Ram: The More You Have, The More You Loose?

[l3loodred]

Whats the deal with XP eating RAM? I ran just fine for over a year at 512 megs of RAM (with enough left over for basic Photoshop CS usage). I replaced one of the 256 chips with a 1G not to long ago, and now I'm wondering why, at 96% sysidle (process), my machine is using more ram than in it's 512 days? Did a percentage of the Paging file see all that new space and move in? wtf-

-Windows XP SP2
-Dell Ins. 1150 Laptop
-2.8 P4 CPU
-WAS at 512 ram
-NOW at 1.25 (gig.5)
-No major autostart changes
-Assume no malware/spyware/adware

As always, you guys rock; Thanks-

[Hagar]

I think it should read: The More You Have, The More You Use.
It should be a good thing to use all available memory, it is no good having it idle.
Having said that, I quite often wonder about how effective XP's memory use is. Virtual memory is a very complicated affair.

[jlreich]

Did a percentage of the Paging file see all that new space and move in?
That's pretty much what happened. And this is a good thing. ;)

Instead of programs having to go to the pagefile it is now in the much faster ram.

Keep in mind XP will always use a certain amount of pagefile. Even though I have 2GB ram I still have between 250-350MB in the pagefile.

[azzey]

Yeah, same here... with 2GB of RAM, Windows uses up to 768MB depending on the day (and how long the computer has been running). Right now, I'm using about 350MB total (including running Firefox and nothing else).

Another problem could be that you have many programs running at startup... I know lots of Adobe programs do that, as does Microsoft Office and Open Office... there are many other programs that will do that too. My rule is that unless it is a critical program (AV, firewall, etc) I prefer for it to not start by itself... I like having control over what runs and what doesn't.

[l3loodred]

Right on guys; thanks for the input. Thinking about it, it does make sense that the less PF is used, the better off you are. I just wasn't sure if this was the case. There were no changes is software/hardware other than the RAM upgrade. In any event, I'm going through a system exchnage w/Dell. Out with the Old (VERY 1150 old) and in w/the new!