Vista - Vista x64 & Ram usage

I recently purchased some more ram for vista, now have 6gb instead of 4gb. I was a bit puzzled as to why my ram usage has shot up 200mb after installing the extra 2gb. Even on a clean install its 200mb more than it was when i had a clean install with 4gb of ram. Anyone know why this is?

A modern operating system (OS) like Vista is able to make more efficient use of the physical memory on your machine than previously possible with older OSs. You paid for your memory - it is in your best interest that it is used as effectively as possible. Over a period of time, you will probably find that your RAM useage will increase even further as more processes are able to reside in RAM instead of being occupying the Paging File. All machines have a number of background processes running at all times - these comprise drivers and anti-malware services together with other processes. For example, my machine has 2GB of RAM and I have only 5MB free. I only have Windows Mail, 2 Internet Explorer tabs and the 'Windows Task Manager' open. If I open more programs, such as 'Solitaire' and 'Calculator', the amount of free memory will fall. This is normal behaviour. Windows supplements the RAM as and when necessary with the Paging File on the hard disk. The more programs you have open, the more use will be made of your
Paging File. As long as your Paging File is of sufficient size, I wouldn't worry.
Dwarf

How many DIMM slots are you utilizing to have 6GB? That's an oddball number. Unless you have equal balance for every two matched slots, you are losing your dual channel capability. Just curious....Did you put 2x 2GB sticks in two slots and 2x 1gb sticks in the other two slots? That's the only way I can think of...

Long story short, your Vista is now placing more information in actual RAM instead of its paging file...which means your hard drive works less and your computer has faster access to information from RAM instead.

I lost mine as well, but it is still faster than it was before at 2 GBs with dual channel. I am worried about adding another gig though, because of the issues people seem to be having with filling all memory slots.

This post should explain some of the issues that people have with utilising all memory slots. On some motherboards, fully populating all the available RAM slots can actually degrade system performance. This is because in order to use the extra slots the RAM frequency is actually backed down from, for example, 200MHz (DDR-400 / PC3200) rate to 166MHz (DDR-333 / PC 2700) rate. In addition, in order to maintain dual channel capability (if your system is capable of supporting this), I recommend that ALL memory modules are identical in capacity and speed, even to the extent of being from the same manufacturer. You need to check with your motherboard manual whether or not this is the case. If it is, then a BIOS upgrade may fix this issue. This is because of system timing issues and crosstalk. In an ideal world, all the circuit paths from the memory sockets to the memory controller would be equal, but obviously in practice that is not possible. Upto a certain frequency there is no problem with that, but at higher frequencies errors can creep in. This is also what has limited the old EIDE interface for optical and older hard drives, and which is why this interface is being superceded by SATA, especially for hard disks. There are some SATA optical drives available, but other than being easier to install than the older versions there is no great advantage in choosing the serial interface over the parallel one as most optical drives operate well within the limits of the older interface..
Dwarf

Ah so the more ram i have, the larger amount of ram vista uses? Kind of like when you move into a bigger house, you utilise the extra space instead of leaving it empty sort of thing?

I used to have 4x 1gb xms2 6400c4, but then found out about 2gb sticks of 6400c4dhx, which is exactly the same except with fancy dynamic heat xchange (heat sink) on it

Edit:

Seeing as my pagefile size is 0, ive disabled it, hopefully it will reduce wear & tear on my expensive new hdd

It is not recommended that you disable or delete the paging file.
but Windows is not designed to run on RAM chips alone, no matter how many of them you have. In addition to using physical RAM to store programs and data, Windows creates a hidden file on your primary hard disk and uses that file to swap pages of data out of physical memory when necessary. The “swap file” (these days more commonly called a page file) acts as an extension of main memory—or, in other words, as virtual memory.
In addition to this, some programs will not run unless there is a paging file present even though there is plenty of free physical memory available.
Dwarf