Report: Most Windows 7 PCs Max Out RAM, Choke

[OvrClkr]

My PC is running fine with 4GB of 1600Mhz / Win 7 64bit.... no choke here...

 

[buwish]

I did notice that while using the RC (64-bit) on my desktop with 8GB of RAM with nothing installed, the RAM usage would jump up to nearly 80-90% after leaving it on for long periods of time and that was with hardly anything on it running in the background. But the 64 bit Pro version only used 1.5/8, even when left on for days. So who knows what they are looking at in the study- hopefully no data from the RC.

 

[Gin Fushicho]

I'm using 800 MB's if RAM at idle, 1.33 with Ventrilo , uTorrent , and firefox open with 6 tabs.

 

[zorky9]

I top out at 75% playing CoH or FC2. No slow down here... But as the others have pointed out, you paid for the RAM, it'd better be put to good use by the OS.. and Win7 seems to be managing it well.

Intertesting to hear from MS nevertheless.

 

[ayssius]

I have Windows7 Pro x64, fully loaded with av, firefox, all my passive crap its like 1.77GB. This article is full of fail.

 

[jimmysmitty]

stravis, the only thing that uses more RAM in x64 is a program thats 64bit. If you have 32bit, you can't even use all 4GB due to it also having to have room for the GPU memory. But if you run a 32bit program on 7 x64, its still like 32bit and uses the same amount of memory as it would on 7 x86.

As for the report, I have 3 tabs in IE 8 open, Firefox and the launcher for STO and I am running at 40% of 4GB so about 1.6GB. When I had Vista, it was about 50%.

Now the biggest part he is talking about is the caching system, aka SuperFetch, that Vista and 7 have where XP does not. It will take your unused memory and cache frequently used programs so they will launch faster.

Some people think its using it always, but if you have a program or your system needs more memory Vista/7 will free up the memory it needs by unloading the cached programs.

So in the end, its all just opinion. I haven't noticed any slow downs in 7 and its been much faster than XP and Vista. I think the guy needs to read up on SuperFetch a bit more before posting claims like this.

 

[MasterCATZ]

sigh* retyping post again

its not really using that much more

I have win 7 ( well 2008 server) running on an ION system with 1 gig RAM and 1 gig swap file

runs just fine for torrent / www / IM / Email / Multimedia Pc

I also have another pc with 8 Gig RAM , always throwing up low memory
reason being Swap file is off and MS have got a little memory bug not wanting to free up standby RAM before FREE RAM is used up ( normally they dig into the swap file a little bit first ... ( solution is to make an RAM Drive and throw an small swap file on that ... )

realy wish MS would start thinking of the people that do NOT want to have Swap files .. especally those with SSD cards , dont wanna kill them having Swap files on them

if you look at resorce monitor you will see

Hardware reserved ( mostly Video RAM for onboard plus a few BIOS)
IN USE ( what windows is actually using )
MODIFIED ( other programs that are doing things )
STANDBY ( what Free memry that has been used and now in standby so it does not have to be loaded again ie last game played still has its goodies loaded )
FREE ( memory that has been untouched so far )


also most users hop onto win7 64bit .. to use up all their RAM so we can multitalk freely with our 20+ gig of RAM and not the yucky 3~4 gig the other MS OS's offer ... also why wasn't this comparing Vista .. now that was an MeMory HOG

 

[ricin]

I think this guy is full of crap. My Windows 7 x64 box is showing 3.87GB RAM used, which is less than 50%. I've got Photoshop, World of Warcraft, FireFox, Internet Explorer, MS Word, and MS Excel open right now.

 

[maxsp33d]

1.2G out of 4G on 64bit. No problems what's so ever, and it tops at 3G when I'm playing games. Like some people said already, if is there why not use it.

 

[TheViper]

Do these supposed computer people not know what SuperFetch is?

 

[the-real-link]

Sitting here with Winamp and IE open, virus scanner, firewall, and 5 instances of F@H running without anything else really running aside from Windows 7 Pro. Got 4 GB installed and only using 1.5GB of it. No problems here - I've only seen it hit a RAM limit when browsing a directory with say, 10,000+ photos in it at once.

 

[kiwimonk]

You guys do know that Vista and Windows 7 use ram that isn't needed to cache things/predict what you might run and make the system faster right? Just like linux...

 

[doc70]

I don't want to have resources that GB of ram to play with, I'd rather have it used in my PC; if Win 7 can do that, then it's fine by me. Better that way than slow down my system with HDD addressing.
I don't know what Marcus' problem is with that, or, for that matter, the people at Computerworld; until Win7 they all complained that the resources are not used right; now that they are actually used, it's a problem, too. Make up your mind, people.

 

[mr_tuel]

I have 6GB DDR3, and the only time usage exceeds half of that is when I'm running Photoshop CS4 and AutoCAD 2010 together. Photoshopping a 30 MP image does use quite a bit of ram if you have plenty of layers.

 

[gudanov]

I haven't seen any serious memory issues with 7. Right now I have a 4GB and Windows 7 64-bit with a good number of Google Chrome tabs, two sessions of Eclipse, Microsoft Word with a graphics-heavy document, Adobe Acrobat with a good sized document, Microsoft Outlook, Notepad++, 8 explorer windows, and a Perforce client. Memory usage is 75% and it hasn't been rebooted since the last time I installed an update.

My other computer with Windows 7 64-bit has 8GB of RAM and I have a hard time getting it above 40% usage with programs open all over the place and doing background video encoding.

 

[igot1forya]

Who cares about how much RAM is used, the important thing is how LITTLE Pagefile is used. If I've got 12Gig of RAM, I want Windows to use as much of it as possible if it means it wont need to use the Pagefile.

 

[oconnellda]

[citation][nom]Goro[/nom]God I hate these incomplete articles. No oconnellda it is not high. Keep in mind that there might be other stuff running in the background services etc. Plus todays software requires more memory to call so why should not a OS do the same. We want faster CPU more HDD space, put large amounts of ram in the computer but want the OS to use nothing. All this doesn't make sense.[/citation]

I agree with this statement. My performance is fine.

Like most enthusiasts, I want to maximize every bit of performance in my machine. I run lightweight OS's and run Windows 7 in the Classic Theme in order to gain Performance space to use towards running other applications.

 

[Guest]

Using windows 7 pro 64bit. I glanced down at my performance monitor and am sitting at 30% of 4gigs used. This guy's numbers are way off.

 

[tkgclimb]

More people have 64bit os's now which so and are supposed to use more ram

 

[blackjellognomes]

According to the Computerworld report, XPnet found that ... 86 percent of its Windows 7 machines are regularly consuming 90 percent to 95 percent of their available RAM.... Alarming findings aside, XPnet observed that Windows 7 PCs sport an average of 3.3GB of RAM....

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but if XPnet's Windows 7 PCs reflect the PCs they "observed", XPnet is just saying 86% of its PCs regularly use 2.97 to 3.135GB of RAM. The report doesn't really apply to us, so I'm assuming it was aimed at informing the average Joe, who might have less than 4GB of RAM or a 32-bit version of Windows 7.

 

[Shadow703793]

Hmm.... I run intensive CFD and renderings and a RAM Drive (1.4GB) and I don't use up 8GB of the 12GB on my i7 rig.

 

[omnimodis78]

Are they comparing XP x86 to that of Windows 7 x64? Naturally a 64-bit OS will populate more memory straight up compared to a 32-bit OS. That said, my Windows 7 (x64) never goes over 50% of memory usage - ever - so what are they talking about? I hope Microsoft blows these douchebags XPnet people out of the water.

 

[Guest]

Windows 7 memory management is designed to keep 50% of the ram "free". That ram is used also to cache some stuff until it is needed. This "research" is as stupid as telling that raid0 is wrong because it "uses disks too much". Please kids, don't think that you are clever than the best programmers and architects in the world.

 

[extremepcs]

[citation][nom]OvrClkr[/nom]My PC is running fine with 4GB of 1600Mhz / Win 7 64bit.... no choke here...[/citation]

Ditto. Runs fine on my core 2 with 4GB. Left 4 Dead and GTA 4 both run smooth. People need to learn how to manage their systems... start by removing all of the bloatware that comes preinstalled from almost all OEM's. Having stuff running in the background to give the illusion that programs start faster is like leaving your car running all day long, just in case you need to go somewhere.

 

[Guest]

everyone has forgotten that the high ram usage is on PURPOSE. Windows Vista/7 loads programs into the ram, where it is quicker to access than a hard drive. Of COURSE its gonna show all the ram being used versus XP, as XP doesnt sport this behavior.

/thread