In the first part of this series, we talked about how to open Task Manager and went to the Processes, Details and Services tabs. In the second part we will look at the Performance and Application History tabs.
In Part III, we’ll talk about the Launch and Users tabs.
Performance tab
The Performance tab is probably my favorite in Task Manager. This allows you to see in real time how heavily loaded your components are. At the top is the processor that will be selected by default when you click on the tab.
In the right pane, you will see a graph of usage and a lot of useful information about your processor. The name of the processor will be indicated at the top, in my case it is Intel Core i7-8700K. At the bottom and right, you will see the base clock speed, the number of CPU sockets, the number of cores, the number of logical processors (if your CPU supports hyperthreading), whether virtualization is supported, and the CPU sizes. caches.
On the left, you will see the real-time CPU usage and speed. You will also see the total number of processes, threads and handles. The CPU graph above shows the total CPU usage, but if you want to see each individual core, just right-click the graph, select Change Graph To, and then click Logical Processors.
If you click on Memory, you will see a graph showing how much memory is currently being used. At the top is the total amount of memory installed on the system (in my case 32GB).
You will also get useful information such as your memory speed (3000 MHz for me), the number of sockets used (2 of 4) and the form factor (DIMM). On the left are technical details about how much memory is being used, as well as the amount of paged and non-paged memory. Read this article from Microsoft if you want to know more about paged pool and non-paged pool.
For drives, you will see a graph for each hard drive installed on your system. In my case, I have three hard drives, so I have three graphs (C, D, E). Below is the graph for my system drive (C).
There is not much information on this tab besides the model / brand of the drive, read / write speed, average response time, and drive size.
If you have multiple network cards, you will also see multiple Ethernet graphs. In my case, I have two network cards, but only one is connected.
Ethernet graphs are usually pretty straightforward unless you’re actively downloading / uploading something. Above, I ran a speed test that was in the loading phase when I got the screenshot. Therefore, the send value is 721 Mbps. It is worth noting that the “Bandwidth” value at the top changes depending on how much bandwidth is being used.
Finally, if you have a dedicated graphics card, you will also see the GPU graph. If you have multiple graphics cards, you will get multiple graphs. The brand and model of the card will be listed at the top.
Below you will see information about the installed driver version and the supported DirectX version. You will also get information about GPU dedicated memory and shared memory. Graphs also break down GPU usage by task: 3D, copy, video encoding, and video decoding.
Here’s a detailed overview of the Performance tab. Associated with the performance tab is the Application History tab.
Windows 10 includes many built-in Windows Store apps, and this tab displays information about those apps and those you install yourself. This tab is only useful for seeing which applications are using the most CPU or network bandwidth over time. Click a column heading to sort the list by that column. There is nothing else to do on this tab. Right-clicking will only switch to the application, which will essentially open it if it isn’t already open.
That’s it for the Performance and Application History tabs. In Part III, we’ll talk about the last few Task Manager tabs. Enjoy!
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