Ram caps out at 50% in task manager. Please Help.

[Beam3k]

So I was looking at my task manager while playing a game and realized it caps out at 50% is this a common issue or can someone help me ?

[Arika]

how much RAM do you have and what games are you playing? if it doesn't need to use all your RAM it wont

[minibois]

Perhaps the game just didn't need more RAM.

Your GPU or CPU should cap out at 100%, usually one or the other will most of the time.

[Beam3k]

Just now, Arika S said:

how much RAM do you have and what games are you playing? if it doesn't need to use all your RAM it wont

Yeah I think 

 

Just now, minibois said:

Perhaps the game just didn't need more RAM.

Your GPU or CPU should cap out at 100%, usually one or the other will most of the time.

Yeah it was that i was also curious i have vengeance ram 3200 mhz but its stuck at 1067 do i need to turn on xmp in my bios ?

[Beam3k]

Just now, Beam3k said:

Yeah I think 

 

Yeah it was that i was also curious i have vengeance ram 3200 mhz but its stuck at 1067 do i need to turn on xmp in my bios ?

2400 not 3200 my bad

[minibois]

7 minutes ago, Beam3k said:

Yeah I think 

 

Yeah it was that i was also curious i have vengeance ram 3200 mhz but its stuck at 1067 do i need to turn on xmp in my bios ?

Nowadays it seems like CPU's do benefit from higher clocked memory, I would suggest turning on XMP for a higher clocked set of memory

[Beam3k]

Just now, minibois said:

Nowadays it seems like CPU's do benefit from higher clocked memory, I would suggest turning on XMP for a higher clocked set of memory

I dont have xmp i have something called DCOP or something but idk how to set it up

[minibois]

3 minutes ago, Beam3k said:

I dont have xmp i have something called DCOP or something but idk how to set it up

XMP is an Intel name for their technology, DCOP is the AMD equivalent on Asus boards.

[Beam3k]

1 minute ago, minibois said:

XMP is an Intel name for their technology, DCOP is the AMD equivalent on Asus boards.

Yeah I have a Asus board this is what it looks like at the moment trying to get my ram to run at 2133

[Bananasplit_00]

3 minutes ago, Beam3k said:

Yeah I have a Asus board this is what it looks like at the moment trying to get my ram to run at 2133

 

why are you downclocking your RAM...

[Beam3k]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

why are you downclocking your RAM...

My ram is at 2133 ? What do you mean ? Sorry I'm not very firmiliar with messing with bios. My PC says my ram is currently running at 1067 mhz but my ram is 2133mhz

[Beam3k]

I made the DCOP 3000 mhz and now it shows this. 

[Bananasplit_00]

3 minutes ago, Beam3k said:

My ram is at 2133 ? What do you mean ? Sorry I'm not very firmiliar with messing with bios. My PC says my ram is currently running at 1067 mhz but my ram is 2133mhz

you said it was 2400MHz in the post before that one. The 1067 is from the ram being DubbleDataRate(DDR) btw

[Beam3k]

1 minute ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

you said it was 2400MHz in the post before that one. The 1067 is from the ram being DubbleDataRate(DDR) btw

Okay so everything is all good then id assume ?

 

[Bananasplit_00]

Just now, Beam3k said:

Okay so everything is all good then id assume ?

 

sure, if its base is 2133MHz then nothing is wrong

[Beam3k]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

sure, if its base is 2133MHz then nothing is wrong

Okay i turned on DPOS and now its saying 1500 mhz cause i set it to 3000 should i just set it back to the 2133 ?

[minibois]

8 minutes ago, Beam3k said:

I made the DCOP 3000 mhz and now it shows this. 

That's correct.

DDR = dual data rate, so together your sticks do 3000Mhz (so one by one they do about 1500Mhz)

[mariushm]

No. @minibois  that's not how it works.

 

The real frequency of memory sticks is half the value advertised on packaging and everywhere.

If the memory stick was sold as 2133 Mhz, it will actually run at 1066 Mhz.  If it's sold as 3600 Mhz, it will run at 1800 Mhz.

 

The reason you see 2133 Mhz or 3600 Mhz is a marketing ploy and a simplification and it's also done to more accurately represent the actual performance of the memory sticks.

DDR memory can send 2 bits of information with every tick, each of those Hz in that Mhz value. In the past, previous memory technologies ( SDRAM, EDO, FPM memory could only transfer 1 bit of information with every tick)

 

So, when DDR1 was invented, they simply decided that people were too dumb to understand that a 333 Mhz SD-RAM stick was slower than a 200 Mhz DDR1 memory stick, because the DDR1 stick transfers 2 bits for every Hz, so they simply decided to advertise the DDR1 stick as 400 Mhz.

This way, a noob that sees on a listing of IT components  333 Mhz SD-RAM and 400 Mhz DDR1 will say "Well, 400 is higher, so it must be better"

 

A lot of motherboards will default on 2133 Mhz (1066 Mhz real frequency) for safety and compatibility reasons, even if the sticks are capable of higher frequencies. The memory sticks have some "profiles" built inside them, which tell motherboard what parameters to use to safely run the memory sticks at those higher frequencies.

So you simply have to go in that XMP or DOCP (pretty much the same thing, like Gsync vs Freesync) and select the preset with higher frequency.

If you get instability (crashes, resets) you can simply go back and either increase some of those parameters, or pick a preset with lower frequency.

 

In one of your last pictures, you're showing your memory sticks running at 3000 Mhz (2x 1496 = 2992 Mhz, close enough). If you don't get crashes or resets, then you're fine.

In that CPU-Z, the SPD tab will tell you the presets memorized in the memory sticks. Those are most of the combinations (frequency + timings) that you can use with your memory sticks.

 

Dual channel has nothing to do with frequencies. In dual channel mode, the processor simply always uses two memory sticks at same time.

For example, if the CPU has to write "John" to RAM, it will put Jo  on first memory stick and "hn" on second memory stick. Because the reads and writes are at the same time, the CPU spends half the time reading and writing data, so you basically get almost double the bandwidth with the memory.

 

It's not always double, because there are other things involved, some latencies.

For example, it takes a bit of time for the memory sticks to be ready to transfer some data to the CPU, to prepare it for transfer. If the data size is too small, it can take more time to prepare the data than the amount of time required to transfer it.

So dual channel works best with big pieces of data, in the hundreds of KB. If a program works with very tiny chunks of data, the performance increase by going with dual channel would be less noticeable.

 

later edit: GDDR5 and GDDR6 you see on video cards transfer 4 bits of information with every tick, that's why you see advertised 7000 Mhz or higher for that RAM - the actual frequency is 7000 / 4  = 1750 Mhz.

Also, it's worth pointing out that memory sticks transfer data through 64 pins, so on every Hz, the stick transfers 2 bits x 64 = 128 bits to the CPU. With dual channel mode, the CPU gets 256 bits with every tick.

The GDDR5 and GDDR6 chips on video cards are designed to each send 32 bits to the video card processor, that's why you see 8 tiny memory chips on a video card that advertises 256 bus bandwidth.

HBM1 and HBM2 went another way, instead of raising frequency, they decided to increase the number of parallel bits sent  - instead of 32 bits, they send 1024 bits in one tick, through 1024 super tiny pins.

But we're getting off topic.

 

If you have problems understanding that CL value , the latencies... here's an analogy.

 

Kid (CPU) enters a store and goes to the clerk (RAM)

- Mister RAM, I want crayons.

Clerk turns around, look at the shelves, goes a few feet / meters to the side, picks a big cardboard box with crayons and brings it in front of the kid.

- OK kid, I'm ready, how many crayons do you want?

- Give me 5 crayons, please.

Clerk takes a box of 20 crayons from the cardboard box with 100 boxes of 20 crayons, breaks the seal and hands over the 5 crayons, one at a time.

 

In this analogy, the latency is that amount of time from the moment kid told the clerk he wants clerks to the moment the big cardboard box sits in front of the kid and the clerk is ready to hand over crayons.

The actual frequency (those ticks), is how fast the clerks goes in a 20 crayon box, pulls out one crayon and puts it in kid's hand (the kids fingers are the pins on the memory stick)

 

So the latency and frequency are often a balance..

You can have an old guy that knows where every crate is on the shelves and quickly retrieves the crate of crayons, but once in front of you, he may be slower at opening those tiny boxes to pull out crayons.

Or, you could have a young clerk that wastes time looking up where each box is and bringing it to you, but afterwards he can quickly put the crayons in your hand. 

With high performance memory sticks you have both lower latency and high frequency.

 

In most cases, kid doesn't care it takes some time for the box to arrive in front of him, as long as he receives the crayons in his hand at a steady rate (so he can put them in his pocket or whatever)

It takes much more time to receive let's say 325 crayons 5 at a time, compared to the amount of time it takes to prepare the crate of crayons. (where 325 is a random number, an amount of KB of data in RAM, and 5 is the ram bandwidth, those 2 bits x 64 bits at a time that can be transferred with every tick of that frequency)