Why do programs start taking up virtual memory even before all the RAM gets used

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InquilineKea

New Member

Joined

Aug 4, 2010

• Aug 7, 2010

• #1

Why do programs start taking up virtual memory even before all the RAM gets used up?

 

ChanceCoats123

d20 in a jacket

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Joined

Feb 1, 2009

Location

Illinois

• Aug 7, 2010

• #2

I would assume that the system always reserves a certain amount of ram for A. new programs to be opened or B. System processes.

But that's my uneducated guess at best.

 

Moneyless

Member

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Joined

Apr 27, 2010

Location

Toronto, Canada

• Aug 7, 2010

• #3

Could it be superfetch? I'm assuming you're on Windows.

 

orion456

Member

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Joined

May 31, 2004

• Aug 7, 2010

• #4

Moneyless said:

Could it be superfetch? I'm assuming you're on Windows.

Click to expand...

At least on Vista I turned superfetch, defrag and load optimization off. So much time was spent accessing the harddrive that applications loaded slowly and sometimes took ridiculous times to come up. Especially on a slow harddrive, in Vista these need to be deleted.

 

I.M.O.G.

Glorious Leader

Joined

Nov 12, 2002

Location

Rootstown, OH

• Aug 7, 2010

• #5

Not a short answer, but here is some information on why it works the way it does - slightly dated, but I read through it and the key ideas are the same:
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

And this one shows you how to get a better sense of what is going on with memory usage:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-7-memory-usage-whats-the-best-way-to-measure/1786