The “culprit”: compressed memory
Before the advent of Windows 10, the operating system made heavy use of paging memory. Whenever some resources had been in memory for a long time, without being processed, they were moved directly to the paging file on the hard disk to leave the most free memory. This process frees up memory, but has a very negative impact on performance.
With the arrival of Windows 10, Microsoft began to use another technique to save resources: compress memory. When resources are not used, instead of sending them to paging, they are compressed, but they are still kept in memory. Of course, as long as there is RAM available. The data compression and decompression processes take time, but this is much less than sending the data to paging. When there is not enough space in memory, this is when compressed data is sent to paging to free up as much space as possible.
As time has passed, Microsoft has adjusted its operating system so that it uses less and less compressed memory. And, currently, whenever there is RAM available it will try to avoid the use of this compression.
Is it bad for Windows to use more RAM?
We always look for operating systems and programs that consume less memory, and think that this is a good thing. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Windows consumes a lot of RAM memory, more than older versions of the OS, because as long as there is enough RAM try to avoid both paging and data compression.
There is no use having a PC with 32 GB of RAM if we do not let the operating system use it. The RAM memory is to use it, and it is much better that something consumes 4 GB of memory, and that it is, as is, in the RAM, before it occupies 1.5 GB but that it is compressed or saved in the paging.
If our computer has little memory, we don’t have to worry either. Windows automatically takes care of controlling the available resources and, in case the memory is filling up, resorting to these two techniques that we have already talked about so that our PC works without problems.
We remember that Windows 11In addition, it has increased its minimum requirements, now asking to have at least 4 GB of RAM. Do you need them? No, but with them avoid using data compression, and paging, so that the system can work better.
