CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsmemoryresourcesram
Dynamite
Dynamite

Reputation: 361

Memory Usage in Windows

I have 4GB memory installed in my system of which 3.9 GB is shown usable by windows. When i open the task manager and observe the memory usage of various processes, the summed up value and the percentage value shown by task manager differ largely.

Task Manager
(source: googledrive.com)

The sum of the memory used by individual processes is around 1200MB, while task manager shows it to be 63% which is roughly 2500 MB.

ResourceMonitor
(source: googledrive.com)

The resource monitor also shows around 2600 MB used while the memory listed of individual processes does not sum to 2600 MB. I want to know where is the rest of the memory used ??

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2289

Answers (1)

JensB
JensB

Reputation: 6850

Most likely it is used as a cache for things which you have had in memory. The operating system does this to make things faster to start or run the next time around. If the space occupied by the cache is needed for active processes the OS removes the cache. Memory used by the cache is usually considered "free", but in use. In your picture you can see that you have 1245Mb cache.

Free – This one is quite simple. This memory has nothing at all in it. It’s not being used and it contains nothing but 0s.

Available – This numbers includes all physical memory which is immediately available for use by applications. It wholly includes the Free number, but also includes most of the Cached number. Specifically, it includes pages on what is called the “standby list.” These are pages holding cached data which can be discarded, allowing the page to be zeroed and given to an application to use.

Cached – Here things get a little more confusing. This number does not include the Free portion of memory. And yet it might see that it is larger than the Available area of memory. That’s because Cached includes cache pages on both the “standby list” and what is called the “modified list.” Cache pages on the modified list have been altered in memory. No process has specifically asked for this data to be in memory, it is merely there as a consequence of caching. Therefore it can be written to disk at any time (not to the page file, but to its original file location) and reused. However, since this involves I/O, it is not considered to be “Available” memory.

Source: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/5860-63-available-stand-free-cached-memory-differences

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Upvotes: 1

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