2GB installed, only 1GB in use?

Question

I have recently installed 2GB of Ram to overcome system stability problems; I was working on solid models of castings; swept shapes intersecting features from many directions with fillets to smooth transitions, internal and external detail.

The system is now stable however a memory manager that I have installed shows that the RAM memory usage rarely exceeds a 1GB level mostly staying around 800-900 KB. I dont know if the system is any faster, I believe it is.

My question is; how do you know if the full potential of the 2GB RAM is being used, are there any settings that need to be set to in Windows XP Pro?

Any feedback appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Jerry Steiger · Accepted Answer

I've got 2.5 GB on my machine and our FEA machine has 4 GB. We've never changed anything in Windows XP Pro to use the RAM. My machine usually gets to at least 1.3 GB, sometimes as high as 1.6 GB before SW starts getting flaky or crashes. The FEA machine seems to be quite happy up to 1.6 GB and has gotten over 2.0 GB without crashing.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Michael Eckstein · Answer

I'm a fan of the 3gb switch in XP Pro. I have seen memory usage hit 2.6 gb before freezing upMike

pete · Answer

If I remember correctly, no matter how much ram you have installed, XP will take half of the available ram for it's self.You had 1GB installed and going by the amount of ram you were using, you must have had a lot of pagefile usage and disk thrashing going on. Now that you have more ram, your system should be a lot more stable.

The Pixleys · Answer

How do you set this switch again???  Thanks"Michael Eckstein"  wrote in message news:0dcxe.3422$    snipped-for-privacy@fe02.lga...

cymech · Answer

Thanks for the feedback.Looks as if everything is as it should be. XP seems to be a hungrycritter, a regular Mr 50%.

TOP · Answer

In the task manager go to the processes tab. Bring down the view menu and click Select Columns. Pick "Mem Usage" and "Virtual Memory Size". This will allow you to see how much memory an application is using from physical ram and how much is being squirreled away in disk cache. If you run a benchmark like PatBench with 11 or 12 iterations selected you should see Mem Usage peak at whatever your system is capable of before SW crashes. If you crash at 1.6 Gb or so, then enable the 3Gb switch and try again. You should be able to hit around 2.6 Gb before crashing SW.

You can get PatBench at:

formatting link

Wayne Tiffany · Answer

You can access all 3 parts of an article series on the 3Gb switch here.

formatting link

Or if you can't get into there, you can also find it here.

formatting link

is a link into the articles directory of our SW User group site. I put a copy of several misc articles I have written or collected, so take a look at what else is there - you might find something else that tickles your fancy.

WT

The Pixleys · Answer

Great...Thanks

John Layne · Answer

Is the Microsoft Hotfix still required with SP2 for Xp?RegardsJohn Layne

Wayne Tiffany · Answer

No, I've verified that on my machine.  Xp Sp2 does not require the patch that was required for XP SP1.  WT"John Layne"

John Layne · Answer

Wayne Tiffany wrote:

2GB installed, only 1GB in use?

Join the Discussion

Didn't find your answer?