I'm running Windows 11 on a system with 40 GB of installed RAM and integrated Intel UHD graphics. In System Informer, the GPU shared bytes (committed) value keeps increasing and has reportedly passed 120 GB, which is more than the physical memory installed. Does this indicate a memory leak, or is the number referring to virtual or committed memory rather than RAM currently in use? What should I check to identify the process responsible?
3 Answers
The important detail is which process is making the number rise. Open Task Manager, sort processes by Memory, and inspect the GPU memory columns. If physical RAM usage is not close to full and the system is not slowing down, the committed figure may simply be a reservation or virtual-memory limit rather than a leak.
Also check your virtual memory settings under Advanced system settings, Performance Options, Advanced, and Virtual memory. The page file contributes to the system’s commit limit. A high commit value alone is not proof of a leak; look for steadily increasing physical RAM usage, paging, slowdowns, or one process whose memory usage keeps growing.
A committed value of 120 GB does not necessarily mean 120 GB of physical RAM is actively being used. Integrated graphics can use shared system memory, and Windows can commit memory against the page file or other virtual memory. Check Task Manager’s Memory and GPU sections, along with the per-process GPU engine and dedicated/shared GPU memory columns, to see what is actually consuming resources.
That makes sense. I’ll monitor the processes in Task Manager instead of relying only on the shared-bytes counter.