Ram usage always at 50%

[dtleonard]

Hi everyone i have an HP Pavillion G6 laptop it has 4 gigabites of ram and my ram usage always at 50% is there any way to lower it or should i upgrade to 8 or 16 gigs?

thanks for your help

[EChondo]

Which OS are you running?

Windows 7 uses close to 800MB to almost 1GB alone, factor in other things like browsers, chats(skype, teamspeak), or anything else, it will all add up. I would recommend looking in Task Manager and seeing what is being used, otherwise upgrade to 8GB.

[Greg]

I also have 4GB or RAM, and my usage always at ~50, too. It's pretty normal, doesn't mean anything is wrong.

[dtleonard]

thanks guys im running windows 7 and i think im going to upgrade to 8GB of ram

[pctr]

Do you really need those additional four gigs? Do you often reach 100% of ram usage?

[dtleonard]

i do get spikes to 95-100% but most of the time its at 75%

[Guest]

What's using it? You probably have dozens of applications open in the background such as printer things, RainMeter ect.

[Konn]

Check your processes (CTRL + ALT + DELETE) and see what programs are using up all your ram, end the processes that you don't need or even uninstall the application.

[xeks]

I'd also clear out all your programs that start on boot, most of the time you don't need them and they just hog resources.

>>Start Menu > Start Up (Folder)

>>Windows + R (Run) > MSCONFIG > Startup (tab) - Make sure you know what you're disabling.

>>Check your system tray to see what has loaded. If you don't need a certain application, open it's preferences/options and uncheck where it says to start on boot/windows.

Also it can't hurt to have 8 GB of RAM if it's inexpensive to upgrade and you see yourself using that tech for a bit longer.

[Oisin Maguire]

xeks way will work perfectly for lowering the amount of ram you are using but there's a nicer way were you can leave all your program the way they are.

>>system>>advanced system settings>>advanced

under performance settings go into advanced and under virtual memory change the size of paging and hay presto you can have alot more memory using your hdd/ssd as virtual memory

ye its abit slower than actual ram but its free and its not that bad :-)

[RyanC]

Windows 7 caches programs in memory so starting them up doesn't take as long. When more RAM is needed, Windows will free the cached memory. If you aren't experiencing any crashes and Windows doesn't feel slow then you don't need to worry about it. You can always upgrade to 8GB for almost nothing assuming you have DDR3 RAM.

[BCMods]

Which OS are you running?

Windows 7 uses close to 800MB to almost 1GB alone, factor in other things like browsers, chats(skype, teamspeak), or anything else, it will all add up. I would recommend looking in Task Manager and seeing what is being used, otherwise upgrade to 8GB.

Just so you know, TS uses literally no resources :P

[Salmiakbal]

What a lot of people don't realize is that ram is meant to be used. Ram that isn't being filled up is useless ram and for almost all of your day to day tasks 4 gigs is well enough.

Also, the more ram you have, the more your system will use. My dad has a laptop with 2gb of ram and it's always idling around 1gb used. My system on the other hand, debloated and all will use 2.5gb of its 8 when idling.

If you still don't feel sure about it, go ahead and buy 4 gigs extra. It's not like it's expensive or anything ;)