As a Windows user, keeping track of your computer’s use of resources is critical to maintain its best performance and avoid problems. If you feel your computer is running slowly, you must check what is using your resources. Windows includes several built-in tools for monitoring system usage of resources. You can use these tools to monitor your system’s resource use and determine how demanding the programs on your PC are. This includes tracking how much RAM, GPU, and CPU usage on Windows.
How to Check RAM, GPU, and CPU Usage in Windows
Given below are three tools within Windows that you can use to track the RAM, GPU, and CPU usage in Windows
- Task Manager
- Resource Monitor
- Performance Monitor
Some of these are only accessible to an administrator account.
1] Check via Task Manager
The Task Manager is a key system resource monitoring utility in Windows. The tool is the most convenient way to view which programs and processes are active and how much resources each consumes. Here is how to check the RAM, GPU, and CPU usage via Task Manager:
- Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and click the Performance tab. This tab displays your system’s RAM, CPU, GPU, and disk use.
- Click the Memory box to examine the RAM usage of your PC. This box displays how much RAM is currently in use and how much is still available.
- You can click the CPU box to view your computer’s processor use. The processor box displays a changing CPU percentage usage figure and speed information.
- Click the GPU box to check how much GPU RAM is in use. If your computer has two GPUs, you can pick two boxes in Task Manager for each.
Task Manager also includes a helpful summary view showing only the system resource utilization boxes. To access that way of viewing, right-click within Task Manager and select Summary view from the context menu.
To check which programs are using the most resources on your PC, perform the steps given below:
- Click the Processes tab. This page provides the memory, CPU, disk, network, and GPU usage of all running apps and background tasks.
- You can free up system resources by choosing a third-party background program (or processes and services) that you may not need and clicking the End task button at the bottom of the Task Manager window.
2] Check via Resource Monitor
The Resource Monitor program in Windows 11 is a slightly more extensive system resource monitoring software than Task Manager. Like Task Manager, that utility displays resource consumption information for memory, CPU, disk, and network using graphs. This is how you can use Resource Monitor to keep track of system resource utilization:
- In the Windows search bar, type resource monitor, and click on the result to open the Resource Monitor window.
- Select the Memory tab to examine resource utilization graphs. This tab contains a physical memory graph that displays how much memory is currently in use, how much is available, and how much is on standby. It also shows the percentage utilization information.
- To see graphs of processor utilization percentages, click the CPU tab. Go to the Network tab to view processes with network (internet) activity.
- Click Overview for details about memory, CPU, network, and disk utilization in a single tab.
3] Check via Performance Monitor
The Performance Monitor is a valuable tool for analyzing system performance and resource utilization. This utility generates system summaries, performance reports, and a real-time performance graph.
This is undoubtedly a challenging program, but it is a handy tool for expert users who can make sense of its data. Here is how to use Performance Monitor on Windows 11 to view performance and system resource details:
- Type performance monitor into the Windows search bar and click on the result to open the Performance Monitor window.
- Next, click the Performance option on the left pane to view the system summary resource usage data.
- Under Monitoring Tools, click on Performance Monitor to access real-time performance metrics. The graph displays the processor performance counter by default.
- Click the Add button (green plus sign) to add more counters to the graph. On the Add Counters window, select a counter from the list of items in the counter box, for example, Memory. The Memory counter’s committed bytes line displays the average RAM consumption over time.
- Click the Add button to add the counter, and click OK. You can view the performance data for your selected counter on the graph.
How Much Resources Do I have on my PC?
When system resource utilization is high, particularly for RAM and CPU, Windows 11 will become slower and less responsive to your operations. Check your PC’s use of resources with the tools listed above whenever you want to speed up Windows.
You can then identify which programs or background processes use the most resources and shut them down. You will notice an improvement in overall system performance after that. Thus, monitoring your RAM, GPU, and CPU consumption will help you identify performance issues and optimize your system.
