Forum Discussion
Is the Total RAM Usage Percentage Higher Than the Sum of Individual Programs?
Why is there a discrepancy between the percentage of memory usage indicated in the column title and the total memory usage of individual programs listed in the column? For instance, in Task Manager, why does the column title show 82% of RAM usage when the combined memory usage of all programs listed does not add up to 82%?
4 Replies
It is not possible to simply add up the numbers in the "Memory" column of the "Processes" tab and arrive at the total RAM usage percentage. Windows memory management is far more complex than that simple sum would suggest.
Zombie processes are terminated but still consuming system memory. They can contribute to the overall memory usage, but their memory usage is not always reflected in the individual process memory usage.
This includes system cache, memory used by drivers and memory reserved for hardware; the process list only shows the memory usage of user processes, so this is normal and there is no need to worry.
This is because the memory percentage shown in Task Manager includes system cache, memory used by drivers and memory reserved for hardware, whereas the process list only displays the memory usage of user processes.
