task manager RAM usage question

[sample text]

hey,can someone tell me what do the "204 MB Compressed" , "Committed 9.8/18.3 GB", "Cached 7.9 GB" , "Paged pool 392 MB" mean in this screenshot? I can't understand how I have 16GB RAM and 9.8 out of 18.3 GB are committed and 7.9 of them are cached

[PokiDaSpitz]

their small bits of memory that store other stuffs. everyone has these. no need to worry 

[sample text]

10 hours ago, PokiDaSpitz said:

their small bits of memory that store other stuffs. everyone has these. no need to worry 

ye ik,just I want to understand that for educational purposes

[PokiDaSpitz]

i know that cache stores your passwords and account emails and stuffs... the rest you should just google  

[Ashleyyyy]

2 minutes ago, sample text said:

ye ik,just I want to understand that for educational purposes

i believe, but i could be wrong, that cached ram is stuff you've closed but is still loaded in memory to make it open quicker when you relaunch it.  so for example when you close google chrome it keeps it in ram so it opens faster when you relaunch it. 

 

but again, i could be wrong. 

[samcool55]

Compressed means that the data in that part of the RAM is compressed and needs to be decompressed first before it can be used.

This is useful if the system starts to run low on memory.

 

Paged pool is how much of your pagefile is been used. Almost every system as a page file on a hard drive or SSD and basically acts like an overflow catcher.

Let's say you need 18GB ram, but you only have 16GB, what it does is store the rest in the pagefile so the system can keep working. Of course it's slow AF but it's better than a crash.

 

Committed means how much ram has been assigned to all the programs. Let's say you run a game and windows decides to assign 4GB to it, but it only uses 3GB. Result is that there's only 3GB in use while there's 4GB committed. The fact there's such a big difference isn't an issue. Once your RAM gets full it will start to better manage it on its own.

[Mira Yurizaki]

20 minutes ago, sample text said:

hey,can someone tell me what do the "204 MB Compressed" ,

Some of the memory in use by applications but not recently accessed is compressed to save space.

Quote

"Committed 9.8/18.3 GB",

This is how much memory all of the applications and programs have reserved out of the total virtual memory system that the OS has set up. Note that reserved memory (or rather committed memory) does not mean the application is actually using it. It just means that the OS will give them that space when they need it.

 

The entirety of virtual memory is how much RAM is physically installed plus the size of the page file.

Quote

"Cached 7.9 GB"

When you close applications, the memory it used doesn't immediately clear. It's there in case you want to relaunch the application. This way it launches faster. Superfetch also preloads things into ram as "cached". If applications need more memory, Windows will overwrite cached data instead of free memory because it's less overhead to do so.

Quote

"Paged pool 392 MB"

This is how much memory that the OS and drivers use that can be put into the page file. Normal user applications are not counted in this category. Note this does not mean how much OS/driver data is actually in the page file. It just means how much can be put in it. See https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich/2009/03/10/pushing-the-limits-of-windows-paged-and-nonpaged-pool/

Quote

I can't understand how I have 16GB RAM and 9.8 out of 18.3 GB are committed and 7.9 of them are cached

Cached doesn't count towards your memory usage.

Edited May 18, 2018 by M.Yurizaki

[sample text]

10 hours ago, samcool55 said:

Let's say you need 18GB ram, but you only have 16GB, what it does is store the rest in the pagefile so the system can keep working. Of course it's slow AF but it's better than a crash.

does that mean in my case I have 16 GB RAM and I'm using 10GB committed out of 18.3GB(16GB real RAM + 2.3GB page file) which means everything on my PC has 10GB total memory reserved out of my 16GB + 2.3GB page file? And the rest of my 6GB actual ram aren't reserved yet?

Edited May 18, 2018 by sample text

[samcool55]

38 minutes ago, sample text said:

does that mean in my case I have 16 GB RAM and I'm using 10GB committed out of 18.3GB(16GB real RAM + 2.3GB page file) which means everything on my PC has 10GB total memory reserved out of my 16GB + 2.3GB page file? And the rest of my 6GB actual ram aren't reserved yet?

Yes, and out of that 10GB a part of it is used (5-ish GB)

The other 6GB is indeed free and available for allocation, however that doesn't mean it's completely wasted.

As said above let's say you played a game for a while and closed it. The ram it used becomes free and available for being allocated to other programs. However the ram stays "filled" until it's actually allocated. Which means in this case, the game stays in ram.

If you would start the game back up you might notice it loads a lot faster, that's because it loads partially from ram because it's still there instead from the HDD or SSD.