So, will more RAM solve my problems?

sjt269 · 27 Jul 2008 at 17:09

Basically, I was recording the other night and I added some guitar tracks to a very large arrangement in Live, then I went back the next day to a 'Not enough memory' error, and it refused to open. After some cajoling, it finally opened and played back perfectly, but it won't let me record or even arm a track for recording without giving me the 'Not enough memory, save and quit' type error again. I trimmed down the background processes, and I got rid of some of the audio samples that were present, and I've tried again today to see if I can get anything to record, but nope, nothing. After getting that error, it wouldn't even load up the Preferences menu to let me fiddle with audio buffer sizes either, it said that 'Direct Draw does not have enough memory' and that was that. Loaded up Vampire: The Masquerade next for a quick play, and lo and behold, memory errors abound, missing textures etc.

I'm running an E2180 at stock, and 2Gb of OCZ RAM. There's also an ATi 2900 Pro, running from a 480W PSU...I'm wondering if I'm perhaps hitting the PSU's limit when pushing the system like that, or if the RAM is faulty, or if there's simply not enough RAM.

Tried running OCCT yesterday, set it to the 2 hour RAM test and it stopped at 2 mins 4 seconds to tell me the CPU was overheating. Nice.

In addition to this, the PC has a nasty habit of restarting at entirely random times...sometimes while web browsing, sometimes on opening a video file, other times on closing a game. All of this seems to be memory related to me, but then I'm just hoping for the cheapest possible fix, and with 2Gb more OCZ at £30, that's easy enough to afford.

I'm hoping you're going to say, 'It's fine, grab another 2Gb of RAM and all will be well' so that I can order some tonight/tomorrow morning, get it dispatched tomorrow and maybe have it by Tuesday or Wednesday. If it doesn't look like RAM, guess I'll have to relocate myself to another section of the board and beg for help there instead.

Oh, and another symptom I've just remembered - the PC takes FOREVER to start up just now...the Windows load screen stays up longer than it has any right to, and it's a good minute or so before the desktop starts responding to any mouse clicks I make - icons take a long time to load, too.

Anyways, any and all help will be much appreciated. Any other tests I can run, let me know. I had a quick go at memtest set to 1Gb and it showed no errors, but running 2 instances set to a gigabyte each crashed the PC.

Thanks
tTz

:edit:

Gah, more information for you (sorry). Running Windows XP, 32-bit. I'm aware I won't get the full 4Gb memory, but I'd settle for a little over 3 if that's what would help.

sjt269 · 28 Jul 2008 at 20:53

Right, well, with the GeIL down to £25 for the 2Gb, I think I'll go for that and see if it helps. Need to order a mouse anyway for the new laptop, and perhaps some AS5, my CPU temps are dodgily high at the moment for no reason whatsoever.

LaRZ · 29 Jul 2008 at 22:21

Your problem appears to be releated to the cpu overheating. :eek:

Adding more memory is a bad idea until you have adressed the CPU heat issue.

What are your current temps ?

Corasik · 29 Jul 2008 at 23:02

You wont get a huge benifit from adding more ram, as windows 32bit limits any 1 single application to 2 gb of "user space" memory. Switching to 64bits increases most existing 32bit applications to a full 4gb memory space.

But you will gain a "little" as windows/antivirus etc all share the memory, so your application will at least get its full 2GB allocation.

If thats a branded 480W supply, then its more than sufficent for your system, although the 2900's were pretty power hungry and hot.

What case cooling do you have, as Larz says, you need to fix the overheating before you can make any meaningfull diagnostics.

PhoenixUK · 30 Jul 2008 at 00:34

I would advise fresh reinstall of your OS, it looks to me like its ######.

Also post your CPU-Z screenshots showing memory and cpu tabs, and temps from coretemp and realtemp.

I would also like to see your taskmanager process window so I can see the numeber of things you got running

.

sjt269 · 30 Jul 2008 at 19:33

Has a thread in the CPU forum about the overheating, it seems that it's just OCCT reading my temps too high. Coretemp shows them as mid 40s to low 50s under load. The BIOS shows them at 27 degrees or thereabouts. I don't know which to believe, but I think OCCT is over-reading them. Others seem to say OCCT reads a little high as well, so I'll chalk it up to that. Had some wierd throttling issues going on, but I'm working on that. As it happens, I didn't order the RAM yet, because Live suddenly started working and allowed me to record the bass part in question last night. Not that it matters, that section needs redone anyway (timing is awful) but it's interesting that with no hardware changes, it still works when it wants to.

Corasik said:
But you will gain a "little" as windows/antivirus etc all share the memory, so your application will at least get its full 2GB allocation.

Yeah, this was my intention. I knew about the limits already, but figured for the price, why not?

PhoenixUK said:
I would also like to see your taskmanager process window so I can see the numeber of things you got running .

At the moment, 31, counting Firefox, MSN, and other bits and pieces. Figure around 28 for when I'm recording and I've got that stuff turned off.

Case is a Lian Li PC65, I think? Or PC7? The one with 120mm fans. Arctic Cooling Freezer HSF on the processor, but none of the fans are spun up to any great degree, it's pretty near silent. CPU fan shows in the BIOS at 340rpm, when core temps at that time at 27 degrees each.