High Virtual Memory (pagefile) causing Gameplay Stutter

[Grant Cole]

I've been watching the performance and behavior of my gaming pc lately just to try and troubleshoot some issues I've been having. Ever since I started gaming on this pc I've been having general problems, and because I have no previous experience to compare my troubles to, it makes it difficult to troubleshoot, but lately I noticed that gameplay stutters when Virtual Memory or pagefile exceeds 9GB.

Here's my hardware:
- Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB
- GPU: Sapphire Nitro R9 380 4gb
- CPU: FX 6300
- HDD: WD Blue 1TB
- Ram: x2 Ripjaws 4GB Ram (8GB Total)
- PSU: EVGA 750w (80 Bronze)

Important Details:
- Tested mostly on Fallout 4 on Medium or High Settings in 720p resolution.
- Ram never exceeds 4.5 GB in all tests.
- Vram never exceeds 3 GB in all tests.
- Pagefile often almost reaches 10GB and causes game to stutter.
- CPU on average only uses 60% to 70%.
- Temperatures for both CPU and GPU are around 30 to 40 degrees on average.
- No overclocking.
- Windows 10 User.
- GPU Drivers up to date and have been reinstalled during troubleshooting.

I am hoping this is enough information to give people ideas of what is causing so much virtual memory. Since I am not using an SSD, I'm pretty sure that this issue is pretty taxing on my HDD. I am suspecting, because the ram itself never exceeds around 4GB that one of my ram cards may be faulty, but I would like to get an expert opinion.

 

[corroded]

Have you tried manually setting the Pagefile max? say 5GB...?

 

[Grant Cole]

Wouldn't that be like putting a band-aid on a problem that could potentially be bigger?

 

[himmatsj]

Did you find a solution? I have Quantum Break and I experience somewhat similar issues to you.

The game stutters like crazy whenever a new pre-rendered cutscene plays or whenever I open a door.

I have 8GB of RAM and 6GB of VRAM (GTX 1060) with an i5 3330.

The usage in-game is only 3.5GB of VRAM and 6GB of RAM, but pagefile maxes out at just above 10GB.

 

[corroded]

What is your Disk type? I'm running an SSD as the Boot/OS drive, a standard HDD as Storage, and another SSD for games. the boot SSD has the page file set to variable 256 - 1024 MB then on the Storage drive I have it set as 512 - 2048 MB. My system also has 16GB of RAM with a new(ish) NVIDIA GTX 960...

If you're on a standard HDD for your whole system and have lower RAM, the page file is on the (SLOW) HDD, hence a lag when read/write is required.

 

[Grant Cole]

What is your Disk type? I'm running an SSD as the Boot/OS drive, a standard HDD as Storage, and another SSD for games. the boot SSD has the page file set to variable 256 - 1024 MB then on the Storage drive I have it set as 512 - 2048 MB. My system also has 16GB of RAM with a new(ish) NVIDIA GTX 960...

If you're on a standard HDD for your whole system and have lower RAM, the page file is on the (SLOW) HDD, hence a lag when read/write is required.

SSD is my main harddrive. However it's running on a Sata II, therefore not running at it's full potential. This build also has a HDD for storage.