W7 - Apps refuse to use half of my RAM

Fiveseven · 18 Sep 2016

Hello,

I am on Win 7 x64 with 16GB installed RAM. The whole amount is recognized by the system with no issues. Resmon only shows 80MB as "hardware reserved".

The problem is when I get near 8GB usage, I start getting low memory system warnings, then apps start crashing and so on. Resmon still shows at least 6GB as "standby" at that point.

It does however show very low amounts of "free" memory, altho from what I managed to google, standby and free shouldn't really make any difference in terms of what's available to the apps, as standby is just unused memory containing cached data which may be freely replaced at any point.

One thing to note, I have pagefile disabled completely - not sure if that matters.

Other than that, the system is perfectly stable. No indication of issues with RAM or anything else.

Full specs:
i7 6700K
ASUS Z170-PRO
2x 8GB Kingston DDR4 2400MHz CL12 HyperX Savage Black
Windows 7 x64 Pro
EVGA GTX 1080 FTW

Any input appreciated

LMiller7 · 18 Sep 2016

Welcome to the forum.

Post a screenshot of Task Manager - Performance tab. There is critical information there that is not found anywhere else.
Low memory warnings do not refer to RAM at all but to the commit charge. Low or even zero free memory is not relevant.

ThrashZone · 19 Sep 2016

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Which slots do you have the 2x8gb sticks inserted in the light gray or black slots ?
Did you confirm which slots to use on the mother board manual ?
What's your memory assessment speed? [2]

Fiveseven · 19 Sep 2016

LMiller7 said:

Welcome to the forum.

Post a screenshot of Task Manager - Performance tab. There is critical information there that is not found anywhere else.
Low memory warnings do not refer to RAM at all but to the commit charge. Low or even zero free memory is not relevant.

Thank you.
Here is a screenshot taken right at the moment when the memory seemingly runs out and things start to crash https://i.imgur.com/aHMgk8y.png
So I can see that the commit charge you mentioned is at 15/15GB which I assume is the culprit here, but don't know what causes it or how to resolve it.

ThrashZone said:

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Which slots do you have the 2x8gb sticks inserted in the light gray or black slots ?
Did you confirm which slots to use on the mother board manual ?
What's your memory assessment speed? [2]

Thanks.
They are installed in the manual-recommended slots, each in a different channel. Those would be slots A2 and B2, the gray ones.

winsat mem results:

Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: System memory performance assessment ''
> Run Time 00:00:05.10
> Memory Performance 30794.02 MB/s
> Total Run Time 00:00:06.61

edit: just realized you might have rather linked that thread for the everest screenshot? I have CPU-Z which reports correct dual-channel operation.
https://i.imgur.com/0OwVCjr.png

torchwood · 19 Sep 2016

Hi FiveSeven,
what have you got set for pagefile
System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced
my rig 3Gb has 3066mb, yours should be about 16000mb

Roy

ThrashZone · 19 Sep 2016

Hi,
Pretty close to AddRam's
What's your memory assessment speed? [2]

Fiveseven · 19 Sep 2016

torchwood said:

Hi FiveSeven,
what have you got set for pagefile
System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced
my rig 3Gb has 3066mb, yours should be about 16000mb

Roy

Hi Roy,
as stated in the OP, I have pagefile completely disabled. Didn't see any reason to keep it around as 16GB of RAM is enough to hold all my apps with comfortable headroom. Keeping the pagefile seemed like nothing else than unnecessary performance loss and waste of storage space.

I've already had it disabled last year when I still had 8GB RAM, and never ran into any issues - only received low memory warnings etc. when the RAM was actually fully occupied.

ThrashZone · 19 Sep 2016

Hi,
Page file does bring up another question
Are you using a ssd or hdd ?

Most ssd users would limit some write features if not using a hdd for the operating system.

Fiveseven · 19 Sep 2016

Well I'm using two SSDs and two HDDs (system is on one of the SSDs of course).

LMiller7 · 19 Sep 2016

The problem here is that the commit charge is hitting the commit limit. The commit limit is defined as RAM size plus pagefile size minus a few MB, or slightly less than RAM size if there is no pagefile. The commit charge is a difficult thing to understand and I will not attempt to explain it here. But it is not influenced by how much available memory there is. The commit charge can hit the limit even when there is plenty of RAM available.

For the current workload you need a pagefile. There may be a problem that is raising the commit charge but the numbers seem to indicate otherwise. I will not try to explain. I would set a system managed pagefile and see if that solves the problem. The pagefile was designed to optimize the use of RAM, however much you may have. Yes, a hard drive (or SSD) is slower than RAM and that is precisely why the pagefile is a good thing. Counter intuitive but still true.