Solved W7 - Apps refuse to use half of my RAM

[Fiveseven]

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]

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]

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 ?
http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...9-whats-your-memory-assessment-speed-2-a.html

 

[Fiveseven]

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 http://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.

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 ?
http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...9-whats-your-memory-assessment-speed-2-a.html

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.
http://i.imgur.com/0OwVCjr.png

 

[torchwood]

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]

Hi,
Pretty close to AddRam's
http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...mory-assessment-speed-2-a-82.html#post3176727

 

[Fiveseven]

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]

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]

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

 

[LMiller7]

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.

 

[Fiveseven]

Really wish you had explained a bit further, especially the "a hard drive (or SSD) is slower than RAM and that is precisely why the pagefile is a good thing" part is difficult to swallow for me, lol.

Nonetheless I've enabled a 17GB pagefile on my SSD which raised the commit charge limit to ~32GB and now I get 29/32 commit charge when (successfully) stuffing 15GB of data into my RAM - so the problem seems to be resolved. Thank you.

 

[PimpleMaze]

I have 16gb of ram installed on my 64bit w7. For space saving on my ssd i disabled hibernation and set my pagefile to 512mb on the ssd (so in case of a crash it can write to the crashlog) and made a pagefile the size of my physical memory on a hdd. never ran into trouble, I never reach the commit limit. (I wonder if disabling the hdd pagefile will make any difference at all).
If your situation is like mine, where you have limited ssd storage space, making a minimal pagefile on your 1st partition and moving the rest to a storage drive will save you 16 gb of valuable space. correct me if i'm wrong.

I still don't understand why his memory started swapping before it ran out. i've never seen that happening.

 

[Fiveseven]

I have 16gb of ram installed on my 64bit w7. For space saving on my ssd i disabled hibernation and set my pagefile to 512mb on the ssd (so in case of a crash it can write to the crashlog) and made a pagefile the size of my physical memory on a hdd. never ran into trouble, I never reach the commit limit. (I wonder if disabling the hdd pagefile will make any difference at all).
If your situation is like mine, where you have limited ssd storage space, making a minimal pagefile on your 1st partition and moving the rest to a storage drive will save you 16 gb of valuable space. correct me if i'm wrong.

I still don't understand why his memory started swapping before it ran out. i've never seen that happening.

I absolutely want to avoid putting a pagefile on a HDD because the performance of that setup still gives me nightmares, but on Thurdsay I bought a third SSD anyway because the space was becoming an issue overall, so I just put the whole pagefile there.

 

[TechnoMage2016]

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.

Both MS and the majority of PC Gurus concur, that the Pagefile should never be disabled, as there are a not of programs that rely on it. It's just on the hard drive anyway and not in ram, if that's any help.
But we've had a pagefile, previously known a a Swapfile, for as long as we've had windows, and MS put it there for a very good reason..... to supplement ram, not to totally replace it.

Another problem I see, that maybe won't show up now, but most likely later, is the ram itself.
Many, many years of PC experience has told me to NEVER use Kingston ram. Every time I've had a PC come in with some totally weird complaint, that defied all standard troubleshooting methods, the problem was solved by removing a stick of Kingston ram and replacing it with Micron or Crucial ram.
A good friend who is in the RAM business has told me that Kingston buys second grade ram chips from Major Manufacturers and puts them on their own boards. When new, they may work OK, but as they age, they will begin to get wonky, and eventually just totally fail.

Cheers Mates!
TechnoMage

 

[Fiveseven]

Weird, I've always viewed Kingstons as generally recommended, when it comes to RAM anyway. Been using them myself with zero issues for more years than my own memory can track.