New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

[Uranium-235]

ok, so i built this for a customer, i3-6100, MSI B150 PC mate, 8GB DDR4, 512GB Samsung 850 Pro. When I first did the major cadre of updates (post Sp1) it gave me a low memory notice. Indeed it was getting up there. Samsung Magician changed the page file paremeters since I set it to high reliability. I did then change the page file to 'system managed'

out of sheer curiosity, the fact the intel HD 530 gave me a 6.9 gaming score, I decided to install fallout new vegas to test it. With medium settings it actually ran rather well. I was monitoring the memory and it never went above 2GB, what I didn't notice was the commit was going up further and further, until it gave me the warning, the commit was 16gb/16gb and the physical was at 2GB. Mind you at the time, I had the video memory share set to 1gb but still that leaves 7 free. New vegas does not take up that much memory. I am confused as i've never had this issue with any 2nd/3rd/4th generation core platform before (skylake is 6th gen), some only using 4gb

anyone have any ideas?

[Uranium-235]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

this is insane. It shows nv using ~500-600M, yet commit charge skyrocketing to 18GB! (you can't see that, it shows 18/18 on task manager)

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

A memory error with 8 GB of RAM is not normal!

In fact 4 GB does fine with most things without the anti-virus and anti-malware crap.
Seems to only choke with Chrome! (On some Dromaeo tests)

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

is the ssd the only drive on the system? all i can think of is to NOT set the pagefile to an ssd. it doesnt like it with all that writes. use mechanical hdd for putting the pagefile or just disable the pagefile altogether.

[diif]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

I'd guess it's something to do with the page file settings maybe.
Have a look here http://brandonlive.com/2010/02/21/me...-in-windows-7/

Samsung might know how to make hardware but any time i've encountered their software it's been shite.

[Uranium-235]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

It's the only drive. Samsung magician tries to set the pagefile pretty low when set to reliability. with new vegas it maxes out and system memory stays at about 2.x gb. Playing on my laptop it behaves fine

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

I tested my 4 GB with default settings on 8.1 x64.....

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

is the ssd the only drive on the system? all i can think of is to NOT set the pagefile to an ssd. it doesnt like it with all that writes. use mechanical hdd for putting the pagefile or just disable the pagefile altogether.

I wouldn't put it on a spinner, either, unless RAID-0'ed...

[Uranium-235]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

hm, I just put skyrim on there and it seemed to behave fine (and play pretty well, yes, on an intel HD graphics). the swap went up to 2GB and stayed there.

this customer bought a cheap ~$300 desktop from walmart (I think it's a Celeron J series[BGA, integrated CPU]). It started to really bog down, as he has a number of things open at once. He gave me $750 to built him something 'awesome'. I got the case at frys, as the fractal design core 1500 went out of stock. He has it on the floor so I wanted to get him something with upward facing USB ports. THe fractal 1500 seemed to have disappeared from the internet, so I got a Corsair spec 02 (from Frys, instead of newegg, where I got everything else). Nice design, top facing ports. Antec eartwatts 380, 8GB crucial ddr4, i3 6100, asus dvd burner, 850 Pro 512GB. Win 7 home prem. Faster than f'ing hell, I walk away with ~140 profit

the only thing I was pissed about was the power supply. The plastic air-flow focus bar was detached, and I didn't want to have to RMA and wait 8+ business days to get it back. So I had to break the warranty seal and stick it back (already had the adhesive on that side). But the warranty is now busted, and i'm not happy

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

hmm, where'd u get the power supply from? if it was from a brick and mortar shop, dont they offer 7 days 1:1 exchange or sumthing? if it was from a shop, could have taken it back and asked them to change for a new one, i think...

i also hope that power supply is a jap cap unit. if its a jap cap unit, the lack of warranty wont be a problem. only acts of god like a lightning strike can take out a jap cap psu. even then, lightning strikes arent covered by the warranty anyway so warranty becomes a moot point.

u can also use a hairdryer or low wattage/temp hot air gun to weaken the adhesive on the warranty sticker then carefully remove it. after u are done, u can then stick the sticker back. if its not sticky enuff, u can use transparent paper glue to gum it back. however, please do not abuse this to commit warranty fraud for other purposes. i do not condone this and warranty fraud is a criminal offence. if u get sued for everything u own, hubba hubba hubba, serves u right... lol~

[dmill89]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

hmm, where'd u get the power supply from? if it was from a brick and mortar shop, dont they offer 7 days 1:1 exchange or sumthing? if it was from a shop, could have taken it back and asked them to change for a new one, i think...

i also hope that power supply is a jap cap unit. if its a jap cap unit, the lack of warranty wont be a problem. only acts of god like a lightning strike can take out a jap cap psu. even then, lightning strikes arent covered by the warranty anyway so warranty becomes a moot point.

Unless it has change the Earthwatts series are entry-level Deltas, with a mix of some Japanese caps and some Ltec/Taicon, though being a Delta it will still probably last 5+ years with the mediocre caps and by then the warranty would have been long expired anyhow.

[Uranium-235]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

u can also use a hairdryer or low wattage/temp hot air gun to weaken the adhesive on the warranty sticker then carefully remove it. after u are done, u can then stick the sticker back. if its not sticky enuff, u can use transparent paper glue to gum it back. however, please do not abuse this to commit warranty fraud for other purposes. i do not condone this and warranty fraud is a criminal offence. if u get sued for everything u own, hubba hubba hubba, serves u right... lol~

it's funny I tried that with a heat gun, did not work

[Sparkey55]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

it's funny I tried that with a heat gun, did not work

It may use thermosetting adhesive, the more heat the more it sticks.

[Uranium-235]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

hm, the 'free' memory after a while goes down to 0, I bring firefox up and it starts increasing slowly going up to ~120M, commit stays about 1-2GB. Right now on my laptop with FF open it's 680M

[stj]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

cant you get a utility that shows the memory alocated to each running process?

[Uranium-235]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

windows 7 has one built in called the resource monitor, even shows disk i/o for each process. I still can't figure out why fallout NV took up ~600M and the swap was 18GB in size, It never showed any process using up more than that at the time. Things seem to be behaving better but i'm still not sure what the future will bring. Skyrim acted fine. Maybe it's a huge memory leak in the graphics drivers with fallout NV (FO3 crashed on load/new game)

[stj]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

maybe it's using the gpu for something else using the CUDA api.

[Uranium-235]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

there is no cuda, it's intel HD graphics

[Ascaris]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

I initially made this one really long post, but I thought the memory stuff at the bottom would be TL;DR'd, so I am breaking it into two posts. So if anyone wonders why I am posting two replies back to back in the same thread, that's why!

is the ssd the only drive on the system? all i can think of is to NOT set the pagefile to an ssd. it doesnt like it with all that writes. use mechanical hdd for putting the pagefile or just disable the pagefile altogether.

I have a Samsung 840 Pro SSD (128GB) with the page file on it. I've had it a bit over two years, and I have been hitting it hard with the page file... my 8GB ram gets used up quickly with all the tabs I have open in 64-bit Firefox. Even so, I've only used 15% of the drive's rated write cycles, which means the drive should last a total of 13 years before hitting the rated limit.

That doesn't mean the drive will die, though-- someone out there, I forget who, torture tested SSDs with constant writes until they died. The Samsung lasted until twice its rated life before it began to fail. Now it's one drive, so YMMV, of course, but it's still pretty impressive and it does inspire some confidence.

Mine's only a 128GB. Had I bought a 256GB, I'd have only used 7.5% of the drive's rated write cycles by now (twice as many NAND cells with the same number of writes=half as many per cell due to wear leveling).

[Ascaris]

Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)

With the error in the original post, I think the devil may be in the details. Can you reproduce the error and post a screenshot?

RAMMap from Sysinternals (now part of Microsoft) is a great free tool to see what's going on with the memory. There was an informative video somewhere out there, with someone demonstrating the basics of how to use the program... specifically, he mentioned that it was one of the few real ways to know if you need more RAM. Use the system for a while (I don't think RAMMap has to be active while doing this, but I could be wrong on that), stress it however you wish, then go to RAMMap and select the Priority Summary tab and select refresh from the menu (or hit F5). It will show 8 priority levels, from 0 to 7, with 7 being the most important stuff you'd never want to swap out to the page file if it can be avoided.

For each priority level, it has two figures... standby and repurposed. Standby at the lowest priority levels is when a task is no longer active, but Windows keeps the data in memory if possible in case it is needed again. It's cached, in other words. Windows will attempt to fill up almost all of your memory this way-- but that's not bad. Free memory is of no benefit; why not use it for caching stuff until its needed?

As soon as a task calls for more memory, Windows will purge the lowest-priority data from memory and reassign that memory to the task that called for it. If that's not enough, it will purge the second-lowest priority data from memory, etc., continuing until it has the free memory the system wishes to assign.

That's what the "repurposed" category represents-- the running total of how much memory each priority level has been dumped to make room for other stuff. Priority levels 0-3 are of low importance, and if they have been repurposed a lot, that's fine... but above that starts to raise the possibility that you could use more RAM. In that case, you're not just dumping cached data (which is low priority); you're swapping out stuff the system is still using to make room for whatever program you're running.

If you're hitting the top few priority levels (as I often do) with large amounts of "repurposed," that's a sure sign you need more RAM... the system is losing performance by having to swap out high priority data to make room for whatever is hogging your memory, but then it has to swap that back in to do whatever it is that high priority task is doing. If the amount of RAM is in tune with your needs, you should rarely or never swap out priority levels 5+, as I understand.