4gb RAM and 90%+ Memory usage in games?

PixelChef

PixelChef

PixelChef

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Hi,

I recently got a new PC: i5 760, GTX 470, 4gb RAM, Win7 64 bit

During games the memory usage seems to be very high, which causes stutter and mini freezes. The computer is reading all 4gb of the RAM.

I'm pretty sure this didn't happen when I first got the PC but it's started happening for a week or so. Here is an example when playing World of Warcraft:

2ihbaiw.jpg


This can't be normal. At first I thought it was only a WoW problem, but I tried Crysis and it is similar, although a bit less RAM usage surprisingly. Crysis also had a bit of stutter and mini freezes and actually crashed after 5 mins of gameplay, I assume because of the RAM.

In both examples the games were on around highest settings, but they should not use all 4gb of my RAM I'm pretty sure of that.

Any ideas?
 
Windows7/Vista by design uses most of your Ram to preload/prefetch OS data!!

99.9% of all PC games are 32 bit applications so are limited to 2Gb Ram unless your running a special 64 bit version of the game it will not use more than 2Gb Ram for the game.
 
I bet it's a Google Chrome memory leak. Can you shut down the processes you don't need to isolate the offending programme?
 
Holy!, why do you have so many processes running while playing wow?

Chrome, Steam, WmPlayer, MsnMngr

Do you really need those open? unless your wow uses steam ofcause.

Close Chrome and msnmngr though, that's killing your ram usage!
 
weescott said:
I bet it's a Google Chrome memory leak. Can you shut down the processes you don't need to isolate the offending programme?
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It's hard to tell, but I shut down almost every process apart from WoW and usage was still around 70%, way too high I think.

LeJosh said:
Well, why do you have so many chrome.exe's running?
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Each Chrome tab runs as a separate process.

I'm aware I have a lot of programs etc open but the system should be able to handle it no problem.

My previous spec Q6600, 4gb RAM, GTX 260 never had this problem in WoW or any other game. I never did check the memory usage but I never needed to.

Also the previous RAM was DDR2 the new set is DDR3.

This is the new RAM if it helps: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-203-CS

Pretty sure there is something wrong with the RAM, i'll run memtest when I get a chance.

Edit: If someone with a similar spec to me could run a game for example Crysis on very high and check memory usage in task manager I'd be grateful.

Appreciate the help too by the way.
 
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I was hoping it wassn't that, that's retarded by google to be honest. :\

What's the page file set to?
 
May i suggest removing a lot of **** addons? like questhelper, healbot, xpearl, complete custom interface package, or any crap like that seriously kills your ram.
Also the stuttering could be down to gfx settings, last patch reset a lot of them, 1 in particular that causes the so called stuttering you mention is lack of triple buffering, enable that if you haven't already.
 
Neil79 said:
Holy!, why do you have so many processes running while playing wow?

Chrome, Steam, WmPlayer, MsnMngr

Do you really need those open? unless your wow uses steam ofcause.

Close Chrome and msnmngr though, that's killing your ram usage!
Click to expand...

He's barely got anything open in all fairness, those programs don't use much.
 
LeJosh said:
I was hoping it wassn't that, that's retarded by google to be honest. :\

What's the page file set to?
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by page file?

stopper said:
May i suggest removing a lot of **** addons? like questhelper, healbot, xpearl, complete custom interface package, or any crap like that seriously kills your ram.
Also the stuttering could be down to gfx settings, last patch reset a lot of them, 1 in particular that causes the so called stuttering you mention is lack of triple buffering, enable that if you haven't already.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of this, It's not a specific WoW problem as it happens in other games. Thanks for the suggestion though. :)

Neil79 said:
Would be interesting to see the entire process list as he has only the top half posted
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The lower half of the task manager was irrelevant, it was only background applications like drivers most of which were using less than 1mb of memory. Strife212 is right I didn't really have any demanding programs open other than WoW. I'm pretty sure we are past the days where people bother to close all thier programs and background apps before running a game, atleast I am. :p

And like I said, I ran the same programs / background apps on my previous spec and games ran fine.
 
oL said:
I'm pretty sure we are past the days where people bother to close all thier programs and background apps before running a game, atleast I am. :p
.
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Past the days? :p, If i'm playing a game i want only the game to be showing and the system processes used to run, well the system. If i followed your example i'd have imgburn,foobar,firefox,mpcplayer open :D. Don't see the point of having apps open that you are not currently looking at. But hey it's probably something else going on with your system and memory usage :)
 
Neil79 said:
Past the days? :p, If i'm playing a game i want only the game to be showing and the system processes used to run, well the system. If i followed your example i'd have imgburn,foobar,firefox,mpcplayer open :D. Don't see the point of having apps open that you are not currently looking at. But hey it's probably something else going on with your system and memory usage :)
Click to expand...

Well yes I close programs I don't need, but I often tab out of games and browse the web / msn / music etc.
 
oL said:
Not sure what you mean by page file?
Click to expand...

Virtual memory?

Do you want the full details or just where to go to check it out?

Goto control panel > system > advanced system settings > advanced tab > under performance click settings > advanced tab again...

It should have total virtual memory assigned and recommended, if this is 0 it could be messing with memory useage or I could be way off the mark but troubleshootings fun.

I'm sure there's a quicker way, can't remember it though.
 
Memory usage in wow seems fine if a little high mayby, what you have to remember is these days 4gb really aint a lot when you have that many programs running
 
If running a 64 bit OS then I would certainly up the RAM the only thing that I can think that might cause the stutter is having the graphics settings to high.

I am always alt-tabbing / using IM programs / whatever - it's what multi-tasking was designed for and they take up little memory.

I'd also ensure your antivirus isn't doing something daft like a full system scan while you are trying to play games.



M.
 
Swifty55 said:
Reformat?

Also, are you overclocked?

Don't care what anyone says, 78 processes is way too much.
Click to expand...

What are you talking about? I'm sitting on my desktop with 73 processes going without any games, using up 43% physical memory.
 
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