is my ram bottlenecking my PC?

[Bruhmis]

I've been using this pc for about a year and most of the time my performance is significantly lower than it should be, and I also run into a lot of weird stability problems too. I really don't know much about RAM at all so I've always wondered if my RAM was a problem.

my specs are:

win 7 x64
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
GTX 670
FX-8150

and the ram is:

 

[iceclock]

whats ur complete pc specs, and have u defraged and scan disked ur system. also put on a clean windows installation and latest drivers would help.

 

[Bruhmis]

whats ur complete pc specs, and have u defraged and scan disked ur system. also put on a clean windows installation and latest drivers would help.

what other specs were you looking for? my PSU is a corsair CX500 and all my fans are stock. I've done clean installs before, I've defraged and it's been like this on a wide variety of drivers, which are the very latest at the moment. I'm basically just trying to find out if my RAM is a bad or not

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

whats ur complete pc specs, and have u defraged and scan disked ur system. also put on a clean windows installation and latest drivers would help.

what other specs were you looking for? my PSU is a corsair CX500 and all my fans are stock. I've done clean installs before, I've defraged and it's been like this on a wide variety of drivers, which are the very latest at the moment. I'm basically just trying to find out if my RAM is a bad or not

If you have cheap RAM, yes. And it could also cause stability problems, but you haven't given and more info on the stability issues, so it's hard to say (like if you're OCd).

You'd see a slight performance increase if you moved up to 1600 or 1866, as your current RAM is 1333, and there is a bit of a boost moving up a level or two.

However, you've not indicated what your measure of performance is.

If you're talking about games, then your GPU, and possibly even your CPU are also bottlenecks.

We need more info.

 

[Bruhmis]

If you have cheap RAM, yes. And it could also cause stability problems, but you haven't given and more info on the stability issues, so it's hard to say (like if you're OCd).

You'd see a slight performance increase if you moved up to 1600 or 1866, as your current RAM is 1333, and there is a bit of a boost moving up a level or two.

However, you've not indicated what your measure of performance is.

If you're talking about games, then your GPU, and possibly even your CPU are also bottlenecks.

We need more info.

what I meant was: is my RAM bottlenecking my CPU or GPU. meaning are those clock speeds and everything less than what I should use with the rest of my rig. my measure of performance is just my general assessment from using it for a year. benchmarks of the same/similar hardware generally don't reflect my experience. many games are completely unplayable, whereas others run without any issue. I get these weird lockups where the screen completely freezes and stays frozen for 15-40 seconds then when it unfreezes it makes some sort of low volume beeping noise. I have overclocked before but it didn't have any effect so I'm not overclocked now.

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

If you have cheap RAM, yes. And it could also cause stability problems, but you haven't given and more info on the stability issues, so it's hard to say (like if you're OCd).

You'd see a slight performance increase if you moved up to 1600 or 1866, as your current RAM is 1333, and there is a bit of a boost moving up a level or two.

However, you've not indicated what your measure of performance is.

If you're talking about games, then your GPU, and possibly even your CPU are also bottlenecks.

We need more info.

what I meant was: is my RAM bottlenecking my CPU or GPU. meaning are those clock speeds and everything less than what I should use with the rest of my rig. my measure of performance is just my general assessment from using it for a year. benchmarks of the same/similar hardware generally don't reflect my experience. many games are completely unplayable, whereas others run without any issue. I get these weird lockups where the screen completely freezes and stays frozen for 15-40 seconds then when it unfreezes it makes some sort of low volume beeping noise. I have overclocked before but it didn't have any effect so I'm not overclocked now.

Lockups like that can usually be attributed to driver issues. While a sound problem doesn't always mean a sound driver issue, I'd start there.

To correctly identify the issue we will need less vague descriptions. Make note of the specific error message, the game and playing conditions for all hardware. A lock up could be overheating issues, bad hardware, corrupt files, etc.

 

[Bruhmis]

If you have cheap RAM, yes. And it could also cause stability problems, but you haven't given and more info on the stability issues, so it's hard to say (like if you're OCd).

You'd see a slight performance increase if you moved up to 1600 or 1866, as your current RAM is 1333, and there is a bit of a boost moving up a level or two.

However, you've not indicated what your measure of performance is.

If you're talking about games, then your GPU, and possibly even your CPU are also bottlenecks.

We need more info.

what I meant was: is my RAM bottlenecking my CPU or GPU. meaning are those clock speeds and everything less than what I should use with the rest of my rig. my measure of performance is just my general assessment from using it for a year. benchmarks of the same/similar hardware generally don't reflect my experience. many games are completely unplayable, whereas others run without any issue. I get these weird lockups where the screen completely freezes and stays frozen for 15-40 seconds then when it unfreezes it makes some sort of low volume beeping noise. I have overclocked before but it didn't have any effect so I'm not overclocked now.

Lockups like that can usually be attributed to driver issues. While a sound problem doesn't always mean a sound driver issue, I'd start there.

To correctly identify the issue we will need less vague descriptions. Make note of the specific error message, the game and playing conditions for all hardware. A lock up could be overheating issues, bad hardware, corrupt files, etc.

it doesn't happen while playing games. I never really thought about it before but it hasn't happened once while playing a game, it generally happens when I'm using a web browser or something like that. there's no error message either. the sound also seems deliberate, it's not a loud, obnoxious screeching or beeping, but rather a subtle sound cue that sounds like it's part of some sort of user interface. I can't really go into anymore detail than that, that's the extent of what I know.

 

[iceclock]

id reinstall ur sound drivers, try a different set of rams,

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

If you have cheap RAM, yes. And it could also cause stability problems, but you haven't given and more info on the stability issues, so it's hard to say (like if you're OCd).

You'd see a slight performance increase if you moved up to 1600 or 1866, as your current RAM is 1333, and there is a bit of a boost moving up a level or two.

However, you've not indicated what your measure of performance is.

If you're talking about games, then your GPU, and possibly even your CPU are also bottlenecks.

We need more info.

what I meant was: is my RAM bottlenecking my CPU or GPU. meaning are those clock speeds and everything less than what I should use with the rest of my rig. my measure of performance is just my general assessment from using it for a year. benchmarks of the same/similar hardware generally don't reflect my experience. many games are completely unplayable, whereas others run without any issue. I get these weird lockups where the screen completely freezes and stays frozen for 15-40 seconds then when it unfreezes it makes some sort of low volume beeping noise. I have overclocked before but it didn't have any effect so I'm not overclocked now.

Lockups like that can usually be attributed to driver issues. While a sound problem doesn't always mean a sound driver issue, I'd start there.

To correctly identify the issue we will need less vague descriptions. Make note of the specific error message, the game and playing conditions for all hardware. A lock up could be overheating issues, bad hardware, corrupt files, etc.

it doesn't happen while playing games. I never really thought about it before but it hasn't happened once while playing a game, it generally happens when I'm using a web browser or something like that. there's no error message either. the sound also seems deliberate, it's not a loud, obnoxious screeching or beeping, but rather a subtle sound cue that sounds like it's part of some sort of user interface. I can't really go into anymore detail than that, that's the extent of what I know.

If its only during web surfing, there is probably something going on with the browser.

I'd suggest using Chrome or FF only. If you're already using one of these, I'd completely uninstall it, make sure to look for any programs that are installed like anything called a "search helper" or any toolbar. These are crap gimmicks used to collect user usage stats and sell crap to you through targeted advertising.

It may also be that the sound is from your virus/malware scanner detecting an issue in the browser. Pay close attention to this.

After you've removed the unnecessary programs and browser, you're not done, so DON'T REINSTALL yet. Press Win+R to open the run menu. Type %appdata%. You'll want to click on the address bar at top and move up one place in the folder tree. You should see a folder called Local. Double click this and navigate to the Temp folder and delete everything in this. Make sure under "View" on the folder options you've selected to Show Hidden Files so that any hidden temp files can be cleared, too.

There may be a couple files that Windows says can't be deleted. Make note of these file names. and report back here. Some are ok, some are not.

Now hit Win+R again and type msconfig.exe. Take a look at the Services tab and the Startup tab. You'll want to take special note of any items that say "unknown" under manufacturer name or that have a name of a company you don't recognize. Don't do anything with this right now, just report them back, or better yet provide screen shots, and we can continue from there. For now you're okay using IE to come to Tom's but I'd strongly suggest avoiding it once we are done.

Post back and I'll keep assisting.