Vista using 50% of ram - HELP!

The simplest thing is to close unneeded programs. Open Task Manager and see what programs are using lots of ram. I avg. about 30% on Vista idling, I have a few monitoring programs open also. Just opening Firefox ups that to 35%.

You might also try turning off Superfetch, I'll find a link on how to (I don't remember) and post back.

EDIT: Disable Superfetch link

Another thing, turn off any unnecessary startup programs.

Vista normally uses a lot of RAM, but that's likely not what is affecting your game FPS because it will free up RAM if a game, or other app needs it. What's your memory usage during a game?

Another thing to check is that Vista is not Indexing your HDD, this will use alot of ram and slow you down.

ram usage in a game goes near 100%, depending on the game...

If your RAM usage starts off low but gradually gets higher and higher, it's because of Superfetch.

Consider unused RAM is wasted RAM. Vista tries to use around 50%. What you describe is normal. How you conclude it lowers your FPS? There are several tweaks to try and lower usage. But the amount and the affect on performance are not worth it.

This comes down to basics of what RAM is and how it works. While I do not recommend it and do not think it will help disable page file. If your system does not crash (it wont) do you see an improvement? No so the Vista usage of RAM is not negatively affecting performance. Now turn page file back on and quit worrying all is fine.

One could argue that it's just utilizing that much ram when you aren't gaming, but it shouldn't be using that much RAM. I use a little over a gig on idle.

How many programs are set to run on start up? Cut those down will help a fair bit. My conditions are upon start i am using about 23-25% ram of 4gb and only memory hog i have is steam on start up.

For me after running a game my ram usage will stay up for a while but it is up because the game data is cached in the ram for faster load times, and the OS will dump the games cache if a different game need more memory that is currently allowed.

If the OS is cacheing memory to and from your hard drive then you have to worry but i doubt you are using all 4gb of ram in task manager while gaming. Read what you have said so far and still holding my thought.

Well, Superfetch makes all your programs load faster and indexing your HDD helps with speed when searching for something on your computer. They're pretty good features so I would suggest leaving them alone.

only things i have on startup are:

vista sidebar
Everest ultimate (on sidebar)
msn 2009
AVG anti virus
CCC

so i doubt there is much else to it...

Is this a recent Vista install?

Try some of these tweaks:
http://mostlysavingmoney.com/top-10-...-speed-tweaks/
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm

to disable superfetch:
1. click start
2. in the search bar type "services.msc" without the quotes and press enter
3. find "superfetch"
4. right click on superfetch and then click properties
5. under the general tab go to "service status" and click "stop"
6. go to the "startup type" drop down box and select "disabled"

and to disable indexing do all the same steps above for "windows search"

i personally disable indexing because i cant stand the thrashing on my harddrive and i never need it, and superfetch uses ram that i can use for other stuff, and i don't need it, it serves no purpose for me. so i disable it.