Ram bottleneck

[BrettmFelton]

Hi 

 

My current system config is a i7 7700, a gtx 1060 6GB, 8 gigs DDR4 Ram running at 2666hz, I have a 250 ssd for my OS and for counter strike and steam, and a 2 tb HDD for music games I don't play and music. When every I play counter strike I get 200-300 FPS but when the fps dips it drops hard, this is without any background apps open, like chrome, music. I only run team-speak for voice. My first question is what could be the problem here. Then when I try streaming so OBS is open, chrome is open, team-speak is open and csgo is open, the game is not even playable, especially when I run triple A games. My second question is what could be the problem here. I also have a 144hz HD monitor (1080p) if that makes a difference, and I run csgo in max settings. 

 

Thanks for the help.

[Majestic]

And your reasoning for this being a RAM bottleneck is?

[bowrilla]

Well, your thread title is already a likely answer. 8GB memory isn't much. You could check and have a look at your memory usage when gaming. If it's close to or even at 100% you've found your most probable cause for stutters. Streaming will need some memory as well and you just don't have anything to spare.

[BrettmFelton]

4 minutes ago, Majestic said:

And your reasoning for this being a RAM bottleneck is?

Because I know how Ram intense all this could be. But Ram doesn't come cheap so I am making sure it is that.

[vanished]

Keep an eye on your disk activity during the game.  It should be pretty minimal.  If it's abnormally high, especially if this coincides with very high RAM usage, then you probably just need more RAM.  However if you're not seeing this happening then the problem is probably elsewhere.

[BrettmFelton]

3 minutes ago, bowrilla said:

Well, your thread title is already a likely answer. 8GB memory isn't much. You could check and have a look at your memory usage when gaming. If it's close to or even at 100% you've found your most probable cause for stutters. Streaming will need some memory as well and you just don't have anything to spare.

When I stream the Ram is maxed out but without the stream there is still 2gb free, which is why I dont understand the random fps drops

 

[bowrilla]

Well, it's still possible that your system is trying to free up memory by putting it in the page file. Or your program loads assets from your drive and it's just too slow to deliver. 250GB aren't that much either for games these days. 

[vanished]

5 minutes ago, BrettmFelton said:

When I stream the Ram is maxed out but without the stream there is still 2gb free, which is why I dont understand the random fps drops

 

Well that seems pretty clear cut to me.  The random drops would be caused by paging to disk which is painfully slow.  You'll need more RAM, or maybe just don't have so much stuff open at once.

[BrettmFelton]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Well that seems pretty clear cut to me.  The random drops would be caused by paging to disk which is painfully slow.  You'll need more RAM, or maybe just don't have so much stuff open at once.

I didn't want this answer XD, there goes my bank account. Thanks for clearing it up.

[vanished]

1 minute ago, BrettmFelton said:

I didn't want this answer XD, there goes my bank account. Thanks for clearing it up.

In the mean time, try having the page file on the SSD instead of the HDD (if it isn't already).  It probably won't solve the problem but it would be interesting if it helps enough to be noticeable.  And also just try clearing up background tasks.  8 GB really should be plenty to play CS:GO.  Even streaming shouldn't take that much more.

[BrettmFelton]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

In the mean time, try having the page file on the SSD instead of the HDD (if it isn't already).  It probably won't solve the problem but it would be interesting if it helps enough to be noticeable.  And also just try clearing up background tasks.  8 GB really should be plenty to play CS:GO.  Even streaming shouldn't take that much more.

How could I see if the page file is on the SSD. The strange thing is it use to be plenty for everything but since a new windows update in June or so I have been having the problem. I was just waiting for the next update to see if its a common occurrence. 

[vanished]

1 minute ago, BrettmFelton said:

How could I see if the page file is on the SSD. The strange thing is it use to be plenty for everything but since a new windows update in June or so I have been having the problem. I was just waiting for the next update to see if its a common occurrence. 

Open This PC and go to Properties, then proceed like this:

 

You can set it where you want, turning it on or off on certain partitions.  You will need to reboot after for it to fully take effect.

[BrettmFelton]

4 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Open This PC and go to Properties, then proceed like this:

 

You can set it where you want, turning it on or off on certain partitions.  You will need to reboot after for it to fully take effect.

It was on a 2000MB intial and max I have now changed it to system managed size, I will run some tests and get back to you if it has made a difference, I hope it does. Thank you for the help.

[vanished]

Just now, BrettmFelton said:

It was on a 2000MB intial and max I have now changed it to system managed size, I will run some tests and get back to you if it has made a difference, I hope it does. Thank you for the help.

An SSD is massively slower than system RAM, but massively better than a HDD, particularly for the workload of paging so it might actually make a noticeable difference.  I won't promise anything though.  If you had Optane, it's even better for this

[BrettmFelton]

On 8/6/2018 at 10:36 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

An SSD is massively slower than system RAM, but massively better than a HDD, particularly for the workload of paging so it might actually make a noticeable difference.  I won't promise anything though.  If you had Optane, it's even better for this

For what its worth I changed the page file. With 8 Gigs of ram it made no difference, so I upgraded to 16 gigs of Ram made no difference, going to do a fresh reset of my PC at the end of the year when university is over, hopefully that fixes the error.

[vanished]

8 hours ago, BrettmFelton said:

For what its worth I changed the page file. With 8 Gigs of ram it made no difference, so I upgraded to 16 gigs of Ram made no difference, going to do a fresh reset of my PC at the end of the year when university is over, hopefully that fixes the error.

Hmmm... that is very strange.  Yeah I would go ahead with the reset then.  That way we're at least starting from a commonly understood point.  If you do that though, we may never know what the problem actually was, and I am now extra curious to know what it is because by the behaviour you described, it seems obvious it could only be a RAM issue.  I guess you could either return it since it didn't help, or just keep it if you find the extra space is useful.  While I standby my claim that, for what you're playing, 8 GB should be enough, I will also say that 8 GB in 2018 is definitely on the lower side.