Comments on: Measuring memory usage in Windows 7

By: Vinoth

Vinoth — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:04:48 +0000

Awesome!!! Very Clear and detailed.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:16:29 +0000

Hahaha you must change your memory provider or change your job, because 8 GB only cost US40

By: Rick Oshea

Rick Oshea — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:56:13 +0000

Brandon,

I spent my entire last check upgrading the RAM on my Windows 7 PC. I had 4GB and now I have 8GB. More than anything, this has changed my attitude–now I know more than any of the hardware/software engineers who preceded me. I have a big stick by my keyboard and I wave it menacingly at my PC, yelling threatening things such as “I have 8GB and now I make the rules!” and “I don’t need no stinkin’ Page File!”. I believe it, too, because it comes from my own lips. Now I’m in charge. It’s a good thing I’m so powerful too, as something has to make up for my lack of knowledge.

I have no girlfriends, but I have lot of RAM. Surely that makes up for it.

Your silicon pal,
Rick O’ Shea

By: Carlos

Carlos — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 22:13:11 +0000

Hi Brandon, Thanks for the article, great explanation, however I agree with MLO, If I have more than enought memory I think that disabling the page file its a good idea, that is the only way (I think) that you can guarantee that nothing goes to the disk gaining in performance, the whle idea of the page file is to “simulate” more memory but what happend if you are totally sure that you can backup everything with physical memory, another thing to be considered is that the page file can be a security risk, I use a lot of encrypted info and I don´t want to have the risk some of this info ends in the page file, I know to can cypher that too but that imposes another perfomance cost, let me know please what do you think, bye

By: Ranjith

Ranjith — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:39:56 +0000

Hi Brandon, Thanks for the info. Can you also tell about the “commit limit” please.

I’m monitoring the windows 7 system performance using “perfmon” and I want to know the threshold for “Memory\committed bytes in use” counter.

After reading few articles on net I have taken the threshold = to system’s virtual memory (virtual memory details are taken from system information window). But the values shown in task mgr and the system info window are different. System info window is showing 2.5GB and task manager is showing 4094 MB i.e 4 GB. So which one to be considered as the threshold. I’m bit baffled because of these 2 different values. Can you please help me. Thanks in advance.

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Mici intrebari care nu merita un thread separat. - Page 819 - My Garage — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:03:28 +0000

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By: Windows Task Manager | Warren Tang's Blog

Windows Task Manager | Warren Tang's Blog — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 03:34:03 +0000

[...] Task Manager Updated on 10/10/2011 by warrentang What do the Task Manager memory columns mean?Measuring memory usage in Windows 7Windows 7 memory usage: What’s the best way to measure?What do the Task Manager memory columns [...]

By: Brandon

Brandon — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 08:59:55 +0000

@MLO – Even if you have 12GB of RAM, why would you want to waste some of it? If you disable the page file, that will happen (because all of your commit limit will be charged against RAM even when it’s never actually used).

The only benefit of disabling the page file is the disk space you get back. But in most circumstances that benefit is not particularly important.

By: MLO

MLO — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:23:42 +0000

You gave an example of why disabling the pagefile was a bad idea. At some point I don’t think that holds true. Say if you have Windows 7 x64 with 12 gigs of physical memory. Under those circumstances I just don’t see why a page file is needed or wanted. Perhaps you will comment on this.

By: Niong

Niong — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:10:26 +0000

thnx for writing and explaining it. great post

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 02:40:42 +0000

This is one of the few times I’ve read an article online and was moved to thank the author. It was simple, easy to understand, and dispelled a lot of my misconceptions. Thanks so much.

By: Eli

Eli — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:49:29 +0000

Thanks Allot,

what the recommendation for managing the Page file with the memory Managment?

By: Goodtime

Goodtime — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:08:23 +0000

Big thanks for your article!

By: Brandon

Brandon — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:11:10 +0000

@TomK -

This is probably because your motherboard supports a maximum of 8GB of addressable memory. 64-bit chipsets never provide the full 64-bit addressable range (no CPU or OS even supports it right now). Some max out at 8GB, some at 12, some much higher. This means that if you put that much (or more) RAM into the system, you won’t be able to use it all. The best you get is (Max Addressable) – (Reserved by devices) = (Available to Windows).

By: TomK

TomK — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:05:09 +0000

I don’t think your explanation is completely correct. Windows 7 64 bit knows I have 12G installed, but in the Physical Memory (MB) area I see:

Total 6135
Cached 3679
Available 3607
Free 0

Yet if you go into the resource monitor, it gives me roughly the same numbers, they also have a field “Installed” and it shows 12288 MB of memory.

So the Total appears to be ???? don’t know.

An interesting quirk in resource monitor it shows “hardware reserved” to be 6153

So I’m still puzzled.