Too much RAM usage?

When I start up my computer, RAM is at 25-30% (2 GB). So that's like idle.

Start up firefox, mIRC and MSN and it's like 35-40ish.

Well that's fine, but it slowly creeps up to the 50s when I'm just surfing the web and have mIRC on.

Close firefox, close mIRC, and it's still at around the 50s.

So, it's like unnecessarily using an extra 20%? How can I clear up or "refresh" the RAM (besides restarting the PC)?

 

You have the same amount of RAM as I do, and you use the same programs that I have on. You really don't have a reason to concern yourself over it, It does so to save performance. If needed it's freed for other apps. RAM on a computer behaves differently than you'd expect it to. It's not just allocated for an application then when that application is closed you never get the same amount freed as was taken in the beginning.

If you're using Windows XP I know only one program for memory management and that is TuneUp MemOptimizer, part of TuneUp Utilities. However, it doesn't work on Vista and is shareware. You'll most likely find yourself a freeware solution on the Majorgeeks free downloads page. However, there really isn't any reason for you to be concerned. If you'd like an explanation on how your memory is managed.

First of all... There is the RAM on your machine and there is the paging file, which is a pagefile.sys located on C:\ which is by default 1.5 times your RAM. It is an extension of your memory and is used just like the RAM is. The main difference is that, and this is why we have RAM in the first place and don't use our drives for it, is that RAM is hundreds of times faster than hard disk memory. It's basically an extension of your memory. While you may think you have 2GB of memory, you in fact have 4GB(2 RAM + 2 pagefile, the 1.5 times size doesn't apply for computers with as much RAM as yours anymore) of memory - two are extremely fast and the other two are very slow, and they're used together and managed as needed.

When programs are loaded into memory, to save space, some of the pieces of information which are more "idle" and don't change often are moved onto the paging file to free up memory for your starting apps. For performance reasons, Windows keeps as much of your programs in RAM as possible unless it needs to free up that space. This is why if you have 1GB RAM you may see say 20% of it taken up and if you upgrade to 2 or even 4GB RAM you'll still see around the same relative amount(20%) taken up, even though the absolute amount is 2-4 times more than in the past(200MB, 400MB).

To put it simply Windows will always use large amounts of memory because it's there to use, and when crowded it'll move whatever isn't of priority to the paging file, making it seem that even though you opened up programs which use a certain amount of RAM, the task manager reports that an overall lower value than expected is being used. For example you may start up a game which uses up 200MB RAM and find that your overall RAM usage has only increased by 120. The system probably moved 80MB of memory data that wasn't being used much onto the pagefile.

Hope that clears things up for you.

 

Hmm, ok I guess it doesn't matter then.

It's just that, RAM usage used to go down when I closed programs back in XP.

Using Vista now, sometimes it goes back down, sometimes it doesn't. Just thought that it was saving unnecessary stuff.

 

I have Vista also. Background processes are yahoo, msn, mirc, 5 instances of AIM, ATI driver, tv tuner agent, symantec endpoint protection, norton ghost and comodo firewall 3 and it stays at 35%, then after 24 hours of running it gets up to 45% and doesn't get any higher than that unless I run other programs, then it drops back down to 45.

If you wanna see the thing of which I speak open up alot of apps, games and such until it goes to about 70 or 80 percent then close them, you'll see you have more free RAM than before because Vista saw a sudden need for RAM and moved parts of the memory data onto the pagefile. You can "refresh" memory that way though it's pointless and at the cost of performance. Eventually it'll rise back up.

 

Ya, Vista uses a lot of memory by design, RAM that's not used is a waste of money Imo. I have 1 gig and it's usually at %55.

EDIT: No, I wasn't copying you Halo.LOL

 

I didn't see much of a percentage change in before and after I doubled my RAM to 2GB. It used to stay at 60% then dropped to 50% after I doubled it. However, when minimizing and re-maximizing WoW the process used to be very slow and involved lots of disk access, I could hear my harddrive working, and when going into other areas in the game again the same disk usage and lag. But after I upgraded to 2GB I no longer got any of that cause the computer could keep all of WoW's data in memory and not need to transfer any of it to and from the pagefile due to lack of space. If you're a gamer 2GB RAM will make a difference.