[SOLVED] High CPU usage after upgrading RAM?

[YuFish]

So I had this setup:

Processor: i3-3240
RAM: 4GB
GPU: Palit GT 420
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

And my ram usage always skyrocketed to 90% everytime I play games, but the CPU usage always stay at about 5~15%. It didn't really affect the performance of my games, though it did impact Windows. Today, I decided to upgrade my RAM to 8GB 1600MHz and I noticed that my CPU usage is higher when I play games than when I had 4GB RAM. Opening chrome also skyrockets CPU usage to 80% before going back down to ~15% and my RAM usage stays at around 39~45%, which didn't happen back when I still had my 4GB stick (RAM usage did skyrocket to 90% tho and it gradually go back to 60%). CPU usage is low when the computer is idle; it sits around 5% and RAM usage at around 30%. I played a game where it usually uses all of my 4GB RAM--usually always around 90% RAM--and now with my 8GB it went down to 60% RAM usage but my CPU usage fluctuates around 25~30%.

Is this normal? Is it safe? I have been using my 4GB stick for about 5 years now and this is the only time that I am upgrading it, so I really don't know if this is perfectly normal for systems with high RAM.

Cheers

 

[kanewolf]

That woudl be normal, IMO. Your CPU is not having to wait on data from the pagefile. You have enough RAM now that the CPU can be busy a higher percentage of the time.

 

[InvalidError]

8GB isn't considered "high" RAM today, it is almost bare minimum for 64bits OS if you want good overall responsiveness for most everyday use and casual gaming. 16GB is a comfortable amount to have for heavier gaming and multi-tasking. 20+GB is where we can start talking 'high' RAM - more RAM than the average gamer is likely to have a use for over the system's useful life.

As wolf wrote, the reason why you had very low CPU usage before is that your CPU was wasting most of its time waiting for the swapfile that resides on the HDD/SDD which Windows uses to make up the difference between the amount of physical RAM available and the amount of memory all of the stuff you have open needs. Since even the fastest SSD is still ~100X slower than RAM, anything that causes significant swapping generates a massive performance penalty.