34 votes
Accepted

What are "Commited Memory", "Cached", "Paged", "Not-paged pool" & How They are Different with "In-Use Memory"

Answer to Q1: In-use refers to the actual amount of physical memory being used. The second number in the committed memory refers to the commit limit which is amount of physical memory + the size of ...
wbkang's user avatar
  • 866
26 votes

In which "order" does Windows manage RAM?

It doesn't work that way. The OS doesn't even know about these numbers. The motherboard (bios) organizes the strips into 1 or more blocks of memory that are handed over to the OS. The ordering isn'...
Tonny's user avatar
  • 30.4k
23 votes

What are "Commited Memory", "Cached", "Paged", "Not-paged pool" & How They are Different with "In-Use Memory"

Taking these not in the order you asked... ( Note: This is still in progress. I'll likely tweak and edit this over the next few days. And I will add screen caps.) ( Note the second: I realize that ...
Jamie Hanrahan's user avatar
15 votes
Accepted

How does memory/commit charge work in Windows 10?

This is actually pretty straightforward once you understand that commit charge represents only potential - yet "guaranteed available if you want it" - use of virtual memory, while the "...
Jamie Hanrahan's user avatar
13 votes

In which "order" does Windows manage RAM?

Most likely the act of removing and reinserting the DIMM fixed the problem, not the swap of places. DIMM contacts carry frequencies in the GHz range, where really strange things happen. It is not ...
Eugen Rieck's user avatar
  • 20.1k
12 votes

Is it possible to make the OOM killer intervent earlier?

For me setting vm.admin_reserve_kbytes=262144 does exactly this thing. OOM killer intervents before system goes completely unresponsive.
Michael Vigovsky's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

How to fix MEMORY_MANAGEMENT and ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY BSOD on Windows 10

The most likely cause of this type of crash is defective memory. As suggested by harrymc, the first thing to try is generally to run a memory testing program, such as Windows Memory Diagnostic (...
bwDraco's user avatar
  • 46k
10 votes
Accepted

Why turning off Virtual Memory doesn't improve my computer's performance?

Because virtual memory is more than just the page file. You have simply removed the storage device that allows your system to push memory out to disk and you cannot "just" disable virtual memory on ...
Mokubai's user avatar
  • 90.8k
9 votes

Sorted tree view in htop or alternative?

A 2019 update on this 2014 question that ranked highly when searching for this topic is that htop has this built in now, and in the current version 2.2.0, simply pressing t in the default view ...
Rich L's user avatar
  • 191
8 votes
Accepted

Sorted tree view in htop or alternative?

Looks like Glances should have what you need: glances --tree And then sort using commands m,t, i etc. Full command reference
pkk's user avatar
  • 129
8 votes
Accepted

Is Windows 10 memory compression used if you have no page file?

Page file needs to be enabled for memory compression to be enabled. I've just verified it on Windows 10 version 1809. I'm normally running this system with page file turned off, and despite enabling ...
guest24305082314's user avatar
6 votes

Why is windows 10 compressing memory when I have plenty available?

If I wanted to be snarky the answer to your question would be "because of One Microsoft Way", which seems to be their philosophy, not just their corporate HQ address in Redmond. In short, ...
Igor Levicki's user avatar
6 votes

Committed Bytes and Commit Limit - Memory Statistics

Commit limit is RAM size (not free RAM, total RAM usable by the OS) plus current pagefile size. This is the maximum amount of "private committed" virtual memory that can exist on your system. ...
Jamie Hanrahan's user avatar
6 votes

What is standby memory in MS windows OS?

Microsoft forums link to this explanation of the different memory pools from Tech Republic. Standby The Standby list, which is shown in blue, contains pages that have been removed from process ...
Jim Diroff II's user avatar
6 votes

Why don't SSD replace RAM?

SSD is not like RAM. There are a couple of very important differences - SSD's have a limited number of writes, and really need to be written in blocks. There is a whole lot of abstraction to ...
davidgo's user avatar
  • 69.6k
5 votes

Why doesn't an SSD improve the speed of running applications compared to a HDD?

You ask why SSDs don’t necessarily improve the speed of running applications compared to a traditional HDD. The reason is disk access. SSDs do read and write much faster than traditional hard disks. ...
Keltari's user avatar
  • 72.6k
5 votes
Accepted

rammap issues - does not show up anything (win10 pro build 17120)

RAMMap uses internal API to query the memory data. Such API change in new Windows 10 versions. And it looks like Microsoft made some changes in the last RS4 preview Builds that cause the tool to fail. ...
magicandre1981's user avatar
5 votes

Why don't SSD replace RAM?

TLDR; SSDs still aren't as Performant as RAM for the Insane Data manipulation speed of today's CPUs. It would be possible to use SSD as RAM - for a potato PC or mobile devices - with a few ...
PathToLife's user avatar
  • 1,146
5 votes
Accepted

Why does Windows 10 allow consuming all memory without limit?

Because allocating memory is not something that is considered "wrong" or any kind of illegal operation in computing. Every modern operating system allows the use of virtual memory where ...
Mokubai's user avatar
  • 90.8k
4 votes
Accepted

Is there any protection from RAM corrupt in file copy routines (in Windows)?

On consumer desktop systems, no. There is no detection of corrupt memory data, as long as the incorrect data is successfully retrieved. I know that sounds contradictory, but it is entirely possible. ...
skrrgwasme's user avatar
4 votes

Change memory size units in Windows 10

Further research shows this is not possible natively in Windows. This cannot be changed. Windows Explorer will display the size column in the smallest unit, “KB” for simplicity. If you select your ...
Jonno's user avatar
  • 21.1k
4 votes

Is it possible to make the OOM killer intervent earlier?

The other answers have good automatic solutions, but I find it can be helpful to also enable the SysRq key for when things get out of hand. With the SysRq key, you'd be manually messaging the kernel, ...
timuzhti's user avatar
  • 314
4 votes
Accepted

Can one use 4-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit sized pointers on a 64-bit machine?

A pointer points to contains an absolute address. If you need to add a value before you use the pointer, what you have is an offset, not a real pointer. In C, a void pointer can be a function ...
LawrenceC's user avatar
  • 73.6k
4 votes

Can Low Memory on a Computer Cause in More CPU Usage?

Low memory causes the operating system to push memory from least recently used applications out to the page file. This costs some CPU overhead to manage the act of writing data to disk. Later on when ...
Mokubai's user avatar
  • 90.8k
4 votes
Accepted

Does windows clean up memory after my C program?

Yes. When a process exits the OS will free all the resources that process was using. For short and quick programs this means memory management isnt real important. For longer running or complex ...
kicken's user avatar
  • 1,638
4 votes
Accepted

Check which processes are eating swap on Linux?

Run top Press f to select displayed fields Navigate down to SWAP using arrow keys Hit Space - SWAP will become preceded by asterisk * Press right arrow key - this will allow you to move SWAP to a ...
Peregrino69's user avatar
  • 4,574
4 votes

out of memory crashes with a lot of "available" memory on Windows

You must enable the page file. Otherwise, you are wasting physical RAM for memory reservations programs made but do not use. You are not running out of memory, you are running out of commit limit. ...
Daniel B's user avatar
  • 61.6k
3 votes

Why doesn't an SSD improve the speed of running applications compared to a HDD?

A. When your system starts to swap, you are already in trouble. You don't want to get there, ever. B. SSDs are faster than conventional hard disks, but they are still significantly slower than RAM ...
Aganju's user avatar
  • 9,932
3 votes

Why doesn't an SSD improve the speed of running applications compared to a HDD?

Generally swapping occurs only when you start running out of RAM. With today's systems with 16 GB and higher, it is unlikely that playing games would cause swapping to occur. If swapping does occur, ...
CConard96's user avatar
  • 1,279
3 votes

Why is `ulimit` not limiting the memory usage as I expect?

With modern Linux kernels, the ulimit is getting less and less meaningful with every release. You really cannot use -v because your version of glibc might prefer loading files with mmap() so you have ...
Mikko Rantalainen's user avatar

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