SS Memory consumption

schroeder · Post by **schroeder** » 20 May 2006, 20:43

Alrighty, here's a seperate thread.

This is about the memory consumption of SS. If I minimize the program to the task bar (right lower corner) the memory footprint goes down to about 900K (awesome!) but then after about 20 seconds it goes up to about 2-2.5 MB and stays there. Why is that?

Specs:
Acer Laptop 1.5GHz Pentium M
512 MB RAM
Windows XP SP2
Servant Salamander 2.5 RC1

schroeder

schroeder · Post by **schroeder** » 20 May 2006, 23:18

Hi,

So, I have looked further into the matter and this is what I found out:

I unloaded all of the plugins, which changes the overall numbers around depending on how many plugins are loaded but the general behaviour is the same.

The first picture shows the memory consumption in my Task Manager right after Salamander was minimized to the task bar TRAY:

The second picture shows the memory consumption after SS is staying about 10 seconds in the tray:

The third picture shows the memory consumption after maximizing SS again from the task bar tray:

schroeder

Mem · Post by **Mem** » 21 May 2006, 14:29

I confirm this behaviour (after minimizing the Memory usage is about 800 kB, little while after that about 1600 kB - but only sometimes. I was testing it now for a while and it happens with approximate probability of 0.5, usually when I focus on another file and quickly minimizes).

But it has no sense to show only memory usage - you have to add virtual memory too (and this is still not the whole SS footprint, as it uses other DLLs etc.).

Post by **Jan Rysavy** » 22 May 2006, 14:21

I can confirm it too. I tried the web browser Opera and it bahaves the same.
So it looks like standard Windows Memory Management behaviour to me.

(tested on W2K and Win XP Pro)

SvA · Post by **SvA** » 22 May 2006, 17:35

This does not happen only when minimizing to tray, but also when minimizing to task bar. (schroeder's initial posting is unclear on this. It names the taskbar but describes the tray)

You should note, that memory consumption shown in Windows Task-Manager is the working set, which is the amount of physical memory allocated to the app, not actual memory consuption (which is virtual memory consumption).

It appears to me that on minimizing Windows marks discardable and swappable memoryto be reused by other applications. The application will then, after some while receive some messages from the system. In order to process these, windows will have to swap in (or reuse from it's internal pool) the memory required to process these messages.

This is really nothing you should be concerned about.

Mem wrote:But it has no sense to show only memory usage - you have to add virtual memory too (and this is still not the whole SS footprint, as it uses other DLLs etc.).

DLLs are mapped into a process's (virtual) memory space. Thus, they are included in the figure given by Task Manager.

schroeder · Post by **schroeder** » 23 May 2006, 17:34

SvA wrote:It appears to me that on minimizing Windows marks discardable and swappable memoryto be reused by other applications. The application will then, after some while receive some messages from the system. In order to process these, windows will have to swap in (or reuse from it's internal pool) the memory required to process these messages.

This is really nothing you should be concerned about.

I am not really concerned, the question is: after minimizing the program, what message can be so important that it requires to triple the memory?

What I am getting at here: I minimize the program for it to just sit there and do nothing, i.e. remain idle until I need it again. All unnecessary memory is discarded and freed for other apps. Great. I was just wondering if it is possible to keep the memory at the initial 800KB.

schroeder

SvA · Post by **SvA** » 23 May 2006, 18:13

schroeder wrote:I am not really concerned, the question is: after minimizing the program, what message can be so important that it requires to triple the memory?

This is not a question of importance. The application will be notified of anything any application might want to know to react uppon. Salamander might not even process the message other than pass it on to Windows' own default handler.

Windows does not know whether you minimized the window to let it do it's work or because you don't need it at the moment. The App basically runs just the same whether it is minimized or not. You would quite likely get the same result using some "Memory Optimizer".

Post by **Jan Rysavy** » 23 May 2006, 20:04

100% agree to SvA. Thank you for your detailed explanation!