Is my PC memory working ok?

[Justin Passing]

My PC acts like it's clogged up if I have too many browser things going on.
The memory usage never gets near the 32GB it has.

I'm suspicious of the geek at the place which put it together - he said he always uses a - somethng like - series memory mode instead of the recommended parallel mode because the latter tends to cause problems and the speed difference doesn't materially affect the computer speed.
LIke it's processor speed limited and not memory speed limited.


Recently when I was using Chrome and Firefos, each was allocated 6Gb but it said memory 80+% used. ?????????
The computer starts to jerk, on mouse movements,filling web pages, etc.


Some screenshots:
22% doesn't look right

Separate question, I want to use a 6-8 monitor setup, I know I need a better video card but does the PC make a difference for that, past some certain limit?


Thanks.

 

[Wayners]

Use a pc benchmark test. Some free ones around. See how that withe out

 

[flameport]

22% doesn't look right

7.3GB out of 32GB is 22%, so nothing wrong there.
Memory use will be low as there are only 5 apps running, and of those only Firefox is likely to use any significant amount of memory.

As for the problems - you need to look at Task Manager or Resource Monitor when the problems are occurring. Using those when things are idle will reveal nothing.

series memory mode instead of the recommended parallel mode because the latter tends to cause problems and the speed difference doesn't materially affect the computer speed.

That sounds like nonsense.

They might have meant single or dual channel - your motherboard has 4 slots for memory, 2 of which are used.
For dual channel, the two correct slots must be used, otherwise it will only work in single channel which will be slower.
Whether the correct two have been used cannot be determined from the images, however even if they are wrong that won't cause the problems described.

 

[Odds]

Get rid of M.soft Word for a start: it sucks Ram like a cheap whore. I use Editpad: much easier on the mem. sahib.

 

[opps]

As above benchmark the PC.

Sysinternals by Mark Russinovich is a good starting point but much of his work has been baked into W10 and W11.

Sysinternals - Sysinternals

Library, learning resources, downloads, support, and community. Evaluate and find out how to install, deploy, and maintain Windows with Sysinternals utilities.

learn.microsoft.com

You can download the likes of Memtest to test the RAM

 

[martygturner]

you have 2 dimms fitted so you have parallel memory.... any jerking etc is caused by the graphics card..update its drivers.

 

[Justin Passing]

Thanks guys
It was this 22% I thought looked wrong

I mean that's about 1GB, so how is it 22%?

single or dual channel - your motherboard has 4 slots for memory, 2 of which are used.
For dual channel, the two correct slots must be used, otherwise it will only work in single channel which will be slower.

That sounds familiar. Performance checking software complained that the memory was slower than it should be, and iirc the commentary said what you just did. Would that make an overall difference though?

When it was messing about Firefox and Chrome were using about 6GB each of memory. Youtube streams open etc.. I've never seen it using anything near 32GB.

Using those when things are idle will reveal nothing.

SUre, but the numbers aren't what I expected.

Get rid of M.soft Word for a start: it sucks Ram like a cheap whore. I use Editpad: much easier on the mem. sahib.

Never seen a problem with that. Powerpoint often goes Bertie and uses everything up though. Can tell by the cooling fans speeding up!

Acrobat can run very slowly with big files - any computer. If you're editing a 200 page document it takes a while to scroll even. Where is the speed bottleneck causing that?

 

[opps]

Post number 1- click on the background processes.

One of them might be hogging the RAM.

Ages ago, I had a problem with Windows Defender hogging RAM. Sorry, can't remember what I did to sort it out. On another occasion, I found Windows Update was stuck in a loop. I had to open a "DOS" terminal and copy'n'paste commands I found via the web.

 

[Jurassicspark]

in addition to above, scan for viruses you might have some hidden malware that is consuming ram.

 

[opps]

in addition to above, scan for viruses you might have some hidden malware that is consuming ram.

Good point regarding malware.

Years ago, my mum had a problem with her XP PC. She had the free Avast AV at the time. I used Sysinternals to look at the processes. Back in those days, I could recognise most legit background processes. There was one that was suspicious. I killed the sub thread, and then noticed that it would automatically start again. I went in to the registry and removed the parent thread. It was another couple of weeks before Avast recognised it as malware.

 

[martygturner]

Please... there is not fault with the memory or the processes shown or malware, all that is showing is a perfectly stable system.. memory is allocated in blocks on a windows system, all that you are seeing is the allocated memory of the tasks that you have open, once an address space is allocated it is reserved for that program until you close that program and then it may remain allocated for some time as windows resolves the silent exit of that program, ie writing data to whatever storage system you have. The amount of memory reserved for an active process will be a deduction of the os, ooh Firefox has opened, whats its cache size, whats its defined memory requirements for the program itself, what was the history of that program memory usage, I know says the os I will give it a memory space of xxx gb , that should stop it from crashing and be stable and responsive. Task manager does not show active memory use directly ie what is being used by a program but rather what has been assigned to that program for its use, this is so that it can multi task and multi thread at a speed compatible with the processor across the data bus, without having to resort to pagefiling the memory out to a storage array.

eg playing a game, if you did not allocate a memory block to the game then as the game ramps up its processing the os would need to pagefile out some of the memory data to say a flash drive as other back ground items require memory, as they game would have consumed all the memory. As the game is stored on the same flash drive the drive bus the pc as a whole slows down as it does read/write cycles until....crash.

In short task manager shows allocated memory not what is actually being used at any given moment and guess what its doing a blinder.

 

[opps]

Additionally, if the machine is set to have hibernation mode, that will eat into the available RAM.

 

[flameport]

It was this 22% I thought looked wrong

I mean that's about 1GB, so how is it 22%?

That is only what's being used by those 5 apps. The OS and various other things will be using the rest.