Why Is Windows 10's "System" Process Using So Much RAM?

[steven36]

If you’ve made the jump and updated to Windows 10, you might have noticed something strange: the System process takes up an insane amount of RAM, sometimes over 1GB. That’s actually not a bug, it’s a feature of Windows 10. Here’s how it works.

Before we explain what’s going on in the new versions of Windows, let’s talk about how previous versions of Windows have handled memory usage. You only have so much space in RAM to store data. If you fill up your computer’s memory, Windows would offload the least used pages of data to the pagefile, which resides on your hard drive.
The downside to this method is that if you need to use data from your pagefile again, it has to get it from the much slower hard drive, rather than loading it from ultra-fast memory. While that’s better than an app crashing, it would still be better if that data didn’t have to leave memory at all.

How Windows 10 Handles Memory Management
Windows 10 still uses a pagefile when it has to. However, now when your computer’s memory starts to fill up, Windows 10 will start compressing old pages of memory so they take up less space, similar to what happens when you create a ZIP archive of multiple files. So, for example, if you have an app running that you haven’t touched in a while, rather than copying the information about that app to your hard drive, Windows will simply make it smaller, but keep it in memory.

The trade off, of course, is that decompressing the compressed memory takes up more CPU cycles. Typically, however, this performance cost is much, much lower than it would be if the system had to retrieve data from a hard drive (even SSDs). So even with the compression, it’s faster to pull those old apps out of memory than it is to load them from the hard drive’s pagefile.

All of the compressed memory that Windows 10 creates is stored in the System process. This is why it appears to balloon over time. The longer you have your computer running (and the more applications or browser tabs you launch), the more data in memory Windows will need to compress.

Mac users have been using a very similar feature since 2013, and even newer versions of the Linux kernel employ a type of memory compression. Despite the fact that it looks worrying in the Task Manager, this method of conserving memory is not only better, but already pretty common among other operating systems.

What You Can Do About It
For starters, you don’t necessarily need to do anything about this. As we’ve discussed before, unused RAM is wasted RAM. Closing applications to “save RAM” just means it’s going to take longer to load them when you need them again. Unless your computer is running slowly, you shouldn’t worry about programs using lots of RAM. It’s a good thing.

However, as we stated before, decompressing that compressed memory now uses more CPU cycles rather than just loading from the hard drive, so it’s possible to see a brief performance hit when switching to an application you haven’t touched in a while. If this is happening to you, there are a few things you can do. But they’re pretty much the same solutions you’ve always had:

• Add more RAM: Nothing is going to be better for your system than upgrading your total RAM. The more real RAM space you have, the less Windows 10 needs to compress it.
• Uninstall junk applications: Half the crap that came on your computer is unnecessary and taking up resources. Get rid of everything you don’t need.
• Close applications or tabs you don’t need: The more stuff you leave running, the more memory will get pushed to the System process. For your browser, closing or suspending tabs you haven’t touched in ages and know you’re never gonna come back to can help.

Ultimately, not much has really changed. The way you handle high memory usage isn’t substantially different than it was in previous versions of Windows—it’s just a little off-putting when you first see it in the task manager. But don’t worry: the System process is just working even harder to make sure your computer runs as smoothly as possible.

Source

[steven36]

Mine is using a little more cpu than yours but less memory

Edit: if I turn my browser off I can get down too 0%

[Kalju]

1401.3 MB = 1.40 GB

56 MB = 0.056 GB

12.5 MB = 0.0125 GB

Did someone make a joke? What to compare?

[steven36]

They have a hole lot of programs loaded it seems . The more apps the more cpu it uses take a video converter it would use a whole lot .

[Gamkutopolowk]

i have nothing cpu and ram lowest

[banned]

Many people already disabled their pagefile, so clearly, many people already have more RAM than they need. This feature is probably best for low memory devices such as tablets and phones. Or weak PCs.

[TheRuan]

Many people already disabled their pagefile, so clearly, many people already have more RAM than they need. This feature is probably best for low memory devices such as tablets and phones. Or weak PCs.

That really depends on how often the memory that was compressed will be reused, and also how often it will be changed, this seems very much like the compressed cache used in linux.

And i hope that Microsoft used some settting that considers the free amount of ram before using this.

Why I can't post images? aff

https://onedrive.live.com/?id=4225A1B409294506!2846&cid=4225A1B409294506&group=0&parId=4225A1B409294506!2745&authkey=!AK8AVfjDTWOekSs&o=OneUp

[Sylence]

I have 8GB DDR3 RAM and CoreI5 8th series CPU and a decent Graphic card. when I'm playing GTA V on Windows 8.1, it uses about 2.1 GB RAM but on Windows 10 it uses 3.2 GB and system process takes 1 GB RAM. so what the hell is this? when I asked my other friends playing GTA V on Windows 10 they said they are experiencing the same problem. problem is it causes lags in the game..a lot of lags.

Sometimes we need to CTRL+ESC to go to Windows and open a web page or something and after going back again to the minimized game, it starts to lag even more. I don't see any improvement whatsoever.

Is there any way we can solve this issue? all my drivers are up to date Win10-ready.

[TheRuan]

I have 8GB DDR3 RAM and CoreI5 8th series CPU and a decent Graphic card. when I'm playing GTA V on Windows 8.1, it uses about 2.1 GB RAM but on Windows 10 it uses 3.2 GB and system process takes 1 GB RAM. so what the hell is this? when I asked my other friends playing GTA V on Windows 10 they said they are experiencing the same problem. problem is it causes lags in the game..a lot of lags.

Sometimes we need to CTRL+ESC to go to Windows and open a web page or something and after going back again to the minimized game, it starts to lag even more. I don't see any improvement whatsoever.

Is there any way we can solve this issue? all my drivers are up to date Win10-ready.

In both versions u ran GTA using the same architecture? if so, the amount of ram used in theory should be the same, unless the game is loading something that it didn't in Win 8.1, but in anyway, the amount of memory loaded by GTA u can blame the game only, this isn't touched by Microsoft, the only thing MIcrosoft may apply are settings regarding compatibility, if the game is running in compatibility mode it could generate errors like that, but its more likely that in Windows 10 it's using a different directx version.

But the lag u get can't be due the amount of ram used, unless the system is running out of memory and being forced to compress the memory or to push information to the pagefile.

Maybe something else changed and u don't know, like default graphics configuration (inside and/or outside(in graphics card driver))for instance, like PhysX.

One thing that used to annoy me a lot was Windows Defender, it used to take a lot of process power, which I disabled entirely using GPO policy.(It's the only way to disable that shit)

[Sylence]

I have 8GB DDR3 RAM and CoreI5 8th series CPU and a decent Graphic card. when I'm playing GTA V on Windows 8.1, it uses about 2.1 GB RAM but on Windows 10 it uses 3.2 GB and system process takes 1 GB RAM. so what the hell is this? when I asked my other friends playing GTA V on Windows 10 they said they are experiencing the same problem. problem is it causes lags in the game..a lot of lags.

Sometimes we need to CTRL+ESC to go to Windows and open a web page or something and after going back again to the minimized game, it starts to lag even more. I don't see any improvement whatsoever.

Is there any way we can solve this issue? all my drivers are up to date Win10-ready.

In both versions u ran GTA using the same architecture? if so, the amount of ram used in theory should be the same, unless the game is loading something that it didn't in Win 8.1, but in anyway, the amount of memory loaded by GTA u can blame the game only, this isn't touched by Microsoft, the only thing MIcrosoft may apply are settings regarding compatibility, if the game is running in compatibility mode it could generate errors like that, but its more likely that in Windows 10 it's using a different directx version.

But the lag u get can't be due the amount of ram used, unless the system is running out of memory and being forced to compress the memory or to push information to the pagefile.

Maybe something else changed and u don't know, like default graphics configuration (inside and/or outside(in graphics card driver))for instance, like PhysX.

One thing that used to annoy me a lot was Windows Defender, it used to take a lot of process power, which I disabled entirely using GPO policy.(It's the only way to disable that shit)

I reinstalled the same GTA V version on Windows 10 and the AMD catalyst version I installed was Windows 10 WHQL. the more I played the game the more RAM and CPU was being used by system process. CPU total usage was 98% and everything was so slow (I switched back to 8.1). I thought maybe there is some memory leaks in Windows 10 or maybe Rockstar should release a patch for it but theres nothing here so far.

There is one thing I suspect thought. I set the game graphic settings to Ultra and the graphic RAM needed was more than I had, 3.2 GB while I had 2GB. so maybe the game is trying to use the main RAM as GPU RAM. I'm not really sure. cuz on Win8.1 It was the same settings but didn't have this problem. probably the graphic quality is better in Win10. but if this is really the reason then shouldn't we really be happy about it? people has been looking for a way to use RAM as GPU RAM.

Yes I did the same to it, for me it was so annoying when I turned it off in the settings and on the next sys restart it was running again.