patcheney

Hi all, i've finally decided to post this question and seek explanations and solutions.

The computer basicly has a Conroe E6420 2G CPU(a little old yeah), 2G Ram ( 2x1G modules in dual channel), asus nvidia 8800gtx 768Mb memory, and these are the components in question. system is vista 32bit. the following screen shot was taken when no major apps running in the background( basicly straight after a restart)

Having checked with system resource monitor and nvidia system monitor, as pictured below,



i've come to realise that i have only 52Mb of ram free??? surely i was convinced i had enough ram to cover my usage but i only just began to suspect the problem few days ago when i noticed random pauses in games and slow respond by the OS switching between apps.

also the video card had 768Mb( or whatever) built in, but according to nvidia system memory, besides its own dedicated video card memory, its also sharing another whopping 767mb of my system memory.

so, i would appreciate if anyone could point out if my observation was correct, and if so, how do i disable the shared graphics memory, or is the best solution to buy another 2gigs of ram? surely 52mb of free system memory cant be right.....

many thanks for all your help!

Liability

It's called superfetch... Vista automatically populates unused RAM with programs you use often so it can load them instantly. It also frees up the space if it's needed for another app. Don't worry about it

patcheney

thanks for the quick reply mate, yeah i prob should worry if its just superfetch.

although why is the graphics card using 768 of its own memory and another 767 of the system memory? or am i wrong about this?

wiggy2k7

thats normal

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KILLER_K

It is because it is 32bit vista. If you was using 64bit you wouldn't see all that. A 32bit os keeps ram stored for onboard peripherals. So your boards devices and your video cards will be taking into the ram.

If you move to the 64bit os you will remove the ram limitation cap that is on the 32bit os.

I ran vista for a while and then went to windows 7 and there is a big difference. My ram isn't just being chewed up on idle and my had drive isn't being thrashed on each boot up and constantly doing something while it is sitting there. And it uses less ram on load so it leaves more free for other things.

patcheney

thank you all for your replies.
so its just the system, and there's nothing wrong with it.

guess i'm gonna try win7 64bit soon.