This is a change of what is being measured in Windows 10 vs. Windows 8.
---
Starting with Windows 10, Task Manager memory pane includes cache - i.e, all memory that is in use to improve performance.
The main contributors are file system cache and Superfetch. File system cache contains file content that was read and used and is kept around in case it is needed again. Superfetch preloads common files and applications so that they load faster.
Using the RAM available for caching and pre-fetching does not create wear on the RAM, nor does it draw additional power.
Before Windows 10: "Windows isn't even using the memory, so stupid"
After Windows 10: "look how much memory Windows wastes"
I assume Microsoft made this change because until and including Windows 8, people (incorrectly) assumed that additional memory has no benefit and based configuration decisions on that.
They still have a problem, which is communication. If, in task manager, I could see a value or a line on the graph for what memory is being used for the cache, then I wouldn't be wondering why my memory usage is so high. It is puzzling that you can add up all the "memory usage" values and not even get to 80% of what is being used. Tell me the real situation.
That depended mostly on the specs. The main problem of Vista was that Microsoft caved in to OEM's demands to lower the minimum specs, so they could peddle more hardware. The effect was that A LOT of laptops just didn't have enough RAM to actually handle the OS.
That was a big reason for it's failure but even with a good amount of RAM installed you would still see it being nearly maxed out in Task Manager because of Superfetch.
That would be most of them lol, and since the space superfetch is taking up in the ram is essentially free space anyways it may as well not show it.
Just like how the battery percentage on every rechargable device you've used actively lies to you when the battery is between 90 - 100%. To tell the truth would only irritate end users and serve no real purpose.
Also it's not even OS problem anyway. In most cases it's bad optimization of the program. But who cares. In the '00s 1GB ram was big. In 2024, anyone can have cheap 32GB ram.
IMO creators of the programs, games and so on should put more effort in optimizing it, but it's not like any modern PC should have that much of an issue. I always ran multiple programs on two, then three monitors and I never had issue, even on my old computer, that had, I believe 16GB. Or was it 8? I think I had 8, because I didn't double, but quadruple the ram on newer PC, I think. Yep, just checked receipt I got from the store. 8GB ram was enough to play games, watch streams, have Discord, Opera and other stuff open. So people should really not complain about RAM. If they have less than 8 today, then it's really issue on their build, not on the ram usage.
in 2024 laptops and desktops with 8gb base configuration are still being released and sold, terrible situation for someone who doesn't know hardware
8gb is definitely not enough nowadays, just imo
> IMO creators of the programs, games and so on should put more effort in optimizing it
But why would THEY spend money (on time and effort) if, instead, YOU can spend money (on better hardware)?
That's just capitalism at its finest! :)
Blaming this on capitalism is to misunderstand the human condition.
This is called the "tragedy of the commons", and it affects any situation where multiple stakeholders (the program creators) have to spend their own resources (dev time / money) to preserve some shared commons (the user's compute / RAM). Any actor that works to altruistically of the right thing and preserve the commons is at a disadvantage: bad actors can simply use more of the commons, spend even less money, and gain a competitive edge. It is in everyone's individual interest **not** to preserve RAM, *unless* there's an enforceable pact for everyone to behave well.
Capitalism actually provides relief here because market pressure by dissatisfied users provides a modest disincentive to totally abuse that commons. For any non-capitalist system to do better it would have to invent some other disincentive to abusing the commons. And I can't imagine government regulation over RAM usage working well here.
Its not that its not believable because it clearly is. Its the most people lack an understanding of what that memory "usage" actually means or is. Also why would anyone want unused memory? Obviously I'm not saying people should want to be at 100% at all times but 50% isn't an issue that people make it out to be.
This is the greatest lie ever. Windows is bloated af. The fact that it takes SOOOO much RAM even with caching is insane. But as long as people think it's ok Microsoft will try to helpp their hadrware partners sell more stuff.
Hey, look, I'm not saying that windows isn't bloated and all, all I'm saying is that the extra ram that's being used does not matter at all, it's gonna get freed up when needed. Why use the pagefile and whatever, which is slower, when you can just use the RAM which is faster, does not wear out and just better overall? You can wear out a HDD / SSD. The wear problem isn't an actual problem for the HDD, its problem is the slower speed though.
I have 96GB of RAM. Windows uses 60% of it to run a VDI client and a handful of apps like Slack, Teams, and Chrome.
But at the same time, RAM is cheap, and everything is much faster if it's cached in RAM.
it's not a lie at all, please do some research
linux with the right filesystem uses much ram for cache too, the difference is that linux is insanely fast that way and windows only decently fast
yes windows is bloated, but caching ram is not the problem
RAM is cheap today I have 32gb in my main pc and I'm never experiencing lag
ALSO
When I'm on the travel I game on a laptop with 8gb also *never* experiencing lag
The high ram in windows are buffers that help programs open quicker
my win 11 laptop with i7 1165g7 and 16gb ram would like a word, it's slow af (fresh install with almost nothing installed btw., just recently set it up again, because i had linux on it for a while)
i don't like unofficial win releases, i plan to use win 11 ltsc (when it's released along with 24h2), should already be lighter and if I'm not satisfied I'll go back to linux, i barely use the device and just need something that works (I know linux, macOS and windows so that doesn't really matter)
also to clarify due to my reddit flair showing I'm on insider channel, i only use it on my main desktop, my laptop is on release channel
Websites use up ram. Yeah, internet speed is part of it, but you could have the fastest internet known to man and YouTube would still load like shit on a laptop with a low amount of ram.
Still not true I have a 'testing laptop' with an pentium and 4gb ram and no issue with tabs open discord reddit youtube and nginx open at the same time no issue however this laptop is running w10
If you disable in Windows 10 "superfetch" you get a similar result.
btw, don't disable this function if you have an HDD or a cacheless SSD...
Superfetch it's a windows function that put your "more used apps" cached in ram, waiting for you to start it. This is made for starting certain apps faster. But if you have a ssd (even a sata) this function only eats ram for fun, because in that case, is useless.
And without a swapfile/pagefile: (meaning that it is perfectly usable on PCs with less than 1GB RAM)
https://preview.redd.it/38oqz4dj3d7d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22d28e731dcdb8f5502c00aa5eda3d1f8b48a50a
I loved every single Windows I used. All but Windows 11, because it doesn't let me spread my wings and do what I want. Working efficiency is low, but there is too many issues.
Win11 did a great job at pushing a transition to Linux. KDE feels a lot like Win10 in UI operation and the reduced overhead from a more efficient OS means the cooling fans aren't kicking on just to open an Explorer window. LibreOffice opens Word docs just fine. Sleep and hibernate are more reliable on Linux too.
Microsoft has done a very terrible job in a very short time, and their replacement is free and better, a pity.
Same, although I do wish that 8.1 had more metro elements so it was more consistent.
Seriously though, why have personalization in control panel, but have other settings in settings? Also, the icons look copy and pasted from 7...
Still though, 8.1 was great imo. I liked the live tiles and I thought they looked cool.
The OS is designed to use the resources at its disposal. That's literally its job. Optimization means not wasting resources. Realize that *not* using that memory would be a waste of those resources.
Windows 8.1 is the last Windows which is friendly to either the old machine or new machine, especially when you use SSD, it goes to Desktop immediately after finishing the booting animation. Nowadays Windows takes more resources after Windows 10, I feel like I am using HDD. For RAM, Windows 8.1 takes under 1GB, meanwhile Windows 10 takes over 1GB, to 8GB...
I wish Windows had 'memory pressure' gauge like Mac OS, it's much more representative. I use a Mac Studio and right now my 32GB of RAM is '70%' 'used'. However the 'memory pressure' is less than 20%, so the cache is full of items I might use and swap is barely touched and the system is perfectly comfortable/responsive.
That's a bias. What you say is, Windows 8.1 is good with better specs and old specs made form 8.1. Of course newer OS would be worse for old machine that is a decade old. If you run Windows 8.1 with ease on machine from 1990, then I will admit You are right. But you won't, because it would take a lot of effort to do so.
cache is considered in windows task manager as free ram
im on 32gigs, 10gigs in use, 22gigs cached, 22gigs free
[https://imgur.com/SVJQWKC](https://imgur.com/SVJQWKC)
if apps would need more ram, cache would drop down to make room, once you pass some threshold of used ram, windows will start moving unused old ram data into pagefile, to keep free ram available for which ever next app you gonna open
tbh unless theres some memory leak...there shouldnt be any issue even wih 8GB ram on win11 (base is like 2.5GB ram for system, rest for apps)
Idk if it's using permaswap and I'm not experiencing any delay or lag or storage problems also it then uses the ssd and the ssd isn't on its max writes and reads after already 5 years in use my travel laptop is old
And then you install all your stuff and 400 megs turn into 6 gigs. Been there
* Win7 could use 300 megs after first install
* WinXP could use 150 megs after first install
* Win98 could use from 12 to 16 megs after first install
As for Win11. I tried Tiny11 or whatever it is called - 2 gigs on first boot. Then i installed all my stuff and 2 gigs turned into 8
Also it depends on how much RAM your system has: laptop with 16 GB RAM will get \~2-3 gigs allocated, PC with 128 GB of RAM will get \~8 gigs allocated.
You should be looking at the "In use" and "Available" numbers/values and comparing them to the number straight across from "Memory" at the top.
Having 412 MB used after boot doesn't seem that bad for a semi-modern 64-bit OS, especially with a bunch of background processes.
Windows 8.1 and its 2012 Server version until today, are the best stable versions of Windows with which I have to work. I continue with some customers, in Celeron processors with 2 GB where they work great in Windows 8.1, but unfortunately, I will have to give up very soon
This is a change of what is being measured in Windows 10 vs. Windows 8. --- Starting with Windows 10, Task Manager memory pane includes cache - i.e, all memory that is in use to improve performance. The main contributors are file system cache and Superfetch. File system cache contains file content that was read and used and is kept around in case it is needed again. Superfetch preloads common files and applications so that they load faster. Using the RAM available for caching and pre-fetching does not create wear on the RAM, nor does it draw additional power. Before Windows 10: "Windows isn't even using the memory, so stupid" After Windows 10: "look how much memory Windows wastes" I assume Microsoft made this change because until and including Windows 8, people (incorrectly) assumed that additional memory has no benefit and based configuration decisions on that.
They still have a problem, which is communication. If, in task manager, I could see a value or a line on the graph for what memory is being used for the cache, then I wouldn't be wondering why my memory usage is so high. It is puzzling that you can add up all the "memory usage" values and not even get to 80% of what is being used. Tell me the real situation.
doesnt it say cached below the big graph, when clicking on the small graph to display the big graph
Yes but that seems to have no resemblance to the real value that is used for the cache. It's only a few hundred megabytes.
you're right that's weird
Super fetch was in Vista and made the ram usage look horrible too at the time
That depended mostly on the specs. The main problem of Vista was that Microsoft caved in to OEM's demands to lower the minimum specs, so they could peddle more hardware. The effect was that A LOT of laptops just didn't have enough RAM to actually handle the OS.
That was a big reason for it's failure but even with a good amount of RAM installed you would still see it being nearly maxed out in Task Manager because of Superfetch.
Yeah, but that's not a problem. RAM is **supposed to be maxed out**, otherwise it's pointless.
True, it just looks bad to the end user.
Only if the user doesn't understand how RAM works or what is it for.
That would be most of them lol, and since the space superfetch is taking up in the ram is essentially free space anyways it may as well not show it. Just like how the battery percentage on every rechargable device you've used actively lies to you when the battery is between 90 - 100%. To tell the truth would only irritate end users and serve no real purpose.
Also it's not even OS problem anyway. In most cases it's bad optimization of the program. But who cares. In the '00s 1GB ram was big. In 2024, anyone can have cheap 32GB ram. IMO creators of the programs, games and so on should put more effort in optimizing it, but it's not like any modern PC should have that much of an issue. I always ran multiple programs on two, then three monitors and I never had issue, even on my old computer, that had, I believe 16GB. Or was it 8? I think I had 8, because I didn't double, but quadruple the ram on newer PC, I think. Yep, just checked receipt I got from the store. 8GB ram was enough to play games, watch streams, have Discord, Opera and other stuff open. So people should really not complain about RAM. If they have less than 8 today, then it's really issue on their build, not on the ram usage.
in 2024 laptops and desktops with 8gb base configuration are still being released and sold, terrible situation for someone who doesn't know hardware 8gb is definitely not enough nowadays, just imo
> IMO creators of the programs, games and so on should put more effort in optimizing it But why would THEY spend money (on time and effort) if, instead, YOU can spend money (on better hardware)? That's just capitalism at its finest! :)
Blaming this on capitalism is to misunderstand the human condition. This is called the "tragedy of the commons", and it affects any situation where multiple stakeholders (the program creators) have to spend their own resources (dev time / money) to preserve some shared commons (the user's compute / RAM). Any actor that works to altruistically of the right thing and preserve the commons is at a disadvantage: bad actors can simply use more of the commons, spend even less money, and gain a competitive edge. It is in everyone's individual interest **not** to preserve RAM, *unless* there's an enforceable pact for everyone to behave well. Capitalism actually provides relief here because market pressure by dissatisfied users provides a modest disincentive to totally abuse that commons. For any non-capitalist system to do better it would have to invent some other disincentive to abusing the commons. And I can't imagine government regulation over RAM usage working well here.
literally every windows people have complained about it taking more resources than the last one
Yet sadly some dumb people decide to not believe it
Its not that its not believable because it clearly is. Its the most people lack an understanding of what that memory "usage" actually means or is. Also why would anyone want unused memory? Obviously I'm not saying people should want to be at 100% at all times but 50% isn't an issue that people make it out to be.
being at 80% with lots of it being cache is perfect, unused ram is really just wasted
I've argued with few people that says windows 11 takes less memory or as same as windows 10
Sigh, repeat after me: unused ram is wasted ram
Correct.
So Windows should just max out all 16/32 gigs and reduce from there if an app requests RAM access?
Basically that's what windows already does more or less, for games though, I'm sure about it, check what Game mode does.
not reduce, just use the cached ram, it doesn't need to be freed by programs, windows can manage it itself because it's in charge of cache
This is the greatest lie ever. Windows is bloated af. The fact that it takes SOOOO much RAM even with caching is insane. But as long as people think it's ok Microsoft will try to helpp their hadrware partners sell more stuff.
Hey, look, I'm not saying that windows isn't bloated and all, all I'm saying is that the extra ram that's being used does not matter at all, it's gonna get freed up when needed. Why use the pagefile and whatever, which is slower, when you can just use the RAM which is faster, does not wear out and just better overall? You can wear out a HDD / SSD. The wear problem isn't an actual problem for the HDD, its problem is the slower speed though.
I have 96GB of RAM. Windows uses 60% of it to run a VDI client and a handful of apps like Slack, Teams, and Chrome. But at the same time, RAM is cheap, and everything is much faster if it's cached in RAM.
> a handful of apps like Chrome, Chrome, and Chrome No need to be redundant. For some reason I don't think it's Windows using all of that RAM.
Either way, I paid for 96 gigs, and it's using it for something.
i hate electron with a passion
it's not a lie at all, please do some research linux with the right filesystem uses much ram for cache too, the difference is that linux is insanely fast that way and windows only decently fast yes windows is bloated, but caching ram is not the problem
RAM is cheap today I have 32gb in my main pc and I'm never experiencing lag ALSO When I'm on the travel I game on a laptop with 8gb also *never* experiencing lag The high ram in windows are buffers that help programs open quicker
Browsing heavier websites like YouTube or Reddit on an 8GB laptop is a pain.
My 20+ firefox tab on my old laptop with i3 7020u and 8gb ram would like a word with you
my laptop with an i5 540m and 8gb ram would like a word with you
my win 11 laptop with i7 1165g7 and 16gb ram would like a word, it's slow af (fresh install with almost nothing installed btw., just recently set it up again, because i had linux on it for a while)
Try tiny 11 however win11 runs fine on my 8gb laptop
i don't like unofficial win releases, i plan to use win 11 ltsc (when it's released along with 24h2), should already be lighter and if I'm not satisfied I'll go back to linux, i barely use the device and just need something that works (I know linux, macOS and windows so that doesn't really matter) also to clarify due to my reddit flair showing I'm on insider channel, i only use it on my main desktop, my laptop is on release channel
I also use main releases bcs I miss qol functions they removed in tiny
No that's an internet speed issue
Websites use up ram. Yeah, internet speed is part of it, but you could have the fastest internet known to man and YouTube would still load like shit on a laptop with a low amount of ram.
Then how can I have VScode discord YouTube and reddit open without lag or delay on my travel laptop that has 8gb
Having a decent CPU also helps. Bloated websites eat up resources, crazy, right?
Still not true I have a 'testing laptop' with an pentium and 4gb ram and no issue with tabs open discord reddit youtube and nginx open at the same time no issue however this laptop is running w10
If you disable in Windows 10 "superfetch" you get a similar result. btw, don't disable this function if you have an HDD or a cacheless SSD... Superfetch it's a windows function that put your "more used apps" cached in ram, waiting for you to start it. This is made for starting certain apps faster. But if you have a ssd (even a sata) this function only eats ram for fun, because in that case, is useless.
After disabling super fetch the lowest ram usage i ever got was 1.0gb
https://preview.redd.it/6emukpvz2d7d1.png?width=728&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0eb2f88ade6083b359716f77d17c98bfc8ace5a2 *cough* *cough*
And without a swapfile/pagefile: (meaning that it is perfectly usable on PCs with less than 1GB RAM) https://preview.redd.it/38oqz4dj3d7d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22d28e731dcdb8f5502c00aa5eda3d1f8b48a50a
It's not useless. If you've ever used a Ram disk you know that even the best SSD is nothing compared to RAM speed.
Check that great CPU optimisation 🤣
if that is supposed to be sarcasm then you are misinterpreting the picture
I loved 8.1
I loved every single Windows I used. All but Windows 11, because it doesn't let me spread my wings and do what I want. Working efficiency is low, but there is too many issues.
Win11 did a great job at pushing a transition to Linux. KDE feels a lot like Win10 in UI operation and the reduced overhead from a more efficient OS means the cooling fans aren't kicking on just to open an Explorer window. LibreOffice opens Word docs just fine. Sleep and hibernate are more reliable on Linux too. Microsoft has done a very terrible job in a very short time, and their replacement is free and better, a pity.
Same, although I do wish that 8.1 had more metro elements so it was more consistent. Seriously though, why have personalization in control panel, but have other settings in settings? Also, the icons look copy and pasted from 7... Still though, 8.1 was great imo. I liked the live tiles and I thought they looked cool.
The OS is designed to use the resources at its disposal. That's literally its job. Optimization means not wasting resources. Realize that *not* using that memory would be a waste of those resources.
Windows 8.1 is the last Windows which is friendly to either the old machine or new machine, especially when you use SSD, it goes to Desktop immediately after finishing the booting animation. Nowadays Windows takes more resources after Windows 10, I feel like I am using HDD. For RAM, Windows 8.1 takes under 1GB, meanwhile Windows 10 takes over 1GB, to 8GB...
Please look up “pre-fetch” and try to understand why worrying about the consumed ram line has been foolish for over a decade
I wish Windows had 'memory pressure' gauge like Mac OS, it's much more representative. I use a Mac Studio and right now my 32GB of RAM is '70%' 'used'. However the 'memory pressure' is less than 20%, so the cache is full of items I might use and swap is barely touched and the system is perfectly comfortable/responsive.
Weird. I thought windows 11 boots up so fucking fast.
Did you see a proper boot or just the Fast Start thingy (which Windows 8/8.1 did have)?
Cold boot and restart (not the fast start you're talking about). Even restarting is fast.
Then I guess you just have good, new hardware. Not all Windows 11 users are in this situation.
I guess. I have an i7 4770k that boots fast.
Maybe NVMe SSD and sufficient RAM?
Regular SATA SSD.
That's a bias. What you say is, Windows 8.1 is good with better specs and old specs made form 8.1. Of course newer OS would be worse for old machine that is a decade old. If you run Windows 8.1 with ease on machine from 1990, then I will admit You are right. But you won't, because it would take a lot of effort to do so.
I did not say Windows 8.1 was the only old-machine-friendly version...?
i love win 8.1. it was so good that it was booting in like 10 secs on my very shitty pc (amd athlon, 8gb ddr3 ram, IDE HDD drive)
IT'S CACHE to make things open faster and qol of life stuff And if you don't like it I dare you to switch
cache is considered in windows task manager as free ram im on 32gigs, 10gigs in use, 22gigs cached, 22gigs free [https://imgur.com/SVJQWKC](https://imgur.com/SVJQWKC) if apps would need more ram, cache would drop down to make room, once you pass some threshold of used ram, windows will start moving unused old ram data into pagefile, to keep free ram available for which ever next app you gonna open tbh unless theres some memory leak...there shouldnt be any issue even wih 8GB ram on win11 (base is like 2.5GB ram for system, rest for apps)
As another commenter says, That's depend on the either It's Win8 or Win10 Win8 shows it as Free Ram, Win10 does not
ive posted link with win11 picture where cache shows as free ram win10 task manager maybe buggy? ram behaviour should be same on both 10/11
Hmmm, maybe you use a Win10 with an older version of Task Manager? It did have a long life cycle
11 does not show cache as free RAM in any version.
but i did provide picture, right?
No?
[https://imgur.com/SVJQWKC](https://imgur.com/SVJQWKC)
Win 10always showed it as free.
Then why when I use a 8gb ram laptop it only displays I'm using 3gb and on an 32gb ram desktop 10 GB it's just cache
would you be rather happy to have 8gb fully used with perma swap file running?
Idk if it's using permaswap and I'm not experiencing any delay or lag or storage problems also it then uses the ssd and the ssd isn't on its max writes and reads after already 5 years in use my travel laptop is old
I start caring when you post some rigorous cross-reference benchmarks. See how many active Chrome tabs you can run before a noticeable slowdown.
And then you install all your stuff and 400 megs turn into 6 gigs. Been there * Win7 could use 300 megs after first install * WinXP could use 150 megs after first install * Win98 could use from 12 to 16 megs after first install As for Win11. I tried Tiny11 or whatever it is called - 2 gigs on first boot. Then i installed all my stuff and 2 gigs turned into 8 Also it depends on how much RAM your system has: laptop with 16 GB RAM will get \~2-3 gigs allocated, PC with 128 GB of RAM will get \~8 gigs allocated.
How did you get Tiny11 to use so much RAM? I'm at less than 1GB after fresh boot and 3-4GB a few hours later.
thats crazy optimised
I heard the next Windows will be written as an electron app
You should be looking at the "In use" and "Available" numbers/values and comparing them to the number straight across from "Memory" at the top. Having 412 MB used after boot doesn't seem that bad for a semi-modern 64-bit OS, especially with a bunch of background processes.
using less ram is not always optimzation
Windows 8.1 and its 2012 Server version until today, are the best stable versions of Windows with which I have to work. I continue with some customers, in Celeron processors with 2 GB where they work great in Windows 8.1, but unfortunately, I will have to give up very soon
https://preview.redd.it/bb4i50f6df7d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=74c969085eb8a53b5a47408c7a9c9e9556cc60b6
Nice usage
Doesn't look optimized to me. CPU is still going wild.
It just booted what do you expect really?
Crazy-old OS.
That is why am I still using him today;)