Bottleneck in PC

[rndmate]

Hello, I'm wondering if there is any way to test for bottlenecks in my PC (Windows 7 64 Bit) or if someone could identify what it could be from the hardware. Games like crysis run smooth when theyre running but take forever to load. Normal startup and programs like word also take ages to load.

CPU: E8500 core duo (OC by .3GHz - obv. not much of a difference)
Motherboard: GA-EP45-ds3 (gigabyte)
Gfx card: BFG Gtx 280 1GB
RAM:2x1GB 800MHz Kingston 1.8v

Also i've reformatted it and Windows experience index just plain doesn't work.

 

[tranzz]

Check the ram utilisation. It may be getting maxed out. Press Shift + control + esc at startup. If it is maxing out run msconfic and disable any programs that are running at startup that you don't really need or use. If you are staying under 2gig on startup you may have a fragmented harddrive. Is it close to being full?? I'm guesing this is not the problem as you stated that it has been formatted recently.

 

[plasmastorm]

Crysis generally takes a while to load, try a faster hard disk or SSD. Also you could check the power options on the disk itself to make sure windows is not slowing it down.
Settings in BIOS such as AHCI can improve speed on that front too.

 

[plasmastorm]

Just noticed the amount of RAM , DOH !
Throught it was 2x2gb, get 4gb total for games these days really

 

[rndmate]

RAM seems to be being idling at 50-60% - The thing that bugs me is that this used to be 3-5% a year ago (before it became bloated). Would installing some 666MHz I have lying around do it any good or cause significant performance issues?

 

[HEXiT]

your pc is gpu heavy, and cpu bound games will cause bottlenecks.
games like battlefield bad company 2. will allow you to max the gfx but wont allow more than 40 fps... yeah that sounds great but the problem is that 40 fps is the absolute maximum. most of the time you will be at 15 fps which means your game will be unplayable... oh you think... i drop the gfx settings...
well you just got 41 fps and your now getting an average of 20 fps but you still drop down to 10-15 fps...
this is a cpu bottleneck... when you look at task manager your program is running the game flat out. but look at gpu-z and you will see the gfx card is using no more than 50 percent of the gpu...

cpu bound games are more likely to cause bottlenecks than a gpu bound game like crysis

todays games in 99% of cases dont need more than 2 gigs of ram. a 32bit o.s. there is no actual requirement in a game that says you would play better with 16 gig as 2 gig is enough if you use vista or win 7. gaming isnt memory intensive.. so most gaming pc's that have more than 3 gigs have way more memory than they need.
i really do laugh to myself when i see sum1 with an exclusively games orientated machine that has 3 ultra high end gfx card and 24gigs of ram... 99 percent of the time its sitting there doing nothing other than burning electric... at the very other end of the scale you have games like xplaine 10, it will use every cpu you throw at it up to 16 i think and will try to use as much gfx horsepower as you can get it... memory it will chew through it like it was a fat bloke in a pie shop thats been locked in the cellar for a week, with nothing other than tiktax to keep him minty fresh... it will use up to64 gigs of ram...

and what does all this extra demand bring you...

some very nice cloud detail some nice ground detail and some seriously large draw distances.

x plane 10 is 1 of the most demanding games you can throw at a pc but will work on a single core 88gt setup which is astonishing really...

 

[13thmonkey]

I'd be really surprised if you were idling at 3-5% RAM usage, ever on a 2GB system.

2GB is not enough for gaming, (i'm using 5.5GB when running BF3), but load speeds are going to be HDD speed, SSDs are noticably quicker (10-15s quicker on BF3), and more RAM. if you have some lying around install it, it might make all of your ram slower, but more is better.

to hexits point above BF3 itself usese about 1.7GB, i've no idea where the rest has gone, 4GB used to be more normal until recently.

 

[HEXiT]

bf3 is 1 of the few... as is skyrim when updated... but you dont need to take my word for it... any game you have thats 32bit which is most wont use more than 2gig. having the extra ram on 64 bit apps will often just go to caching textures and the likes.
any game that uses the console as the development platform, which is the majority will work just as well on a pc with 2 gigs of ram. (sorry forgot to add this to the above to help explain my point better)

 

[13thmonkey]

absolutely a 32bit exe will not use more than 2GB, but a 32bit exe using just under 2Gb + other game materials + all of the other windows rubbish in the background rapidly approaches 4GB and lots and lots of swap file usage, which if you are running windows, swap file and the game off the same mechanical disk becomes a problem. Decreasing swap file usage by increaseing memory will help.

 

[rndmate]

Best answer selected by Rndmate.