I just want to complain about memory not being enough

[sram]

Hi,

When I build my PC's I build them to last. My current rig is the one you see in my signature. It is about 6 years old. I have an older build that is 11 years old and still kicking it. Yes my current build is relatively old by current standards but still: It should perform well in most situations. The thing that is annoying me is that I don't understand why the system eats my memory very fast as if I'm running a really heavy application or editing a huge video file while all I'm doing is having few firefox windows open with multiple tabs on them + Acrobat reader with 8 pdf files open + chrome with some tabs also open + another user logged in with some browser tabs also open. When I open up task manager it shows that I'm using 65% of my memory. 64 GB is still large RAM size even by today's standards. Why is this happening? I don't remember it was this bad before. Is it because of the updates I'm getting for windows and other software programs? Software are becoming more heavy as they update themselves? Or is windows still bad with memory management?

I really feel like browsers consume memory nowadays like never before. But why isn't it a problem with my 6 years old iphone which has like 500 safari tabs open? Because they are shown in screen?

Will a newer system with the same amount of RAM (64 GB) have less memory utilization when compared to my build because of better efficiency?

Like I said, no problems here. I just wanted to complain and probably get a better understanding of things. Thanks.

 

[pendragon1]

from what you describe youre doing with it, it sounds about right.
your phone is running mobile versions, way dumbed down.

 

[Stugots]

Can you post a screenshot?

Are you sure it's not just caching a large amount of data while actual computational memory usage is much much less?

 

[sram]

View: https://imgur.com/E6piaoC

 

[sram]

This is the whole desktop:


View: https://imgur.com/tmQmRSZ

 

[sram]

View: https://imgur.com/OMVRbiY

 

[acquacow]

I work from home, use 30+ browser tabs across two different browser profiles for work/personal... I have no issues working either from my desktop with 16 cores and 32GB of DRAM, or my Laptop with 4 cores and 16GB of DRAM.

In both cases, all DRAM gets used up by system caches, as any unused DRAM is wasted DRAM. Things will be unallocated as applications need more memory/etc.

You could have 128GB and it should still fill up, at least with system cache stuffs...

 

[Dopamin3]

The thing that is annoying me is that I don't understand why the system eats my memory very fast as if I'm running a really heavy application or editing a huge video file while all I'm doing is having few firefox windows open with multiple tabs on them + Acrobat reader with 8 pdf files open + chrome with some tabs also open + another user logged in with some browser tabs also open.

Two users logged into one system, along with what each user is running and evidenced in your task manager screenshot seems pretty typical to me. Modern browsers use more RAM as they typically spawn tons of instances, basically a process for each tab, extension, etc...

I know in older versions of Windows you could see processes for all users when launching task manager as admin but I'm not sure if that's present. With each user logged in there are various services and windows background programs running consuming that precious RAM.

 

[Stugots]

View: https://imgur.com/E6piaoC

Yea; you have 36GB total in use, but 27GB of that is just cached data.

 

[sram]

I want to understand this cache thing better. Are you guys saying that the system is set to just cache anything I open in RAM so that it is faster if I open it again until it is all used up? And if a new fresh program needs to run, it will release some of the RAM used for caching?

 

[sram]

Yea; you have 36GB total in use, but 27GB of that is just cached data.

This cached data means it was running at some point in time before but it is no longer running now? And this is for the sake of quicker access/processing if I open the same data again? And this also means only ~9GB is my actual usage of RAM?

 

[GotNoRice]

I want to understand this cache thing better. Are you guys saying that the system is set to just cache anything I open in RAM so that it is faster if I open it again until it is all used up? And if a new fresh program needs to run, it will release some of the RAM used for caching?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefetcher

Basically what you said is correct, although it is more aggressive than that. Ever since SuperFetch was introduced in Vista (since renamed SysMain in Windows 10), it will attempt to cache things into system RAM even before you use them, based on your usage patterns. Everything loaded into cache is considered to be low priority, so any program that actually needs to use system RAM for traditional purposes will always have priority over anything in cache. It will not result in increased pagefile usage or anything like that. There really is no downside, it's putting to use RAM that would otherwise be sitting there doing nothing. RAM is still much faster than even the fastest SSD.

 

[vick1000]

The more RAM you install, the more Windblows will reserve.

 

[toast0]

I want to understand this cache thing better. Are you guys saying that the system is set to just cache anything I open in RAM so that it is faster if I open it again until it is all used up? And if a new fresh program needs to run, it will release some of the RAM used for caching?

Mostly yes, but if you've got 27 GB free, your fresh program needs to use a lot of memory before any disk cache needs to be evicted.

Mobile phone OSes aggressively drop context from ram. Safari probably stores the context for most of your tabs on disk, not ram. iOS barely allows program execution in the background, when you switch apps, the old one has a few seconds to clean up before its killed (and that's when Apple is being generous). Android allows apps to run in the background more often, but also likes to kill things, so apps need to persist to disk early and often and tend not to keep piles kf things in ram (although, don't get me started about some of the terrible apps or why Andoeid phones have 4GB ram at all).

 

[sram]

I see, it is clear now. The way RAM is managed is way more complicated than one would think. Thanks guys.

 

[Mr Evil]

Yea; you have 36GB total in use, but 27GB of that is just cached data.

The 27GB cached is in addition to the 36GB in use. You can see this in task manager by hovering the mouse over the "memory composition" chart - the two dark portions are in-use, and the lighter portion to the right is cahe. If there was any memory free, there would be a second lighter part on the far right.

 

[sram]

The 27GB cached is in addition to the 36GB in use. You can see this in task manager by hovering the mouse over the "memory composition" chart - the two dark portions are in-use, and the lighter portion to the right is cahe. If there was any memory free, there would be a second lighter part on the far right.

Wait what? Now it is getting confusing again. This is different from what other guys said. This would mean Cached is not part of "In use" RAM. If you sum them altogether I will end up with my RAM capacity.

 

[sram]

I just went and checked. I have 4 portions. In use, modified, standby, and free.


View: https://imgur.com/Y4kJUwU

 

[sram]

This one is better:


View: https://imgur.com/zPxGYr0

 

[pendragon1]

not sure what hes talking about but as you can clearly see, and hopefully you can do the basic math, it adds up to ~64gb. you have 33.1 in use between what the system is using and has cached(25.6, 19.5 is current compressed) plus 30.1 free. i think he may be confused by the "128GB committed"...

 

[LukeTbk]

not sure what hes talking about but as you can clearly see, and hopefully you can do the basic math, it adds up to ~64gb. you have 33.1 in use between what the system is using and has cached(25.6, 19.5 is current compressed) plus 30.1 free. i think he may be confused by the "128GB committed"...

Simply 2 different session, https://hardforum.com/threads/i-jus...mory-not-being-enough.2029934/post-1045711064

This one is better:

You can use Microsoft more advanced process explorer (that let you see all users process, let you save them and open them in Excel):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer#download

For in details:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/defrag-tools/2-process-explorer

 

[Mr Evil]

Wait what? Now it is getting confusing again. This is different from what other guys said. This would mean Cached is not part of "In use" RAM. If you sum them altogether I will end up with my RAM capacity.

Yes. Windows' cache doesn't count as "in use" because Windows will immediately free it if an application needs more RAM. It's good that the total in use + cache fills all your RAM, because as acquacow mentioned above, it's wasted if it's empty.

i think he may be confused by the "128GB committed"...

The different memory metrics are certainly confusing. The "committed" numbers are the amount that applications have asked for, out of the total available (which is RAM + page file). This can be much larger than the "in use" number because apps can ask for loads of memory to be allocated to them, but then only actually use some of that.

 

[Stugots]

The 27GB cached is in addition to the 36GB in use. You can see this in task manager by hovering the mouse over the "memory composition" chart - the two dark portions are in-use, and the lighter portion to the right is cahe. If there was any memory free, there would be a second lighter part on the far right.

Sorry for the confusion. You are correct sir.

 

[michalrz]

I have 32 GB, and while I haven't experienced any serious problems running Windows 10, nowadays I run Mint Linux.
I'm not even evangelizing, the Linux world has its share of utterly retarded software and is not yet ready for the average Kowalski.
But, it behaves similarly with regard to RAM - "if you want your ram unused, take it out and put it on a shelf".

This system is rarely rebooted, runs a Windows VM for MS Office constantly, and I rarely close stuff.
I don't know what latency is. This thing is stupid fast on a regular SATA SSD. CPU is just a Ryzen 5 3600.

The only cases of runaway RAM consumption were 2 counts of the Steam client crapping itself, and it actually caused the system to stutter.
I had to remedy this by opening another tty console (outside of the GUI - ctrl+alt+f<number>) and typing in "killall steam" or "killall firefox", etc.
There are indeed pieces of software that overstep their boundaries, but the userbase usually is quick to vote those away with their wallets.

All is well my dude, enjoy your 128 Gigs.

 

[nightfly]

So basically, if I create a machine with 10 TB of ram, and a 10 TB SSD, the new versions of operating systems will read the whole hard drive and cache it to the ram. Whether I ever run those programs or not.
So whatever new computer I build, is obsolete the moment I build it? Unless I have more ram than I have storage. WTF????
Great, just great. My old 286 ran faster with less nonsense going on. Yeah, yeah, I'll get in my rocking chair now and shut up.

 

[vick1000]

So basically, if I create a machine with 10 TB of ram, and a 10 TB SSD, the new versions of operating systems will read the whole hard drive and cache it to the ram. Whether I ever run those programs or not.
So whatever new computer I build, is obsolete the moment I build it? Unless I have more ram than I have storage. WTF????
Great, just great. My old 286 ran faster with less nonsense going on. Yeah, yeah, I'll get in my rocking chair now and shut up.

Disable the Sysmain service, formally known as Superfetch.

 

[Stugots]

So basically, if I create a machine with 10 TB of ram, and a 10 TB SSD, the new versions of operating systems will read the whole hard drive and cache it to the ram. Whether I ever run those programs or not.
So whatever new computer I build, is obsolete the moment I build it? Unless I have more ram than I have storage. WTF????
Great, just great. My old 286 ran faster with less nonsense going on. Yeah, yeah, I'll get in my rocking chair now and shut up.

Geez, put the gun down…it’s just caching.

 

[GotNoRice]

So basically, if I create a machine with 10 TB of ram, and a 10 TB SSD, the new versions of operating systems will read the whole hard drive and cache it to the ram. Whether I ever run those programs or not.

No.

It's based on your usage patterns. For example, if it records that 98% of the time after you boot up your computer, you use Chrome, then it will begin to load Chrome into cache after each boot, even before you've used it yet. The same could apply to elements of a commonly played game, etc, depending on how much data is loaded into RAM and how much RAM you have. It doesn't just try to load everything. If you actually had more RAM than hard drive space, maybe it would? But if you actually spend that much on your RAM, wouldn't you want it to be used?

So whatever new computer I build, is obsolete the moment I build it?

I can't fathom how you would have come to that conclusion based on what we are talking about, if you had even a very basic understanding of what we were actually talking about. Take a breath and start from the beginning.

 

[Mazzspeed]

I have 32 GB, and while I haven't experienced any serious problems running Windows 10, nowadays I run Mint Linux.
I'm not even evangelizing, the Linux world has its share of utterly retarded software and is not yet ready for the average Kowalski.
But, it behaves similarly with regard to RAM - "if you want your ram unused, take it out and put it on a shelf".

View attachment 590859
This system is rarely rebooted, runs a Windows VM for MS Office constantly, and I rarely close stuff.
I don't know what latency is. This thing is stupid fast on a regular SATA SSD. CPU is just a Ryzen 5 3600.

The only cases of runaway RAM consumption were 2 counts of the Steam client crapping itself, and it actually caused the system to stutter.
I had to remedy this by opening another tty console (outside of the GUI - ctrl+alt+f<number>) and typing in "killall steam" or "killall firefox", etc.
There are indeed pieces of software that overstep their boundaries, but the userbase usually is quick to vote those away with their wallets.

All is well my dude, enjoy your 128 Gigs.

WTF is going on with your ram usage? Why is shared memory usage so high?

I have 32GB of memory, I currently have Thunderbird open in one virtual workspace, Firefox with about 5 tabs open in another workspace, along with Steam, Latte Dock, GWE, Strawberry music player, AnyDesk, Dolphin File Manager...The list goes on - And I'm using 4.3GiB with 400MiB shared and 8.7Gib as cache.

I'm also seeing more people than ever before using Linux, from migrating Windows users to Raspberry Pi enthusiests, obviously the OS has something going for it for the average Kowalski. I've yet to come across any retarded software issue that's unique to Linux, there's retarded software by the magnitude under all operating systems.

space and Firefox with a few tabs open in another

 

[michalrz]

WTF is going on with your ram usage? Why is shared memory usage so high?

Probably because of the Windows VM running. Sort by MEM%:

I've yet to come across any retarded software issue that's unique to Linux, there's retarded software by the magnitude under all operating systems.

Please re-read this part of my post:

I'm not even evangelizing, the Linux world has its share of utterly retarded software and is not yet ready for the average Kowalski.

"Its share of retarded software". Implies - other environments have their share as well. NOT exclusively, like you're interpreting my post.
I'd argue that if you have to ctrl+alt+F<number> or telinit 3 or ctrl+alt+backspace to deal with a misbehaving piece of software , like the steam client, then it is not something that a casual/new user would instinctively do.

You're arguing with the wrong person about this. The Pi is indeed a great example of what can be done properly, with well-curated packages and extensive learning materials.

Would you, however, try to convert someone straight to Arch or Debian? It's a coin-toss - I've seen people adapt seamlessly because their hardware and software worked out of the box, and I've seen people hit a brick wall because someone forgot a --include before building a more obscure package (not checked thoroughly).

 

[Mazzspeed]

Probably because of the Windows VM running. Sort by MEM%:
View attachment 591261


Please re-read this part of my post:

"Its share of retarded software". Implies - other environments have their share as well. NOT exclusively, like you're interpreting my post.
I'd argue that if you have to ctrl+alt+F<number> or telinit 3 or ctrl+alt+backspace to deal with a misbehaving piece of software , like the steam client, then it is not something that a casual/new user would instinctively do.

You're arguing with the wrong person about this. The Pi is indeed a great example of what can be done properly, with well-curated packages and extensive learning materials.

Would you, however, try to convert someone straight to Arch or Debian? It's a coin-toss - I've seen people adapt seamlessly because their hardware and software worked out of the box, and I've seen people hit a brick wall because someone forgot a --include before building a more obscure package (not checked thoroughly).

In that case, I'm glad I find the combination of Libre Office and Thunderbird covers my Office needs, as running a VM just so you can run MS Office seems like a really inefficient way of doing things from a resource perspective. These days, I actually find Thunderbird to be a better mail client than Outlook.

I mapped System Monitoring Center to [CTRL] & [ALT] & M. Upon pressing my key combination, the application comes into focus and I can kill the misbehaving application from there. Under KDE, the key combination [CTRL] & [ALT] & K will bring up the kill cursor - Hover it over the misbehaving software and click to kill the application. Likewise [CTRL] & [ALT] & [ESC] will bring up the default system monitor whereby you can kill a misbehaving application.

EDIT: Some of those shortcuts may have been edited by myself. I've run the same OS install for the last four years, so it's fairly customized, and TBH it's rare that I have to kill a misbehaving application.

As for recommendations, we're drifting a little off topic here and this isn't the place for such discussion. I know what works well for me, I'm sure transitioning users will find their way if they're serious about moving away from Windows.

I will say that I totally disagree with the notion in general that unused ram is wasted ram - An OS doesn't do it's best to use up all available memory, and doing so will result in a very slow running system.

 

[michalrz]

running a VM just so you can run MS Office seems like a really inefficient way of doing things from a resource perspective.

I realize that, but sadly I ran into some showstopping compatibility issues when exchanging sheets and text files with people who use MS Office (for work). Sometimes these were due to stupidly formatted documents, like getting all creative with creating a layout with mostly whitespace and carriage return/line feed
So - gotta keep that baby running. I can at least pause it.

I mapped System Monitoring Center to [CTRL] & [ALT] & M. Upon pressing my key combination, the application comes into focus and I can kill the misbehaving application from there. Under KDE, the key combination [CTRL] & [ALT] & K will bring up the kill cursor - Hover it over the misbehaving software and click to kill the application. Likewise [CTRL] & [ALT] & [ESC] will bring up the default system monitor whereby you can kill a misbehaving application.

Yup yup, all useful stuff and I value KDE in general. I "learned" Linuxen in the KDE 3.5 era and loved it to bits. There might be a problem with having casuals remember these things. I know I have had such problems trying to migrate folk.

I know what works well for me, I'm sure transitioning users will find their way if they're serious about moving away from Windows.

Same here, all it takes is a little bit of determination and foresight into what is happening with closed systems and software in general. I agree with you. There are ways. It's sad that I have to run a tainted kernel in order to use some of my hardware, but here I am.

I will say that I totally disagree with the notion in general that unused ram is wasted ram - An OS doesn't do it's best to use up all available memory, and doing so will result in a very slow running system.

I'd agree with you if only I was able to notice any performance issues on my system.
But your interpretation is not completely wrong - flushing and freeing massive areas of memory does take time and I would also prefer more "empty" RAM space for extremely time-critical stuff. In my case, this seems to be the better model.

 

[Mazzspeed]

I'd agree with you if only I was able to notice any performance issues on my system.
But your interpretation is not completely wrong - flushing and freeing massive areas of memory does take time and I would also prefer more "empty" RAM space for extremely time-critical stuff. In my case, this seems to be the better model.

One of the strengths of Linux is it's effective caching of the file system. Correctly implemented, spinning rust can result in a system that's far more responsive than a Windows based system using the same storage.

People that stand by the notion that unused ram is wasted ram really don't know how memory management works.

 

[sram]

not sure what hes talking about but as you can clearly see, and hopefully you can do the basic math, it adds up to ~64gb. you have 33.1 in use between what the system is using and has cached(25.6, 19.5 is current compressed) plus 30.1 free. i think he may be confused by the "128GB committed"...

Simply 2 different session, https://hardforum.com/threads/i-jus...mory-not-being-enough.2029934/post-1045711064


You can use Microsoft more advanced process explorer (that let you see all users process, let you save them and open them in Excel):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer#download

For in details:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/defrag-tools/2-process-explorer

Yes. Windows' cache doesn't count as "in use" because Windows will immediately free it if an application needs more RAM. It's good that the total in use + cache fills all your RAM, because as acquacow mentioned above, it's wasted if it's empty.


The different memory metrics are certainly confusing. The "committed" numbers are the amount that applications have asked for, out of the total available (which is RAM + page file). This can be much larger than the "in use" number because apps can ask for loads of memory to be allocated to them, but then only actually use some of that.

Sorry for the confusion. You are correct sir.

Okay guys. I guess It is clear now. I only complained because I don't want my system--which I think is still powerful enough--to struggle running normal applications with normal usage patterns. Since that's not the case, it is fine. I thought I was going that way.