86% of Windows 7 PCs Maxing Out Memory

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.'"

Comments

It's called SuperFetch

[dhavleak]

I guess Devil Mountain or whoever don't know about SuperFetch. Or need publicity.

And I guess slashdot editors don't know about SuperFetch. Or maybe an article like this gets them more traffic, revenue, etc.

The fucking bullshit that passes for articles these days..

Re:When do people get this

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the issue here is that the system is turning to swap. Caching stuff that may be referenced again is fine and dandy, but if the system regularly turns to swap just to keep itself afloat, then you have a problem.

Page Faults

[Dr_Barnowl]

The metric to count is the number of page faults, an indicator of the number of times that the OS addresses memory that isn't in RAM.

As others point out, measuring just the fraction of memory consumption is stupid. I have 6GB of RAM ; my processes are using about 1.7GB of that, but the OS is claiming that 3.8GB is consumed. So that's 2.1GB of cached data that I no longer have to wait for from disk. Hooray.

TFA hints that they may be measuring page faults, and does mention that Win7 is hitting the disk for virtual memory more often. But they should make that clearer if it's the case.

Re:When do people get this

[xigxag]

You missed the most important emphasis:

delays in I/O processing - ostensibly due to heavy virtual memory activity as Windows compensates for insufficient RAM. (emphasis mine)

Ostensibly means "to all outward appearances." In other words, they're admitting they don't really know the inner workings, the true cause of the delays. They're just supposing it's due to RAM swapping, as opposed to increased networking activity, aero glass, more concurrent programs being run on average, or any other number of other wag'd reasons. Basically, they picked two measurements that are both higher in W7, and just said, "Well, it stands to reason that A causes B." What's that phrase that internet smarty-pantses use all the time about this?