Thread: RAM Not Being Utilized?

So I've been running the Roccat Power Grid system monitor utility while I'm working/playing and I've noticed that despite having 32gb of ram my system hasn't exceeded utilizing 5.5gb and that's for short bursts like when I was in a heavy fire fight in BF4. I'm running Win7 Pro 64 so the max ram utilization for the system exceeds 100gb.

What am I missing here? Is it because I have a cheap MB? Pipelines too small maybe?

You just aren't going to use all that ram. Never will. I currently have

Chrome w/ ~25 tabs open
Visual Studio 2013
Steam
Directory Opus (2 listers)
an RDP session
Origin
Trillian
Bitdefender suite
Notepad++
Peerblocker
Multiple torrents open in utorrent
Logitech gaming software
Corsair keyboard software
Clickteam Fusion 2.5

All of that open... and I'm using 8.3GB of 32GB of ram.

Don't worry about how much you are using unless it's north of 90% of your ram. It's enough to know that you aren't running out of it.

Originally Posted by Kanati8869

Don't worry about how much you are using unless it's north of 90% of your ram. It's enough to know that you aren't running out of it.

Eh, I disagree a little.

If I'm currently touching less than 25% of my RAM then I feel it will be better to cut my RAM down to two sticks and run it in dual channel mode. It'll be more efficient and it will allow the two sticks to run a little cooler.

Originally Posted by grayman

Eh, I disagree a little.

If I'm currently touching less than 25% of my RAM then I feel it will be better to cut my RAM down to two sticks and run it in dual channel mode. It'll be more efficient and it will allow the two sticks to run a little cooler.

Not sure I follow that logic. All of your sticks are running in dual channel mode. Slots 1/3 and 2/4 should be paired channels. I don't think you will find any difference in performance with 2 sticks vs 4... at least nothing you would be able to detect outside of running some memory benchmark utilities. For games and desktop applications, you are fine.

Now, if you can re-purpose 2 of those sticks into a machine that is in need, then that is a different story all together. Personally, I didn't find a need for having more than 16GB, and I am running my 4x4GB sticks in quad channel. 32 is overkill.

Originally Posted by HeavyG

Not sure I follow that logic. All of your sticks are running in dual channel mode. Slots 1/3 and 2/4 should be paired channels.

Not true because not all boards can run 2 dual channel , channels. I believe my board can run dual channel on 1/3 OR single channel on all 4 banks. I could be wrong about my board specifically but I know that's an architecture limitation of some boards if not most mid and low level MBs.

Originally Posted by RhysJD3

BF4 game files are about 28.6 GB in size. Be interesting if you could create a RAM drive for them. You'd be the first loaded into every map.

I probably wouldn't do this, but...

How cool would that be?! lol

You would just be there sitting and waiting for everyone to load so it wouldn't gain much but it would be a fun experiment.

I'll have to research that to see how to do that.

Originally Posted by grayman

Not true because not all boards can run 2 dual channel , channels. I believe my board can run dual channel on 1/3 OR single channel on all 4 banks. I could be wrong about my board specifically but I know that's an architecture limitation of some boards if not most mid and low level MBs.

What Motherboard are you using?

Originally Posted by HeavyG

What Motherboard are you using?

Good question lol

I don't remember off the top of my head.

I know it cost less than $100 and has onboard video so it's not a performance MB by any stretch of the imagination.

Originally Posted by HeavyG

Now, if you can re-purpose 2 of those sticks into a machine that is in need, then that is a different story all together.

And yes, I'll repurpose those bitches to eBay and buy myself something useful. lol