Resource Monitor is a useful tool in Windows 10/8/7 that helps us find how much of resources are being put to use or used over time through a graphical representation. This way, it helps us check the performance counters of specific resource and decide a course of action to improve the performance. There are many ways via which you can launch Resource Monitor and use the application for tracing the Performance Data.
Resource Monitor in Windows 10
Resource Monitor or Resmon lets you easily monitor your CPU usage, memory usage, Disk Activity, Network Activity and more. Like the Reliability Monitor or the Performance Monitor, the Resource Monitor too is a useful built-in tool in Windows.
To launch Resource Monitor, type resmon in Start Search and hit Enter. When you first launch the application, an ‘Overview’ tab gets displayed.
Overview tab
As the name suggests, the Overview tab displays basic system resource usage information of other four main tabs:
- CPU
- Memory
- Disk
- Network
You can take a look at the base graphs for each of the four categories. it offers at-a-glance, basic overview of your system’s current status.
As you can see, the CPU graph displays the total percentage of CPU capacity currently in use (green curves along the graph)with blue color indicating the maximum CPU Frequency. Alongside it, there’s a Disk graph displaying the total current I/O in green and the highest active time percentage in blue. Similar findings related to the Network graph and Memory graph are also displayed. For Memory, the current Hard Faults per second can be seen in green and the percentage of physical memory in use in blue.
If you are interested in knowing more details about a particular tab, just select the associated tab.
CPU
Under the CPU tab, it is possible to filter each view of the given tabs by the process. Simply check the box for that process, and the bottom window will only show the activity for that process. With no processes selected, the bottom windows will transform into an activity page for all active processes. The numeric scale for the graphs on the right will change as activity changes. On the right side, you will see the usage graphs that will help you monitor the CPUs.
Memory tab
The memory tab shows the memory being consumed by each of the running processes, along with graphs on the right side. This gives us a quick view of what physical memory is being used for. One can easily view the total physical memory and what it is being actively used, along with showing what is hardware-reserved. Hardware Reserved represents physical memory addresses that have been reserved by hardware and is not available for Windows to use.
Disk tab
Under the ‘Disk’ tab you will find those processes that are engaged in some Disk activity. At the time you may find some process engaged in a lot of Read-Write activity. Right-clicking on any process will give you the option to End the process, End the complete process tree, etc.
Network tab
Under the Network tab, you can find which programs are accessing the network and which IP address it is connected to. This helps in narrowing down the problem if you find unusually high network activity.
Thus, the Resource Monitor offers many advantages over previous individual tools like System Monitor, Performance Logs and Alerts, and Server Performance Advisor in a way that it combines the functionality of those tools into a single interface. Besides, it provides a much more in-depth view of system activity and resource usage than previous tools like Task Manager.