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86% of Windows 7 PCs Maxing Out Memory

Posted by samzenpus on from the brand-new-resource-hog dept.

CWmike writes "Citing data from Devil Mountain Software's community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet), Craig Barth, the company's chief technology officer, said that new metrics reveal an unsettling trend. On average, 86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks. The 86% mark for Windows 7 is more than twice the average number of Windows XP machines that run at the memory 'saturation' point, and this comes despite more RAM being available on most Windows 7 machines. 'This is alarming,' Barth said of Windows 7 machines' resource consumption. 'For the OS to be pushing the hardware limits this quickly is amazing. Windows 7 is not the lean, mean version of Vista that you may think it is.'"

2 of 613 comments (clear)

  1. Re:When do people get this by dhavleak · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "-1 Wrong" on so many levels.

    The reason puppy linux fits in 30MB and runs so fast, is because it does barely anything at all. Whatever purpose you use it for, it surely achieves that well, but don't make silly comparisons.

    Next, the swap-file isn't "HDD caching". A cache hierarchy works the other way around -- the fastest (and consequently most expensive, and thus smallest) memory types are closest to the processor (L1, followed by L2, often followed by L3), and the slowest (and consequently least expensive, and largest capacity) are further away -- that would be RAM, and then the HDD. Why add the HDD to the hierarchy? 'cos that's what enables you to simulate infinite memory (or enough for the task at hand, even if you exceed your physical RAM -- if you have enough for the task(s) at hand, it doesn't matter that your capacity is actually finite). Long story short -- in theory, you could call just about every form of memory in your computer a cache, except the HDD.

    Your 'anecdote' about your brother's Win7 / Vista (were you being snarky, or does your brother dual-boot?) machine, is what is commonly known as "a lie". Win7/3GB RAM/AMD X2 running slower than XP/512MB/P4? Sorry dude -- simply doesn't add up.

    And finally, yes, retreiving stuff from the swap file too often kills performance. But who said that the RAM was 'full of crap' on Win7?

  2. The solution by rcharbon · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Maybe the Win7 users should stop running apps that are pure overhead? You know, like the XPnet client?