Memory Compression On or Off?

[unwind-protect]

Compressed memory and compressed swap are heavily researched topics. There is no clear win or non-win that you can easily predict.

Also keep in mind that some data doesn't compress with universal compression algorithms, including images and audio.

 

[Apocalypsee]

I checked my laptop and my main PC, on PC it's on I think I recall disabling it before, but was it done on my laptop because it disabled there? Memory usage on laptop usually higher but that is understandable because my laptop only have 4GB RTX 3050 mobile plus 16GB DDR4 memory, when playing Cyberpunk for example memory hovers around 13+GB mark, with memory compression enabled it lowers slightly to around 9-10GB at the same setting. Didn't notice any performance drop

 

[chrcoluk]

Then methinks, MS should fix its MMU algorithm and swap policies, rather than forcing memory compression to take care of it. In any care, any reference to what you claim? (about 50% level)?

There is a website where someone did a test and observed similar behaviour to what I observed.

Not the same site, but this seems to explain similar benefits.

How Buffered IO Can Ruin Performance

Paging can cause bad interactive performance. This happens quite often but very little content exists how you can diagnose and fix paging issues. It is time to change that (a bit). I present you he…

aloiskraus.wordpress.com

 

[:D:D]

Really? Mine always says compressed...

My W10 too, shortly after starting up.

So that means only 146mb is compressed, right?

No, it means x amount of data has compressed to 146MB. It could be Gigabytes of data or it could be around the same size. You can check by hovering your mouse cursor over the left side of the "memory composition" graphic. It also states if memory compression enabled or not. Note that disabling the pagefile also disables memory compression, at least on this old system.

EDIT: I tried opening up as many apps as I could and... compressed memory... went down....

Maybe some of the earlier compressed data was needed to accommodate the new data so removed from the original compressed data.

 

[iameatingjam]

My W10 too, shortly after starting up.

No, it means x amount of data has compressed to 146MB. It could be Gigabutes of data or it could be around the same size. You can check by hovering your mouse cursor over the left side of the "memory composition" graphic. It also states if memory compression enabled or not. Not that disabling the pagefile also disables memory compression, at least on this old system.

View attachment 371009


Maybe some of the earlier compressed data was needed to accommodate the new data so removed from the original compressed data.

Ah, I see. Well thats good to know. Still don't understand why any compression is necessary when so little memory is in use though. Do you know why that would be the case? ( not thats its overly important or anything)

 

[:D:D]

Sorry, don't know. Perhaps a side effect of the implementation?

 

[eidairaman1]

Just try it and report findings

 

[Girofox123]

I found something interesting. When you keep SysMain service enabled but after login you just stop the service, you still have Memory compression while Prefetch is off!

This can be confirmed when you run RAMMap and choose "Empty Working Sets" while watching Task Manager RAM tab. Instead of flushing RAM to pagefile it just compresses that into some kind of ZRAM like in Linux. When you hover over that region you can see how much actual RAM is compressed into what compressed size of memory.

The latest version of Mem Reduct can show pagefile usage in real time. With memory compression usage should be close to zero or at least below 100 MB.

Beware that "Empty Working Sets" also clears already compressed memory which then gets written into pagefile for a short time. The rest of working set memory gets compressed though.

---

Software used:​

• RAMMap v1.61
  • Empty Working Sets (including compressed memory, does potentionally trigger pagefile writes)
• Mem Reduct v.3.5.2
  • Monitoring Pagefile and Memory usage
• Windows Memory Cleaner v2.8
  • Empty Working Sets (except compressed Memory, does not touch pagefile)

 

[Hardcore Games]

I have 64GB in my laptop and Windows does use some when I use certain demanding programs.

 

[Girofox123]

I have 64GB in my laptop and Windows does use some when I use certain demanding programs.

Intersting, me with 32 GB have exactly 0 compressed memory normallly. But i have Windows Memory Cleaner running with hourly "cleaning working set" schedule. At average i have 300 MB compressed with translates to 1.1 GB uncompressed data. This compressed memory stays the same so it seems that almost unused memory is compressed (as it should), maybe from some svchost.exe processes or idle browser tabs.

 

[Hardcore Games]

I have tested 8GB and up with various machines and 8GB is a tad tight for Windows 11 using Google Chrome

16GB runs much better but compression is high as Windows 11 is designed around more recent machines. DDR4 2x16GB is less expensive and last time I looked it was $70 in Canada. 2x32GB is about $140 at present but most of my machines have 2x16GB as that is what the came with. I prefer at least 32GB for Windows 11 as this seems the best for a limited budget,

My Latest Dell uses DDR5 which is more costly than DDR4 but a considerable margin. My machine has has 32GB DDR5-4800 but I am looking at faster memory which is still a premium.