Getting details on application RAM usage

Question

According to process explorer / task manager my application has a private working set size of around 190MB even while not performing a specific task, which is way more than I would expect it to need. Using FastMM I have validated that none of this is an actual memory leak in a traditional sense.

I have also read the related discussion going on here, which suggests using FastMM's LogMemoryManagerStateToFile();. However the output generated states "21299K Allocated, 49086K Overhead", which combined (70MB) is way less than the task manager suggests.

Is there any way I can find out what causes the huge differences, might 190MB even be an expectable value for an application with ~15 forms? Also, is having 70% overhead "bad", any way of reducing that number?

Answer 1

You can use VMMap from Sysinternals to get a complete overview of the virtual memory addres space your proces is using. This should allow you to work out the difference you are seeing between taks manager and FastMM.

I doubt that FastMM reports or even can report sections like Mapped File, Shareable, Page Table while those sections do occupy Private WS.

Answer 2

DDDebug can give you insights about memory allocation by objects in your app. You can monitor changes live.

Test the trial version or checkout the introductory video on the website.