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Sentinel
Premium Member
join:2001-02-07
Florida

Sentinel

Premium Member

How to tell what is using ram?

How do you tell what is using up the ram that is currently in use? I go to the task manager and it says that I am using roughly 1GB of ram. But if I go to the process section and add up all the items in there it does not add up to 1GB. It adds up to only about 200MB roughly. So I'm guessing that it is not showing me what is actually using up all that ram.

If I use resource monitor it shows that there is 1GB of ram in use, but also does not show what is using it.

Now before people freak and ask why I care since it is using so little ram and stuff like that please don't. I don't care about much is being used. I'm just curious. I always thought that it would show how much ram was currently in use and what was using it. Not concerned; just interested.
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

1 recommendation

dave

Premium Member

Here's the thing that's probably getting in your way: programs do not 'use RAM' directly, they allocate virtual memory, and then the OS assigns and deassigns RAM to back that virtual memory, as the system demands it.

So what are you looking at in Task Manager? There is no RAM column. The Working Set Size column is the best approximation here (in Windows jargon, the working set is the set of process virtual memory that currently is backed by RAM).

(But because of shared code, it doesn't follow that each page in some working set has its own unique RAM page; sometimes 1 + 1 = 1)

But there's also a bunch of pages on the standby list; this contains pages that are no longer part of the working set of any process, but they still have live content, and if the owning process needs them back again, they can be re-added to the working set without any disk I/O. Essentially, standby is available for immediate re-use if need be, but arranged so that it can be put back where it came from relatively cheaply.

Then of course there is the file cache; this contains pages read from files, and you might as well leave the RAM allocated until you have some other more urgent need for it -- there's no benefit in having RAM sit around unused.

If you look in Resource Monitor, you'll notice that Cached = Modified + Standby, and Available = Free + Cached.

tl;dr summary: modern VM systems are complicated resource managers, and what might seem like a simple question ('how much RAM does this particular program use') does not always have a simple answer.
Sentinel
Premium Member
join:2001-02-07
Florida

Sentinel

Premium Member

Click for full size
Yes, that is exactly what I was looking at. Memory (working set). Also resource monitor as attached image indicates.

I remember TuneUp Utilities used to have a graph that showed ram usage by item. Worked well back in the day. Don't know how good it is today with Win7.

I'm not really looking for something that gives an exact down to the MB description of what is using every MB of ram at any given second. I was just hoping to get a slightly better picture of ram usage than what is currently displayed which does not seem to be giving me very much info at all.

For example on this particular PC I have integrated video that I know is using 512MB of ram for video, but I don't see that in the total. If I get a dedicated video card would my overall total drop by 512MB? On another PC I have here that almost identical specs it shows far less ram in use.
I use a static size swapfile so that is not what is causing the difference.
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

dave

Premium Member

Probably your integrated video is of the sort that doesn't reserve the address range at the hardware level, but gets allocated it by the OS.

In which case, the 'shared' part is just plain old in-use memory.
dave

dave

Premium Member

Try this program.

»technet.microsoft.com/en ··· 229.aspx
Sentinel
Premium Member
join:2001-02-07
Florida

Sentinel

Premium Member

Thanks again dave.
I will try that program.

Yeah, I'm guessing that the video memory is just "in there somewhere" but that is one of the things that I find interesting. On another machine I have it is using approximately 700 to 800 MB of ram when idle and it has a dedicated video card. No shared ram for memory.
The machine that I took the screen grab above uses about 860 to 1000 MB of ram when idle. Only roughly 200 MB more. I would have figured it would be roughly 512MB more since it is allocating that for video. I doubt that if I got a dedicated video card for this machine that the amount of ram in use would drop by 512MB (current allocated memory used for video) down to roughly 400 to 500 MB of ram in use.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

1 recommendation

koitsu

MVM

Graphics cards which use system memory for system memory will not "statically" allocate a chunk, they will do so dynamically. I say this because of your statement "I would have figured it would be roughly 512MB more since it is allocating that for video".

Utilities like "RAMMap" I don't think will give you an indication of how much memory is being utilised by your video card (meaning it won't break it down for you in that manner). Utilities like GPU-Z should provide that, assuming the card and drivers both have tie-in support for getting this information (it will be under the "Sensors" tab, under "Memory Used"), however.

Welcome to how complex a VM is. It is not as simple as people like to make it out to be.
lawsoncl
join:2008-10-28
Spirit Lake, ID

1 recommendation

lawsoncl to Sentinel

Member

to Sentinel
If you want lots of info, go download process explorer (used to be Sysinternals before MS bought them out). »technet.microsoft.com/en ··· 653.aspx
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

1 recommendation

dave to koitsu

Premium Member

to koitsu
You probably can also get the graphics system memory usage from the control program that your graphics card vendor provides. The above screen shot from me is just from 'right-click on desktop, choose Nvidia Control Panel'. I'm pretty sure the 768MB is the number for actually-used right-now, rather than being (say) a maximum.
dave

dave to lawsoncl

Premium Member

to lawsoncl
FWIW, the 'rammap' program I linked to is also a sysinternals program.
Sentinel
Premium Member
join:2001-02-07
Florida

Sentinel to koitsu

Premium Member

to koitsu
Yeah, I forgot all about Sysinternals. I remember them from back in the day.
Looking now. Both programs give a lot of info and help a lot. A bit hard to decipher but very interesting.