Report: Most Windows 7 PCs Max Out RAM [UPD]

Maybe if these people actually upgraded to 64 bit software they could use all of their ram...

Thinkpad t500, 4GB of DDR3. Windows 7 Pro

Current RAM Consumption with Google Chrome, Word 2010 open:

1.37GB.

Seems ridiculously high to me. Right?

And that's for Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, with Intel Core2Duo P8700... just for reference.

I may also add I slim down the GUI a lot. I use Linux fluxbox on my other partition...

Maybe this will free your mind a bit:
http://www.linuxhowtos.org/System/ [...] gement.htm

So a group/site called "XPNet" doesn't like Windows 7? Ha. Cute. My Windows 7 runs just fine thank you very much. You guys are welcome to join the rest of us in 2010 when you ditch that circa 2001 OS.

Meh - I run VMWare Desktop 7 x64 on top of Windows Server 2008 R2 (which is the Windows 7 core) on a Q9550 with 8GB of RAM and it seems s00pah! I also run ESXi (with SQL Server and Sharepoint servers on it) on an E6600 with 6GB of RAM and it's s00pah t00.

I think these kids don't understand that there may be some tuning required (plus using x64 to access all your RAM).

Also - I would like to see something more than "seems sluggish". My Smoothwall server cycles it's RAM usage (going to 99% at times) and it's running - you guessed - s00pah!

Did I miss something? My monitors are telling me I'm using 47% of my RAM as of right now. I'm not sure I've seen them go anywhere near 90%, even after heavy use.

I'm sporting 8gb of ram with Windows 7 Pro x64 and I never go over 25% ram being used.

Okay you are running a laptop which uses a graphic card that also uses your memory and your are complaining?? Maybe you should have got more ram after you realized that integrated graphics means memory sharing..

Running Win7 x64. Had my PC running for about 12 hours now with various relatively lightweight apps (Word, Thunderbird, Firefox, etc.) I have 4 GB of RAM in my system. Resource Monitor reports that 514 MB is hardware reserved (512 MB of it for my IGP), 2,100 MB is on Standby, and only 142 MB is truly free. I've frequently seen it dip to just a few megabytes free. But never have I noticed the computer slow down as a result. It can always grab some of the cached data in the Standby RAM if it has to. I'm eagerly awaiting the response from MS, which I'm expecting will vindicate Win7.

You really shouldn't be running x64 on 4GB - you should double that if possible. x64 takes up more RAM for the same applications than if you were running the 32bit version. I can't remember where but I remember seeing the breakpoint between 32 and 64 bit versions and I think (don't quote me on it though) you had to be over 6GB of RAM to make the x64 version worthwhile.

I run 64 bit on 4GB of ram because it's more secure/stable, not because of memory mapping.

Thanks I never knew that. I will double check that for sure.

Since everyone else is listing what they are running, I max out at 3.5 GB of RAM running GTA 4 with Steam, Xfire, and Vent running on 64 bit Windows 7 with 8 total GB of RAM.

from the way microsoft designs it's operating systems, is looks like windows 7 stays tight and light like XP when there is little system RAM in the first place. however, when you have several gigs at your disposal, 7 will spread out and take advantage of the spare room. and later on, if another application needs some, it will allocate some from its reserves. at least that is what it looks like to me, the other possible alternative is a memory leak which is highly unlikely for an OS.

this seems like a good article opportunity for Toms... just saying.

Where is this coming from? I have 7 64-bit, 6gb ram, and NO pagefile - and even I don't get this kind of ram usage. Not even while encoding high bit-rate x264 while playing TF2 and recording a TV show...

??

This does not suprise me to be honest. I feel that we are missing some information though, like how many of these machines are are simply OS upgrades done on hardware purchased originally for Win XP......4-5 years ago. I'm sure most of the readers on this site know people who insist on using thier old machines to run newer operating systems/software, flat out refusing hardware upgrades that would otherwise make thier lives so much easier simply because "it works right now, why would I need new hardware".
My guess is a large part of the test group is running 1 or 2GB of RAM which in theory should be enough for nearly everything an educated end user would ever need but, then look how much bloatware comes with store bought PCs/laptops killing any overhead room they thought they had. We need more information on this "data".

Yup. For example, the old 17 year old Windows Bug/hole didn't affect x64 OSes.

I'm at 41% right now, and that's high it's usually only in the 20's. Then again I do have 12gb of ram, so I guess it don't really matter to me anyways. The slowest thing on my computer is my regular hard drives. And I got my ssd for my os.

But even on my old computer which only has 1gb of ram. Every thing seems just as smooth with win7 as it did with xp.

Let me rephrase my last post - "not even I get this kind of ram usage" means "I really only see 50 percent max"

Regularly 90 to 95%?? Obviously if people are still using 2GB, but even then, that not true at ALL. Both my home laptop & work laptop have 2GB with swapfile turned off and has probably only hit that hit a percentage with EVERYTHING running at the same time (quite rare) using my working environment (IE/VPN/Outlook/Word/Excel/Powerscript/Visual Studio).

My gaming PC has 8GB with swapfile turned off as well, and running Mass Effect 2 with the usual stuff in the background (AV/IE/etc...) it hasn't cracked the 45% utilization (based on both G15 keyboard LCD resource monitor & Performance counters with W7). It idles at around 1.4GB. My laptops idle at about 800MB.

And none of them are even close to be considered slow, maybe a TAD slower than XP on boot, but after that it's no difference.

Obviously it'll take more than XP... did they expect a friggin' miracle? Did 95 take less RAM than 3.1? But 90-95%? hell no.

God I hate these incomplete articles.

No oconnellda it is not high. Keep in mind that there might be other stuff running in the background services etc. Plus todays software requires more memory to call so why should not a OS do the same. We want faster CPU more HDD space, put large amounts of ram in the computer but want the OS to use nothing. All this doesn't make sense.

2.83GB/8.00GB, not what i would call using almost all of my memory

btw, that is with a VM running as well (so really 2 OS's)

RAM is dirt cheap, at least the cheap RAM is...., no excuse not to get the most possible.

I have 12GB on my i7 machine and 8GB on my laptop... BAM!

I am running 22% of 4GB. Hmm...i guess i did optimized quite a bit, but i believe it was still less than 30% on the fresh install.

3GB used out of 12GB on W7 x64 while playing STO.

My PC is running fine with 4GB of 1600Mhz / Win 7 64bit.... no choke here...

I did notice that while using the RC (64-bit) on my desktop with 8GB of RAM with nothing installed, the RAM usage would jump up to nearly 80-90% after leaving it on for long periods of time and that was with hardly anything on it running in the background. But the 64 bit Pro version only used 1.5/8, even when left on for days. So who knows what they are looking at in the study- hopefully no data from the RC.

I'm using 800 MB's if RAM at idle, 1.33 with Ventrilo , uTorrent , and firefox open with 6 tabs.

I top out at 75% playing CoH or FC2. No slow down here... But as the others have pointed out, you paid for the RAM, it'd better be put to good use by the OS.. and Win7 seems to be managing it well.

Intertesting to hear from MS nevertheless.

I have Windows7 Pro x64, fully loaded with av, firefox, all my passive crap its like 1.77GB. This article is full of fail.

stravis, the only thing that uses more RAM in x64 is a program thats 64bit. If you have 32bit, you can't even use all 4GB due to it also having to have room for the GPU memory. But if you run a 32bit program on 7 x64, its still like 32bit and uses the same amount of memory as it would on 7 x86.

As for the report, I have 3 tabs in IE 8 open, Firefox and the launcher for STO and I am running at 40% of 4GB so about 1.6GB. When I had Vista, it was about 50%.

Now the biggest part he is talking about is the caching system, aka SuperFetch, that Vista and 7 have where XP does not. It will take your unused memory and cache frequently used programs so they will launch faster.

Some people think its using it always, but if you have a program or your system needs more memory Vista/7 will free up the memory it needs by unloading the cached programs.

So in the end, its all just opinion. I haven't noticed any slow downs in 7 and its been much faster than XP and Vista. I think the guy needs to read up on SuperFetch a bit more before posting claims like this.

sigh* retyping post again

its not really using that much more

I have win 7 ( well 2008 server) running on an ION system with 1 gig RAM and 1 gig swap file

runs just fine for torrent / www / IM / Email / Multimedia Pc

I also have another pc with 8 Gig RAM , always throwing up low memory
reason being Swap file is off and MS have got a little memory bug not wanting to free up standby RAM before FREE RAM is used up ( normally they dig into the swap file a little bit first ... ( solution is to make an RAM Drive and throw an small swap file on that ... )

realy wish MS would start thinking of the people that do NOT want to have Swap files .. especally those with SSD cards , dont wanna kill them having Swap files on them

if you look at resorce monitor you will see

Hardware reserved ( mostly Video RAM for onboard plus a few BIOS)
IN USE ( what windows is actually using )
MODIFIED ( other programs that are doing things )
STANDBY ( what Free memry that has been used and now in standby so it does not have to be loaded again ie last game played still has its goodies loaded )
FREE ( memory that has been untouched so far )


also most users hop onto win7 64bit .. to use up all their RAM so we can multitalk freely with our 20+ gig of RAM and not the yucky 3~4 gig the other MS OS's offer ... also why wasn't this comparing Vista .. now that was an MeMory HOG