MemAlloc|Free memory allocation stress test for Windows. Heavy memory load simulation

MemAlloc
Stress your memory!

Description

MemAlloc is a free memory allocation tool. It allows you to stress and test your Windows operating system by requesting any amount of memory you want.

Compatibility matrix

Windows 95	Windows 98	Windows Me	Windows NT	Windows 2000	Windows XP	Windows 2003	Windows Vista	Windows 7
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Probably

Usability

You can use "MemAlloc" memory allocation program to:

Put a stress on your Windows system for benchmarking reasons
Easily simulate a heavy memory load (which usually appears while you are using simultaneously several big programs, games, etc)
Determine hardware (memory) requirements for some specific software environments
Test defective hardware
Test performance of specific hardware
Compare behavior of different operating systems in heavy memory load conditions
Test recoverability capacity and time after a heavy memory load of your operation system
Consume all Windows OS available memory to test the behavior of other programs when Windows OS is low in memory
Display real time information about your system resources usage:
- Total RAM
- Total virtual
- Available RAM
- Total page file
- Memory load
- Avail page file

The program will refresh the system resources usage values at every second.

Experiment - Heavy memory load simulation

In this experiment we will set the MemAlloc program to allocate 1.030GB of RAM, while the test computer has only 1023.4GB of installed physical RAM memory.

After pressing the ‘Allocate’ button (fig. 1), the MemAlloc program shows not only that Windows is return to give the requested memory, but also it has some extra free memory (about 22MB) available.

How is this possible?

When MS Windows is low in memory, it will "download" some of the running programs to disk, using their memory for other more urgent purposes. This process is called "swapping". This way it creates the impression that the amount of available memory (called "virtual memory") is higher than the real amount of memory installed in your computer. This is an ingenious solution but it is not perfect, because swapping other programs to disk is very slow.

this memory allocation program can consume all Windows available memory

How does it work?

The MemAlloc memory allocation program will requests from Windows OS the specified amount of memory. This amount can be defined in chunks of 1MB.

This program is now freeware.

Similar programs

You may want to see also:

DOS Delay	This is a DOS command that will execute a delay. Useful in batch files (BAT/CMD). Free.
File generator	File Generator can generate a specified number of files. You can specify the size of the file, content of each file and the file name pattern.
Hardware IDExtractor	This program shows data about your computer's hardware: Hard drive ID (unique hardware ID written in drive's chip), partition ID, CPU ID (unique hardware ID), CPU vendor, CPU speed, data about physical RAM