Not enough memory anymore for gaming

[nitsua101]

I built my computer just over 2 years ago. Never really had any issue with it until recently. Many of the games I used to play all day long are shutting off due to low memory. I have 8gb of memory and yet its not enough any more. I have run virus scans and malware scans and nothing shows up. I really don't know what to do I have searched for so much stuff but none of it really helps or is clear enough/ sounds sketchy haha. I feel like I have to reinstall everything and I am not really up for that.

 

[clutchc]

Do you have a lot of pgms starting with Win? Look in your tray after Win boots and see how many you have. All those pgms steal memory, resources, and clock cycles.
Another thing I'd do is run CCleaner and do the Clean and Registry portions both. That will fix a multitude of registry errors, software conflicts, and other resource-wasting crap that could be stealing memory. https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

8GB of system memory is still more than needed for games.

 

[nitsua101]

Do you have a lot of pgms starting with Win? Look in your tray after Win boots and see how many you have. All those pgms steal memory, resources, and clock cycles.
Another thing I'd do is run CCleaner and do the Clean and Registry portions both. That will fix a multitude of registry errors, software conflicts, and other resource-wasting crap that could be stealing memory. https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

8GB of system memory is still more than needed for games.

When I start up there are about 75 things in my task manager. I don't know if that too much or what, cause I have seen people say that 30-35% is normal memory usage when the computer isn't doing anything. I always forget about CCleaner but I end up running it at least once a month. I just ran it and still no change really.

 

[clutchc]

75! Surely you don't mean that many pgms are running, do you? You must mean processes. How many actual pgms are running in your tray? (click the tiny triangle in the right corner of your task bar)
And 30-35% is way too much memory to be used by background applications. That's going to hurt gaming because the CPU will be busy with all those other tasks. When I'm at the desktop with nothing running except my few startup pgms, I am at 19% memory usage.

 

[nitsua101]

75! Surely you don't mean that many pgms are running, do you? You must mean processes. How many actual pgms are running in your tray? (click the tiny triangle in the right corner of your task bar)
And 30-35% is way too much memory to be used by background applications. That's going to hurt gaming because the CPU will be busy with all those other tasks. When I'm at the desktop with nothing running except my few startup pgms, I am at 19% memory usage.

YES! Those were processes! Sorry looking at task manager to much. I would of realized that was a problem haha. In my tray besies sound and internet and the stupid windows 10 thingy I have 8 programs on start up.

Link

 

[choppalouie88]

as @clutchc has been saying 8 gb is more than enough to run most games out right now, and 8 programs shouldn't make your games crash. Have your games themselves been telling you the problem is memory? how did you find out memory was the problem with your games?

 

[SinxarKnights]

Did you disable your pagefile? If you did turn it back on and you should be good to go.

 

[nitsua101]

as @clutchc has been saying 8 gb is more than enough to run most games out right now, and 8 programs shouldn't make your games crash. Have your games themselves been telling you the problem is memory? how did you find out memory was the problem with your games?

The game stops responding and a window pops up saying there isn't enough memory to run this application it needs to be closed. I have had this issue a couple times with Battlefield 4, Titanfall, Elder Scrolls Online, Dying light, Smite (in the middle of a match btw), and i think a few more.

 

[nitsua101]

Did you disable your pagefile? If you did turn it back on and you should be good to go.

I've had it off for a while but turned it back on thinking it would fix it and it didn't, then I came here.

 

[SinxarKnights]

Did you disable your pagefile? If you did turn it back on and you should be good to go.

I've had it off for a while but turned it back on thinking it would fix it and it didn't, then I came here.

Silly question. Did you restart the PC between turning it on and testing the fix? What did you set it to?

 

[nitsua101]

Did you disable your pagefile? If you did turn it back on and you should be good to go.

I've had it off for a while but turned it back on thinking it would fix it and it didn't, then I came here.

Silly question. Did you restart the PC between turning it on and testing the fix? What did you set it to?

Yes I did restart and it kindof worked I was able to play Dying light for a while but ended up doing the same thing. Someone said you set the initial size to what is recommended and then the maximum to double that. After I restarted a window popped up saying that it was changing the size and put it back to system managed and I haven't touched it since.
My recommended size btw says 4592 MB

 

[SinxarKnights]

Set it to back to system managed and forget about it.

Did you change anything else? What are your system specs?

 

[nitsua101]

Set it to back to system managed and forget about it.

Did you change anything else? What are your system specs?

I don't think I changed anything else!

Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K
Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
Motherboard: ASUS Z87-A
PSU: Corsair Professional 750W 80+ Gold
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB
HDD: 2 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB

 

[SinxarKnights]

Alright.

I am going on the assumption that you are getting that error popup that says something like the system is low on memory please close some programs.

The next time you get this error can you take a screenshot of the task manager showing the program list sorted by memory use? Mind if I ask what are the programs running at startup? I recognize Asus AI Suite, Avast and the Nvidia Experience application.

How long have you been using this install of Windows? I personally reinstall Windows every few months or sooner if something like this pops up. Can be annoying especially things like video templates, images and games.

So things to try is disabling most things from starting up and removing/uninstalling anything unneeded. Did you try closing everything before gaming to see if it stops?

I know it seems like im insulting your intelligence but it is often the most simple overlooked thing that causes huge issues. The more information you can give us the better to help you.

 

[nitsua101]

Alright.

I am going on the assumption that you are getting that error popup that says something like the system is low on memory please close some programs.

The next time you get this error can you take a screenshot of the task manager showing the program list sorted by memory use? Mind if I ask what are the programs running at startup? I recognize Asus AI Suite, Avast and the Nvidia Experience application.

How long have you been using this install of Windows? I personally reinstall Windows every few months or sooner if something like this pops up. Can be annoying especially things like video templates, images and games.

So things to try is disabling most things from starting up and removing/uninstalling anything unneeded. Did you try closing everything before gaming to see if it stops?

I know it seems like im insulting your intelligence but it is often the most simple overlooked thing that causes huge issues. The more information you can give us the better to help you.

I will get on that but I realized something that I did that might be a problem maybe. First I have the same install of windows 8.1 pro since I first built my computer been thinking about going to 10 here soon. The problem was more than year ago I was using AVG to defrag my hdd and this was before I didn't know you can't do it to ssd well AVG tried to defrag my ssd and sent my computer into an infinite reboot loop. I was able to refresh but sadly I wasn't paying attention when AGV tried to do it again and I had to refresh a second time I don't know if that did anything that might have caused it memory issue.

 

[SinxarKnights]

Yeah if you had it that long it is hard to tell what could be causing it. Props for using it that long though. I tend to get strange issues after about 6 months if all goes well, usually a lot sooner.

Personally I would make a backup of your games (steam has a backup/restore function - save to a backup drive) and documents, save games, etc (for the love of God make sure to get everything you need) and either upgrade or do a fresh install. If you do upgrade, I recommend doing the upgrade the proper way so it is valid then do a fresh install of it.

It is a huge pain in the ass but you avoid those upgrade glitches and get a fresh start on a known good system. I haven't had any troubles with Asus drivers in Windows 10. However you may want to avoid AI Suite unless you are using it for something like the USB 3 boost, same with geforce experience unless you are recording with it. Prolly things you already know but less is usually better.

Or you can just hang tight for a while and see if anybody else comes in with suggestions.

 

[nitsua101]

Yeah if you had it that long it is hard to tell what could be causing it. Props for using it that long though. I tend to get strange issues after about 6 months if all goes well, usually a lot sooner.

Personally I would make a backup of your games (steam has a backup/restore function - save to a backup drive) and documents, save games, etc (for the love of God make sure to get everything you need) and either upgrade or do a fresh install. If you do upgrade, I recommend doing the upgrade the proper way so it is valid then do a fresh install of it.

It is a huge pain in the ass but you avoid those upgrade glitches and get a fresh start on a known good system. I haven't had any troubles with Asus drivers in Windows 10. However you may want to avoid AI Suite unless you are using it for something like the USB 3 boost, same with geforce experience unless you are recording with it. Prolly things you already know but less is usually better.

Or you can just hang tight for a while and see if anybody else comes in with suggestions.

I will probably end up doing that then I do have a few questions. The idea has crossed my mind to re install but I don't have a drive for backs ups nor the money to get a new drive(I could rip one out of an old laptop but I don't thing it will be enough). However I had this idea I don't really know if it would work or not but all my games and documents are on my hard drives and windows is on the ssd. Couldn't I just unplug my hard drives and reinstall on the ssd then plug back in my hdd? I am pretty sure the ssd has nothing on there that I could redownload.

Also can u clarify what you mean when you said dong the upgrade the proper way, you make it seem like clicking on the annoy ass pop up telling me every day to upgrade is not the "propper" way to upgrade?

 

[SinxarKnights]

Yeah you can upgrade like that with the popup. Seems what people tend to do, is do a fresh install of 10 without going through he actual update process then they have to downgrade back to the old OS then upgrade. Microsoft then gets blamed for not having a big enough 'click here to upgrade' button etc. Not that you would do that, just a lot of post of people reading random websites getting the wrong ideas on what to do.

The point is to be informed about the process before starting in case something goes awry.

 

[nitsua101]

Yeah you can upgrade like that with the popup. Seems what people tend to do, is do a fresh install of 10 without going through he actual update process then they have to downgrade back to the old OS then upgrade. Microsoft then gets blamed for not having a big enough 'click here to upgrade' button etc. Not that you would do that, just a lot of post of people reading random websites getting the wrong ideas on what to do.

The point is to be informed about the process before starting in case something goes awry.

Ok cool what about the hard drive idea? And hey I turned on my computer this morning and its sits at 20-23% Yay!
All I did last night was went into task scheduler and disable some AI suite stuff then I don't use and disable some nividia stuff on start up. It's like those two were seriously using 8-10% of my memory! That seems crazy.But w/e I have chrome open now and its at 33% mych better than the 45% yesterday.