Hi
I have a device with 256mb RAM but it only shows 111mb user accessible and the rest is hidden (probably)
with usually on 30-40mb cached and 2-5mb free ram its difficult multitasking properly or using any app properly for that matter.
How can I reduce the shared graphics memory from the kernel to get more user ram?
Thank you
i got same problem. my device have 512mb but free ram is max. 210 RAM.
++bump++
Although I'm not sure...here's my idea of what you would need to do...
Get the kernel source, find the files/drivers related to graphics...edit the amount of dedicated memory
I don't suggest doing this as it will likely cause the system to become unstable due to lack of dedicated ram...I wouldn't expect much multi tasking ability from any device that has under 500mb of ram total...
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Related
Hi Everybody,
I have a question about the memory on the vibrant.
In the task manager, it says that I only have 304mb of total memory.
Why?
I've read some posts saying that the vibrant runs on 2.6.29 which does not support himem, therefore limiting the ram to only 304mb. But my vibrant is on 2.6.32, which is said to support himem, and still I only get 304mb. What is up with this?
Also at most I get 160mb of free memory, does anyone have more free memory? I know that android has great memory management, but I just want to check if I have the normal amount of free memory.
Thanks to all replies, bad or good ;-)
No one has more free RAM unless they have a loltaskkiller running in the background aggressively killing tasks.
The phone reserves 128 MB RAM for the GPU out of the 512. None of the Galaxy S phones have (or had) 512 App-Accessible RAM.
Verizon advertises the Fascinate as having 384 MB RAM which seems more accurate because phone reserves 128 for the graphics (512-128=384) and then reserves ~64 MB for the system (384-326 we see = 58).
It has 384 MB RAM, and 128 dedicated the GPU outside of the App RAM. Samsung just advertised it as 512 because they added them together and didn't make any distinction (which makes the advertisement legally legit) and they didn't feel like adding a bit more RAM to the device the way HTC typically does with their phones (extra 64MB in the HD2/HD7 and they put 768 in the MyTouch to compensate for pretty much everything).
HTH.
Oh, now it makes sense. So if 64mb is reserved to the system and I get 140mb of used memory with no apps running, does.that mean android uses about 200mb out of the available 384mb?
tincanman said:
Oh, now it makes sense. So if 64mb is reserved to the system and I get 140mb of used memory with no apps running, does.that mean android uses about 200mb out of the available 384mb?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android uses about 120-150 MB as a base, the rest are cached applications, which allows them to starts up faster next time you run them, but the cached RAM will be freed up if the current running application needs it. You can try disabling free services to reduce the amount Android uses, although it doesn't free up too much.
It makes me wonder does the GPU really need 128 MB of RAM?!
It probably doesn't need 128 MB. They probably could have done well by just giving it 96 and letting the rest of the 32 go for the System (Apps), and then adding another 64 MB to the system on top of that to give the user more time ot multi-task non-game applications.
Not to mention most games load a lot of data in RAM and the lack of Application RAM can/does bottleneck the phone in some of them - making the "incredible" GPU not much of an improvement over phones with more RAM in them and comparable CPU performance (and a faster file system, as well).
Moved of: Samsung Vibrant > Vibrant General
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Please put your questions to: Vibrant Q&A
Hello, as we know, Galaxy S1 was advertised with 512MB ram, but in real there was only ~340MB of usable RAM! So i want to ask, how much ram is usable for applications and how much is free after fresh boot? Can someone check this? You can see this informations in task manager.
I think its about 800-850 RAM.
The original SGS had 512mb of ram as advertised. For some reason people assume that their phone behaves different than their computer. The operating system and everything like that needs to use the ram as well.
AS stated though I understand the SGS2 to have approximately 850MB of ram free after running the OS etc.
If I continually hit advanced task killer it will give me about 445MB free. In the standard task manager it says /833MB.
I don't really think this is all too relevant. You will never have anywhere near the maximum amount available just as you won't in a modern PC either and with phone OS's getting more power hungry and complex this is unlikely to change.
If the amount of ram bothers you check the video of the guy doing heavy multitasking on the phone and that will clear your mind.
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kickassdave said:
If I continually hit advanced task killer it will give me about 445MB free. In the standard task manager it says /833MB.
I don't really think this is all too relevant. You will never have anywhere near the maximum amount available just as you won't in a modern PC either and with phone OS's getting more power hungry and complex this is unlikely to change.
If the amount of ram bothers you check the video of the guy doing heavy multitasking on the phone and that will clear your mind.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Thank you for usefull information. I'm just interested in real numbers, because HTC phones have all advertised ram available to system, instead of samsung, which is cheating about this. Yes the OS is using ram... but from 833MB, not from 1gig. How can system use ram which is not visible to system? Android is linux, you can easily see how much ram is available and usable for system... it's 833 not 1gig. I believe that there is 1GB ram chip, but some memory is dedicated to other components. However 833 MB is really enough for mobile phone.
Shanakin said:
The original SGS had 512mb of ram as advertised.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It did have 512MB of ram in hardware, but a pretty big part of the 512mb was actually dedicated video memory for 3d and movies. The Galaxy Tab 7" which was advertised with 512MB actually had ~600MB of ram in hardware, with extra ram outside the 512MB being for the dedicated video.
With the SGS2 it seems to be as the original SGS with dedicated video ram being taken out of the 1GB. It's easy enough to check by looking at the kernel config files. (And you can even tweak the numbers a bit to get a bit more free ram, as was done in the SGS)
Hope we're not heading down the old line of trying to run with loads of free RAM... I'm of the philosophy that if you have the RAM available, you should use it, rather than have to load things up from storage due to removing it to make a number bigger on a task manager...
ranwej said:
Thank you for usefull information. I'm just interested in real numbers, because HTC phones have all advertised ram available to system, instead of samsung, which is cheating about this. Yes the OS is using ram... but from 833MB, not from 1gig. How can system use ram which is not visible to system? Android is linux, you can easily see how much ram is available and usable for system... it's 833 not 1gig. I believe that there is 1GB ram chip, but some memory is dedicated to other components. However 833 MB is really enough for mobile phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Htc does/did this as well. My Legend is advertised with 384mb ram, but only 290 is available to the system.
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pulser_g2 said:
Hope we're not heading down the old line of trying to run with loads of free RAM... I'm of the philosophy that if you have the RAM available, you should use it, rather than have to load things up from storage due to removing it to make a number bigger on a task manager...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your philosophy is absolutely correct. In Windows that might be a good thing, because it starts buffering to the HD when you run out. But Android will just close some background processes automatically to clear ram as needed.
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pulser_g2 said:
Hope we're not heading down the old line of trying to run with loads of free RAM... I'm of the philosophy that if you have the RAM available, you should use it, rather than have to load things up from storage due to removing it to make a number bigger on a task manager...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately people these days only know about ram management from that poor excuse of an OS called Windows.... excluding 7.
pulser_g2 said:
Hope we're not heading down the old line of trying to run with loads of free RAM... I'm of the philosophy that if you have the RAM available, you should use it, rather than have to load things up from storage due to removing it to make a number bigger on a task manager...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, as long as there is a big line between FREE RAM and TOTAL RAM. More total RAM is always a very very good thing regardless of how good the ram management is.
This thread is about total RAM available to Linux/Android, so it's good imho.
I purchased a Simdo D98T from Pandawill. While the phone isnt pretty and the touchscreen is not well calibrated, I was impressed with the antenna quality: best wifi and GPS I have seen in any phone.
The phone reports 1G of RAM, but the lowest I have seen free RAM has been around 639MB. Programs are closed as soon as you put them in foreground and Firefox even closed on me while working, while still reporting around 640MB of free RAM.
Can the manufacturer reportan incorrect amount of RAM and tweak the kernel to use only part of it?
>...
The RAM might have been used by system.. Actually 1GB RAM should be 800MB+ available for users.
hjc4869 said:
The RAM might have been used by system.. Actually 1GB RAM should be 800MB+ available for users.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats the issue: the kernel closes programs and available RAM never goes under 640MB.
I've got my device for one day already.
This is my first Sony Android phone and ... compared with my previous HTC old phone, Z2 is perfect.
However I find that the ram usage is terrible. There is only 1.1GB free RAM just after the device is booted up.
That means... the phone has used 1.6~7 GB RAM before I open the browser or games.
Quite ridiculous...
Is it normal? or what can I do for more free RAM
I don't think it's a problem but a good thing. Android has a smart/good RAM management. That means apps are kept in RAM until other apps need more. If you don't like you can try in developer option to play with "don't keep activities" and background process limit".
Right, you want your phone to use as much RAM as it can, this is a good thing. Also notice, the "unused" portion of RAM is also used to cache certain processes android believes you use often or will need. All of this is to speed up access to those applications as much as possible.
Take note on this
What is shown as free ram in linux is actualy freeable ram, your actual free ram is about 5mb
Linux has the motto of free ram wasted ram so when you have around 200mb freeable when your total is 3GB then there is a problem
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Hi, i just wonder why this phone use ram so much high? (mine: usually at 1,7GB). At first time i use this phone it was used about 1.1GB of ram.
I'm trying to compare this phone usage with my previous tablet, samsung galaxy note 10.1 and it just consume about 700MB of 2GB ram it have and at first time i use it consume about only 500MB ram.
For your information, i use almost same app running in my booth device. But..
Why it come so much different? Z2 for sure have 3GB ram (bigger than other) but i think the system at least consume much more ram too than others. Are I'am right? Can u tell me what do you think? And tell us about your idle ram usage too if u can..
denny9unawan said:
Hi, i just wonder why this phone use ram so much high? (mine: usually at 1,7GB). At first time i use this phone it was used about 1.1GB of ram.
I'm trying to compare this phone usage with my previous tablet, samsung galaxy note 10.1 and it just consume about 700MB of 2GB ram it have and at first time i use it consume about only 500MB ram.
For your information, i use almost same app running in my booth device. But..
Why it come so much different? Z2 for sure have 3GB ram (bigger than other) but i think the system at least consume much more ram too than others. Are I'am right? Can u tell me what do you think? And tell us about your idle ram usage too if u can..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think nothing of it
Linux is healthy to use ram unlike other OSs when ever you open an app your phone will free ram if needed, its not to hard seeing as how its managed
Your actual free ram is always 15mb but freeable is usualy always %90 of your total ram, ignore how much ram is avaliable
If you want to know more, look up linux ram management
Sent from my D6503 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Looking at RAM usage is entirely pointless.
Apps allocated RAM as they like but the operating system makes all kinds of predictions ahead of time to preallocate blocks of RAM to increase speed, eg when an app requests to allocate some memory the OS gets to instantly go "here you go; hehe sucker I already prepared that earlier".
The OS will more or less allocate as much RAM as you throw at it up to realistic limits. Eg once a tiny app has 1gb of ram the OS will take the educated guess that will be more than enough for it and not allocate any more.
If another app opens up and the OS is running low on memory it will rejig how much it has allocated to apps that never actually requested that much memory.
This happens on any modern OS and is why you should never really care how much RAM things are using.
In Windows under process manager if you looked you would find there is about 10 different ways to look at the RAM usage per app. Unless you really know what the numbers are saying they will all means basically zero in the real world.
Woa.. I never know it before.. Thanks for the info..
Mine 1.5gb used
More then enough
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How do I see this?
Skickat från min D6503 via Tapatalk
mine is usually about 1.5 to 1.9GB
keep in mind it caches apps too incase you reuse them, at the top right of the usage screen hit the menu to see the cached apps.
Mine is usually 1.5 to 1.7GB, even I don't run any app...
BTW, I install the app Clean Master ( like CC clean on Windows). And I always do clean Junk file and Boost ram once a day.
Is it good to use this app everyday?
vdanh said:
Mine is usually 1.5 to 1.7GB, even I don't run any app...
BTW, I install the app Clean Master ( like CC clean on Windows). And I always do clean Junk file and Boost ram once a day.
Is it good to use this app everyday?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's another generic 'ram booster', it's next to useless, but it won't be dangerous to use unless the app is programmed poorly. As others have pointed out, if there's no problem with the system (e.g. memory leaks), the RAM it allocates is used for caching apps so they may load quicker. Simply put, this behaviour is intended.
Cleaning junk files will probably have next to no effect on perceived performance as well untill you've hoarded enough junk files that your internal memory is almost full. But I see where you're coming from; it's very satisfying to see memory freed.
And while I am at it, I'd like to recommend SD Maid for this purpose. It's one of the few apps that actually do something useful. You can delete orphaned folders by apps that are no longer installed, delete junk and duplicate files, bulk clean app caches as well as optimise internal app databases.