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Hi all I was trying to confirm my understanding of "standby list" and "modified list" as stated in this article.

Is it true that "Cached memory" (as shown in the image below) refers to memory that is currently cached (available for use), and memory that was previous cached (previously available for use), but currently used (now not available for use) ?

So if x = "Cached memory" (1184), y = "modified cache pages", z = "cached and were modified",

x = y + z holds true ?

enter image description here

3 Answers 3

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"Cached" memory is not memory that is cached, but memory that is used for cache. In all cases, cache is used as a means of speeding up access to slower medium by storing it temporarily in a faster medium.

In this instance, the cache is for speeding up access to disk based data. An example of this is where you open a file repeatedly, instead of read it from disk, it is stored in memory automatically by the OS so that subsequent reads do not require disk access.

Cached memory consumes "spare" RAM. Ie memory that is not directly used by applications or OS. In fact, it is more complex than that, as if an application is in memory but idle for some time, it might be swapped out to disk so that the memory it is using can be used for other applications, or cache.

If there are applications that require memory, and there is not enough free memory available, and there aren't any candidates for swapping out of RAM, then cache memory will be sacrificed. So it is always available for use, but optimum system performance requires some memory to be available for caching.

Update

Cached memory can include data that has been read from a disk, but also data that is intended to be written to a disk. For example, where a file is read from a disk, cached in memory, and then the file is modified by an application, the OS may choose to write these changes back to disk at a later time. Clearly, these "modified" cache pages cannot be discarded as the represent data that needs to ultimately get to a disk to be stored.

As such this ram is not available, and so doesn't form part of the "Available" memory in the Windows memory usage dialog.

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  • No I mean I couldn't really understand the differences between the "standby list" and the "modified list" as stated in the article.
    – Pacerier
    Nov 24, 2011 at 4:10
  • Sorry yes, I wanted to make sure the terms were understood. Does the update above help?
    – Paul
    Nov 24, 2011 at 4:39
  • thanks alot for the update =D So does it mean that if x = "Cached memory", y = "modified cache pages", z = "cached and were modified", x = y + z holds true ?
    – Pacerier
    Nov 24, 2011 at 8:19
  • I am not sure what you mean by "modified cache" and "cached were modified". The cached pages contain either modified data or they do not. x = the total of modified and non modified cache pages.
    – Paul
    Nov 24, 2011 at 8:33
  • The article talks about cached pages in "standby list", and cached pages in "modified list". Is it true that for a cached page to be placed in "modified list", it must first be on "standby list" ? Basically I'm confused what the number "Cached" (1184) as shown in the picture above refers to.
    – Pacerier
    Nov 24, 2011 at 12:05
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I don't believe that cached memory is available for general use, but it has data that may be used for a specific purpose later. Memory that was previously caches tells me nothing about what it is now. It could be available, and it could be in use.

Cached means the OS thinks that something else will be loaded into memory in the near future, not that memory is available to be used. That is what available refers to.

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In your image, they are all mutually exclusive numbers.

The Standby list & modified list are different from the numbers you see in task manager. Generally, task manager isn't a great tool for such low level memory info. It was designed to manage tasks.

You are better off with Process Explorer.

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