Is this normal for a PC?

[Evil Top Hat]

I have 4 gigs of RAM, but yet while tabbing out of Team Fortress 2 (which I play on minimum settings by preference) I noticed that my RAM usage had shot up to 70%! I was running itunes in the background, I had skype open (but not in a call), last.fm running and very little else, and yet apparently the act of TF2 and music from itunes was enough to suck up just under 3 gigs of my RAM. That can't be normal, can it?

To make matters worse, I seem to have this weird issue whereby upon startup my RAM usage is 25%, which already strikes me as too high, but after playing a game the lowest it seems to settle back to is about 40-45%. Again, that just doesn't seem right. Is this normal? If not, what can I do about it?

 

[Supernova1138]

Which OS are you on. If you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7, they typically use somewhere betwen 700MB and 1GB constantly, accounting for the 25% usage on startup, and that's without a lot of extraneous crap that is preinstalled on a lot of computers.

As for 70% RAM usage, that is certainly possible while gaming with lots of stuff running in the background. Some programs can be quite bloated. Steam itself can also eat up a fair bit on occasion. I find Firefox starts to eat up lots of RAM if kept running for a long time. The Adobe Flash process can also eat up RAM.

You can go into your task manager, via Ctrl-alt-delete, and go to the processes tab. Click the show processes for all users button, and go through the list and see if anything is using lots of RAM. If you see anything suspicious, you might want to run a virus or malware scan.

 

[Evil Top Hat]

Which OS are you on. If you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7, they typically use somewhere betwen 700MB and 1GB constantly, accounting for the 25% usage on startup, and that's without a lot of extraneous crap that is preinstalled on a lot of computers.

As for 70% RAM usage, that is certainly possible while gaming with lots of stuff running in the background. Some programs can be quite bloated. Steam itself can also eat up a fair bit on occasion. I find Firefox starts to eat up lots of RAM if kept running for a long time. The Adobe Flash process can also eat up RAM.

You can go into your task manager, via Ctrl-alt-delete, and go to the processes tab. Click the show processes for all users button, and go through the list and see if anything is using lots of RAM. If you see anything suspicious, you might want to run a virus or malware scan.

I'm using windows 7, so I guess it's a bit more normal than it would be on xp. I ran the msconfig and disable a lot of active processes and managed to lower my systems idle RAM usage to about 25-30%, which is a lot better. I still find it weird that my computer could eat up that much. My old system only had 1gb, and I used to play Team Fortress 2 on that with no problems at all.

Thanks for the response, I realise it's not exactly a riveting topic of conversation, I appreciate the help. I'll be sure to run a virus scan too.

 

[Esotera]

It's entirely plausible that at least a couple of programs/services that you use have memory leaks, which mean they keep using more memory over time and never releasing it.

But seriously, unless you are noticing a big drop in the quality of your experience, you should just leave it alone...RAM is a resource that helps make your computer go much faster, so there's no reason for it to be wasted. If you are noticing a drop in quality, run less applications at the same time, and see if you can disable certain programs from starting when you log on (the crappy ones in the notification area for stuff like printers, phones).

http://www.linuxatemyram.com/ <--- they need a windows edition

 

[DazZ.]

I have 8 gigs of ram and usually when playing almost any game my system sits at around 3.7gb, only with minecraft and a few others I've modded will it go beyond that.

Honestly I think that's a fine amount whilst you're gaming. Skype not in a call doesn't use noticeable more memory than in a call either, if a programs loaded it's in the ram if it's doing something it's using processing power.

I do have a few things running that don't really need to be like rainmeter and rocketdock though, but I tend to go for low memory programs like foobar2000.

 

[renegade7]

70% RAM isn't that abnormal for games or intensive programs. Wouldn't worry too much. If you start to notice random hang-ups or freezes or unusually high CPU temperatures, that would be time to worry.

In addition, some programs are not optimized well at all. Even simple programs can eat up a lot of RAM if they're not programmed well. Open up your task manager and have a look at the processes tab and see if there's something using an unduly high amount of RAM.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Also I'd like to note that TF2, and most Source games actually, seem to hate alt-tabbing with a burning passion. If I recall correctly Source games aren't really easy on RAM in general.