"your computer is low on memory" Win 7 x64 8GB RAM

snedie · 30 Nov 2011 at 21:13

mrk said:
Why do you have a pagefile set on all your drives? That's completely unneeded. Windows Managed will set a very high pagefile regardless of whether you need it or not. So if you have 16GB RAM then Windows will set aside up to 24GB of disk space.....quite bonkers.

Besides, Windows will decide on what pagefile to use depending on the drive that's fastest for the task at hand.

Use the resource centre in Windows 7 to monitor PF usage over normal usage over several days and then manually set your pagefile accordingly. This saves space on your SSD. Your PF should really be on the fastest drive possible as well.

I have 16GB RAM and rarely does my actual PF usage go above 1GB so my min/max is set to 1024MB, after this I monitored via Performance Monitor over normal usage and the PF usage peak never exceeds 11.8% of that 1GB allocation even with VMs/Lightroom/PS running which is what I'd expect. I am a heavy photo editor and do edit videos on a weekly basis as well as being a gamer - To give you an idea of the kind of tasks my PC does and the actual Pagefile usage.

Do the same, manually set then monitor but above all things, sort the memory low issue out first as I don't think it's pagefile related, you should always have a pagefile though, for Win7 a minimum size of 800MB is recommended.

I don't have the page file set across all my drives, that's what I used to do (along with thousands of other server managers) with an enterprise class server. Right now I have a 12Gb page file on my SSD, nothing more nothing less.

Whilst I had Resource Monitor open I thought I'd look for anything strange going on when the stuttering happened, and low and behold it's hard faults. Every time a game stutters, windows is writing/reading from the page file. Just another reason I'd prefer not to even have a page file: even when IO'ing from SSD's in RAID windows still stutters.

mrk · 30 Nov 2011 at 21:19

If it's like that then there's something wrong with your setup and it needs investigating. hard faults like that should not be happening.

How much % of that 12GB Pagefile is actually being used and what is the peak after a day's worth of standard use?

snedie · 30 Nov 2011 at 21:36

mrk said:
If it's like that then there's something wrong with your setup and it needs investigating. hard faults like that should not be happening.

How much % of that 12GB Pagefile is actually being used and what is the peak after a day's worth of standard use?

I haven't got ResMon setup to record the PF usage, I just glance across to one of my other screens to see what's going on. For all I know this could be just another issue with ATI drivers as prior to 2 weeks ago (prior to complete format of system) I didn't have this problem and the CCC drivers are the only things to have changed.

bledd · 30 Nov 2011 at 22:53

bledd. said:
Set a 500-2000 mb pagefile on your SSD and set it to Windows Managed on one of your other drives

I only reccomend this if space is an issue on your SSD

Personally, I've got a 64gb SSD and I just leave mine to system managed, I've only got 4gb ram, but if I had 16gb, I'd do the same

Disable system restore, disable hibernation

Take system image backups every now and then

mrk · 30 Nov 2011 at 22:54

So you'd disable hibernation/SR to save space but waste it again by having 16+GB of allocated PF space that will never be used?

Mind = Blown!

I bet if you monitored for a few days the actual PF usage yours would be very low. Way way lower than Windows will set it to as system managed.

bledd · 30 Nov 2011 at 23:02

It's space that I won't need, although that's besides the point. Yes you can monitor your usage to configure it to suit your needs. But it's sure fire advice that will work with any system

Personally, I can't be bothered to monitor it, so it's nice to set & forget

snedie · 1 Dec 2011 at 00:19

I have my system do an image every 24hrs anyway so that I don't have to mess around with system recovery (much quicker to re-image an ssd than to wait to windows to figure out how I/it messed up).

I'll experiment with spreading the pagefile across multiple drives with smaller values and not having it on C:\, maybe the stuttering in games will ease off a little.

Burnsy2023 · 1 Dec 2011 at 09:34

snedie said:
I have my system do an image every 24hrs anyway so that I don't have to mess around with system recovery (much quicker to re-image an ssd than to wait to windows to figure out how I/it messed up).

I'll experiment with spreading the pagefile across multiple drives with smaller values and not having it on C:\, maybe the stuttering in games will ease off a little.

So did this fix the out of memory issue?

platypus · 1 Dec 2011 at 15:11

Is this with certain applications or everything?

If certain applications, edit the executable so that it's >2GB memory aware.

snedie · 1 Dec 2011 at 15:21

platypus said:
Is this with certain applications or everything?

If certain applications, edit the executable so that it's >2GB memory aware.

Just games, specifically (but not limited to, I have yet to install more) BF3 and Crysis 2. Right now games are the only things that chomp up memory on my pc.

Also, how does one edit an exe to address space above 32bit?

mrk · 1 Dec 2011 at 15:39

If you could do that then 64bit versions of programs would have no point in existence

snedie · 1 Dec 2011 at 16:04

mrk said:
If you could do that then 64bit versions of programs would have no point in existence

Exactly. Making a program large address space aware isn't as simple as it sounds, even though there is a switch to activate such a feature (which can only be accessed in the decompiled program) a program simply can't IO to those addresses if the entire program isn't specifically written to do so: What happens if a 64bit variable is passed onto a function that cannot address greater than a 32bit variable?

Man BF3 would probably commit suicide if you somehow got it to run as an x64 app.

snedie · 1 Dec 2011 at 16:06

Also, I no longer get that error when I have the page file set to auto on the C:\ drive (RAID SSD's) or spread across multiple drives, again set on auto. Games are still laggy as crap however.

bledd · 1 Dec 2011 at 16:34

Laggy?

snedie · 1 Dec 2011 at 16:49

bledd. said:
Laggy?

Laggy is the wrong word, it's stuttering at random points for no good reason. For instance in BF3, I'll be wizzing around in the chopper raping noobs in the AA's, then for no reason the game will drop to <10fps for a few seconds (in which time ill probably crash) and then resume.

Also occurs in crysis 2, I haven't tested other games yet. I have another thread on that specific issue however. Might as well close this thread.

hansp · 4 Dec 2011 at 18:57

snedie said:
Exactly. Making a program large address space aware isn't as simple as it sounds, even though there is a switch to activate such a feature (which can only be accessed in the decompiled program) a program simply can't IO to those addresses if the entire program isn't specifically written to do so: What happens if a 64bit variable is passed onto a function that cannot address greater than a 32bit variable?

Large address aware for a 32bit app in 64bit Windows just means it can grow to 4 GB, but it might crash if not supported by the developer.

mrk said:
If you could do that then 64bit versions of programs would have no point in existence

Well, 4 GB vs 8 TB...

snedie · 4 Dec 2011 at 19:05

hansp said:
Large address aware for a 32bit app in 64bit Windows just means it can grow to 4 GB, but it might crash if not supported by the developer.

That not what I said

hansp · 4 Dec 2011 at 19:10

Then I don't know what you said. Enabling LAA doesn't mean "convert it to 64bit".

snedie · 4 Dec 2011 at 21:33

hansp said:
Then I don't know what you said. Enabling LAA doesn't mean "convert it to 64bit".

Yes I know it doesn't, just as I said.

hansp · 5 Dec 2011 at 16:33

But you did say something about 64bit variables, right? There are no such variables just because you make it LAA.