how come windows 11 is using so much memory with only 2 programs open?

[avidgamer121]

despite having a lightweight version and tweaking services it still does this, should i go back to windows 10 as ram upgrade is not an option

this is with only 1 clip added for shorts in camtasia and only 7 tabs in firefox, outrageous stuff.

 

[Marcus L]

Seems about right, windows will use up to about 3-4Gb on its own and you're using over 4Gb with ff and that other app open, seems a lot for 7 tabs in ff, though guess it depends what they are. And you have 16Gb going off your specs

 

[Frick]

It'll use the memory that is avaliable, and memory not in use is ... well useless.

 

[mb194dc]

Because it's bloated garbage, that's the main reason. Still using 10 LTSC IoT here and plan to until 2032+. It'll run fine on 4GB of ram if you're only doing browsing, MS Word etc.

 

[Solaris17]

Seems about right, windows will use up to about 3-4Gb on its own and you're using over 4Gb with ff and that other app open, seems a lot for 7 tabs in ff, though guess it depends what they are. And you have 16Gb going off your specs

Not to mention most modern OS's even those in the linux space and especially with core changes to windows 11 and up prefer to cache ram and release it when its needed. It wont cache it all by any means but it will hold some.

To be honest the hardware utilization aspect of OS's is out dated imo. Much like CPU thermals being well past 60c for about a decade now, with all manufacturers preferring to bounce off the thermal limiter, scheduler and kernel memory management has come a long way in pretty much every subsequent OS version. Mean that with each passing version and in the recent decade or so since windows 8 they get more and more efficient at memory off loading and caching.

I think we have sailed way passed XP, Vista and 7 memory management ideals in that having the least amount of memory used as possible because poor management led to performance degradation.

The CPU cycles are there, and the memory is there. Modern OSs use this.

If you only ever wanted to use 2GB of ram and 2 CPU cores then why even buy a stronger system.

IMO its an old ideology that will take some years still to phase out. Much like the old data ideologies about used space percentages, which still hang on and lurk in the cobwebbed parts of forums, threads and the greater internet, but has thankfully overtime waned to almost obscurity.

 

[KLMR]

I'm facing the problem the other way around. I've been forced to use a crappy PC for FEM and autodesk inventor. No matter how many inventors or simulations I run, with additional 4GB of for firefox, and some other GB for office365 (pure crapware), Windows 11 caches memory to keep everything under 14-15GB when 32GB are available. So most models and meshes are recached when tabbed. Its a gen 13th intel no X cpu on one of those semi "SFF" desktop PCs, you can't even set memory speed.

I think that as long as there is free memory memory should be used freely and then, when things go tight its a matter of the OS to manage memory.

 

[avidgamer121]

Because it's bloated garbage, that's the main reason. Still using 10 LTSC IoT here and plan to until 2032+. It'll run fine on 4GB of ram if you're only doing browsing, MS Word etc.

seems like i will go back to 10 again, btw it's a shame that a basic and old standard by now AAC bluetooth codec is unsupported on Windows 10, guess i will just buy a wired headphone for better sound quality.

 

[Frick]

Because it's bloated garbage, that's the main reason. Still using 10 LTSC IoT here and plan to until 2032+. It'll run fine on 4GB of ram if you're only doing browsing, MS Word etc.

That's good if you have 4GB RAM, but OP has 16GB. What's the point of having RAM if you don't use it?

 

[avidgamer121]

That's good if you have 4GB RAM, but OP has 16GB. What's the point of having RAM if you don't use it?

it might create bottleneck when i run a game

 

[Marcus L]

Not to mention most modern OS's even those in the linux space and especially with core changes to windows 11 and up prefer to cache ram and release it when its needed. It wont cache it all by any means but it will hold some.

To be honest the hardware utilization aspect of OS's is out dated imo. Much like CPU thermals being well past 60c for about a decade now, with all manufacturers preferring to bounce off the thermal limiter, scheduler and kernel memory management has come a long way in pretty much every subsequent OS version. Mean that with each passing version and in the recent decade or so since windows 8 they get more and more efficient at memory off loading and caching.

I think we have sailed way passed XP, Vista and 7 memory management ideals in that having the least amount of memory used as possible because poor management led to performance degradation.

The CPU cycles are there, and the memory is there. Modern OSs use this.

If you only ever wanted to use 2GB of ram and 2 CPU cores then why even buy a stronger system.

IMO its an old ideology that will take some years still to phase out. Much like the old data ideologies about used space percentages, which still hang on and lurk in the cobwebbed parts of forums, threads and the greater internet, but has thankfully overtime waned to almost obscurity.

Regarding cached RAM that is only shown on the performance tab of Taskmgr and not the process tab that shows how much phycial RAM is being utlised by the OS, services and running apps as in the OP's case he is in fact using up half of his RAM +- though Windows could be caching the rest which is not an issue as what is the point if having it if you never want to use it, of course having more than you need is always better than having less and running into performance issues to to paging etc but I digress lol

it might create bottleneck when i run a game

Rather than speculating and trying to 2nd guess how Windows handles RAM why don't you just play a game as you normally would and monitor your RAM/performance 16GB is the minimum formodern gaminganyway and in some cases with some more demanding they will use more than 16GB regardless of what else you have running in the background and 32GB becomes a must at that point, or possibly24GB by just adding another single stick of 8GB/2x4GB etc though I see little point in such configs in most cases

 

[Solaris17]

it might create bottleneck when i run a game

That really doesnt happen anymore unless you are woefully under spec'd. In-fact the current GUI system:

- Used
- Free
- Total
- Cached

Is only really there for human consumption of individual processes, not a great indicator of overall system health. These measurements used to be used but have since proven inefficient and while great from a *user* debug perspective your OS does not use these metrics to manage memory with all modern operating systems using and preferring memory pressure instead. Unless falling back, in the cases of memory leaks at which point Windows no longer crashes but uses an OOM killer like linux in which it will start terminating processes to try and save the system.

 

[Marcus L]

Looking at the rest of your specs seems to be a fairly balanced system, can't see it being an issue as you will struggle to run most newer games without vastly reduced settings thus also using less RAM, in short don't worry until it becomes an issue, RAM is there to be used let Windows do what it does as it does handle it fairly well compared to older versions and before I updated to 32GB from 16GB I never really ran into any issues in day to day use or gaming

 

[avidgamer121]

It'll use the memory that is avaliable, and memory not in use is ... well useless.

Not to mention most modern OS's even those in the linux space and especially with core changes to windows 11 and up prefer to cache ram and release it when its needed. It wont cache it all by any means but it will hold some.

To be honest the hardware utilization aspect of OS's is out dated imo. Much like CPU thermals being well past 60c for about a decade now, with all manufacturers preferring to bounce off the thermal limiter, scheduler and kernel memory management has come a long way in pretty much every subsequent OS version. Mean that with each passing version and in the recent decade or so since windows 8 they get more and more efficient at memory off loading and caching.

I think we have sailed way passed XP, Vista and 7 memory management ideals in that having the least amount of memory used as possible because poor management led to performance degradation.

The CPU cycles are there, and the memory is there. Modern OSs use this.

If you only ever wanted to use 2GB of ram and 2 CPU cores then why even buy a stronger system.

IMO its an old ideology that will take some years still to phase out. Much like the old data ideologies about used space percentages, which still hang on and lurk in the cobwebbed parts of forums, threads and the greater internet, but has thankfully overtime waned to almost obscurity.

you both were right, firefox saw a significant drop.

Rather than speculating and trying to 2nd guess how Windows handles RAM why don't you just play a game as you normally would and monitor your RAM/performance 16GB is the minimum formodern gaminganyway and in some cases with some more demanding they will use more than 16GB regardless of what else you have running in the background and 32GB becomes a must at that point, or possibly24GB by just adding another single stick of 8GB/2x4GB etc though I see little point in such configs in most cases

i did thanks for suggestion otherwise i would have downgraded to 10.

 

[Frick]

it might create bottleneck when i run a game

No different from any other OS. But as solaris said, you'd have to be very underspecced. I had 16GB for a long time and the only time RAM was an issue was when I did serious multitasking (DMing*, having a game open in the background and then launching another game, Tabletop Simulator with a TON of stuff, on top of that, that did cause some issues).

*meaning several dozen big FF tabs and a whole bunch of more or less big PDFs and excel and word and all of them active at the same time)

 

[Solaris17]

you both were right, firefox saw a significant drop.

Not about being right, good on you for having an open mind to learning of the new changes. Now you know, and now you've seen it.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Something else to consider is that modern PCs have very fast access to storage now. When we were still running spinning rust, the performance hit to storage was massive. Today, stuff can be pulled from NVME storage pretty much instantly. That should give the OS more freedom to use up RAM, because it can recover rather quickly when it has to dump content and pull it back up. It can just keep whatever was recent in RAM, and if that’s not what was needed next, no big deal.