But there are limits.īut that is only half the story. Computers with 8 GB RAM perform better than those with 1 GB. Far better that memory be used for something, even if it is only of trivial value, than letting it sit idle. It is the fastest storage in a modern computer and the memory manager always tries to make maximum use of it. And why not? Memory is not some precious resource to be used as sparingly as possible. When available memory is plentiful, as is the case in all of the screenshots, applications are permitted to use pretty much whatever memory they want. The system memory manager maintains full control over this, always with the goal of maximizing overall system performance.

Memory usage in any modern OS is highly dynamic. You should look at application memory usage when you're actually using the machine - what really matters is that you're not excessively swapping to disk (Resource Monitor->Memory->Processes->Hard Faults/sec) or actually running out of memory (resulting in a crash).Įdit: Just to address your specific question - your idle usage looks fine and I don't see any reason to 'optimize' it further.Įdit: Just to address your specific question - your idle usage looks fine and I don't see any reason to 'optimize' it further.Your explained answer is well appreciated good sir.Ģ1% memory usage on a system with 8 GB RAM is very reasonable. As long as some application isn't hogging all the memory at idle, there will be sufficient space for the disk cache to help speed up future application loads. Windows does this to some degree by caching disk contents in memory (SuperFetch, file caching). The way you load things faster is to keep as much in memory as possible because loading things from your hard drive is thousands of times slower than loading something that's already in memory.

It's like if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around - if Windows is using 100% of your memory when you're not using the machine, does it really matter? Idle memory usage isn't a very interesting metric.

Wordperfect 5.1 on windows 10