Windows – Why RAM usage is much bigger than Virtual Memory usage

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I am running some tests on a very powerful machine ( 24GB RAM, Window 2008 64bit )

I checked my task manager: Physical memory: 98% ( RAM is 24GB )

But the totally "Memory(Private working set)" usage of all my running processors is no more than 16GB

Where are those extra 8GB used for? Is it used by the OS IO buffer, or somewhere else?

Can anyone contribute some ideas?

Best Answer

Yes, used for caching and buffers. Modern OS's try to be smart...if you have 8GB of memory just sitting idle, not being used for anything, it's being wasted. So as long as no application is requesting it, the OS finds other things to use it for to try and speed stuff up. Don't worry about it -- if you application needs the memory, the OS will instantly free it up as soon as the app asks for it.

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