Would exceeding virtual memory be the cause of system stuttering?

[heartburnron]

So I'm getting the occasional stuttering, it lasts no longer than a second and is noticeable when trying to scroll down a web page, or switching to another application, etc. I think it only happens when I'm running the nicehash mining tool although I'm not mining with the actual CPU. I noticed that the virtual memory I'm using is exceeding the virtual memory available and wondered if this could be the cause? Could someone who understands how this works have a look at the below and give me a steer?...

 

[Purgatory]

Set your page file to system managed and forget it (zero reason these days to adjust it). See if that helps, restart after doing it.

 

[Tanin'iver]

What makes you say that the virtual memory you are using is exceeding the virtual memory available?

Looking at that screenshot, you have 16 Gb of physical RAM, and are using just under 8 Gb of it. Your "virtual memory" used is about 20 Gb, with another 11 Gb free - 64% used.

The "virtual memory" figure there includes the physical memory space too, it's the sum of the physical RAM AND the page file.

In terms of how much Windows has actually used the page file to store data to save physical RAM, that's the "page file usage" figure - 1.7%. A quick calculation shows the page file must currently be 15360 Mb, so 1.7% means Windows has actually written about 261 Mb of data to the page file - the system has hardly touched it.

Unless you manually set virtual memory limits in Windows, you will never really run out (unless the disk on which to store it gets full I guess...) since the system will allocate more if it's in danger of using it all up.

I guess you could potentially get a slight stutter when Windows needs to access that, if it's stored on a mechanical hard drive, but looking at your system specs in your signature I'd strongly suspect it's on an SSD.

I'd look elsewhere for the stuttering issue I'm afraid!

 

[heartburnron]

Set your page file to system managed and forget it (zero reason these days to adjust it). See if that helps, restart after doing it.

Thanks for this. I've done this know and it seems to have improved.

What makes you say that the virtual memory you are using is exceeding the virtual memory available?

Looking at that screenshot, you have 16 Gb of physical RAM, and are using just under 8 Gb of it. Your "virtual memory" used is about 20 Gb, with another 11 Gb free - 64% used.

The "virtual memory" figure there includes the physical memory space too, it's the sum of the physical RAM AND the page file.

In terms of how much Windows has actually used the page file to store data to save physical RAM, that's the "page file usage" figure - 1.7%. A quick calculation shows the page file must currently be 15360 Mb, so 1.7% means Windows has actually written about 261 Mb of data to the page file - the system has hardly touched it.

Unless you manually set virtual memory limits in Windows, you will never really run out (unless the disk on which to store it gets full I guess...) since the system will allocate more if it's in danger of using it all up.

I guess you could potentially get a slight stutter when Windows needs to access that, if it's stored on a mechanical hard drive, but looking at your system specs in your signature I'd strongly suspect it's on an SSD.

I'd look elsewhere for the stuttering issue I'm afraid!

Ah yes. I've mistaken the 'available memory' to be a total available metric as apposed to remaining. Thanks for explaining. And yes, using an M.2 drive with plenty of room on it.

 

[heartburnron]

Just to update that I found the culprit. After checking Event Viewer I seen it was a display drivers issue; they were timing out and reconnecting causing a stutter each time. Updated to new drivers and the problem is now gone.

 

[Tanin'iver]

Ah interesting, thanks for letting us know you found the cause! Always worth knowing a little something like that in case you ever experience a similar problem yourself.

 

[heartburnron]

Well it turns out I spoke a little too soon. The stuttering returned! So the error causing the stutter according to event viewer is "Display driver amdkmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered" - event ID 4101. Researching this, there are a number of folk with this issue although for them it causing their games to crash. It doesn't seem to be exclusive to AMD either as there are others with the same error using Nvidia only their error message changes to "display driver nvdkmdag". The problem seems to be more prevalent since a recent windows update this year and as of yet no fix has been found. It only happens for me when I have the mining application running which is using 100% of the GPU. I did have two complete crashes and reboots when playing Metro Exodus however I had recently changed my RAM timings and after returning those to the default XMP profile I haven't had any further crashes when gaming. I am scared though that it will happen if I'm gaming and using 100% of the GPU although in saying that, I have been playing games at 5120x2160p UW using VSR so I'm hoping I have been gaming at 100% GPU utilisation without issue since I changed the RAM timings back. I was using the mining application for 2-3 weeks beforehand without noticing any stutters so I'm pointing the finger at Microsoft as things stand. I've tried to update to the new 20H2 windows update but it keeps failing so I'm just trying to live with it as things stand, very annoying though as once the stuttering starts, it can be as frequent as every 30 seconds...

 

[Tanin'iver]

I had similar issues with my display driver crashing when my graphics card was overheating - if that mining app pushes your GPU to 100% that could be your problem too. In my case though it didn't seem to be the actual GPU overheating, I think it was the VRMs. This was with my GTX 1080 Ti.

I worked around it for a while by using MSI Afterburner to set the power limit down to 80% of maximum, it never crashed at that level. Then later I took the card apart and fixed its cooling - applied new TIM and replaced the thermal pads on the RAM and VRMs. I think they were likely the cause of the problem since when I took the old thermal pads off they just fell apart, they seemed to have degraded.

After that I was able to set the power limit back to normal, the temperature under full load was 18 C cooler too (at 80% power limit that is - I wasn't able to monitor the temperature properly at 100% power limit before fixing it since it would crash after a few minutes).

Try setting the power limit like I did, if the problem goes away then overheating could be your cause.

 

[heartburnron]

I had similar issues with my display driver crashing when my graphics card was overheating - if that mining app pushes your GPU to 100% that could be your problem too. In my case though it didn't seem to be the actual GPU overheating, I think it was the VRMs. This was with my GTX 1080 Ti.

I worked around it for a while by using MSI Afterburner to set the power limit down to 80% of maximum, it never crashed at that level. Then later I took the card apart and fixed its cooling - applied new TIM and replaced the thermal pads on the RAM and VRMs. I think they were likely the cause of the problem since when I took the old thermal pads off they just fell apart, they seemed to have degraded.

After that I was able to set the power limit back to normal, the temperature under full load was 18 C cooler too (at 80% power limit that is - I wasn't able to monitor the temperature properly at 100% power limit before fixing it since it would crash after a few minutes).

Try setting the power limit like I did, if the problem goes away then overheating could be your cause.

Great suggestion, thanks for sharing that. Taking the card apart is above my current paygrade so I'll keep that as a last resort. But yeah, the card itself is running under 60 degrees and only 5 weeks old. That being said I do have the RAM slightly overclocked so I guess it could be hot in that area. I can knock the power limit down to 90% via the driver software although it still draws the dame 149 W compared to when at 100% so perhaps this is as low as it can go. I think the next time the stuttering kicks I'll wind down the RAM clock speeds and see if that makes a difference for now. Thanks again.