Pagefile causing stutter with 50% free RAM?

[Confer]

Just like the title says while gaming with pagefile on auto, or a custom one I get big stuttering while playing. But if i disable it, all the BIG stuttering is gone. Not the small ones every once in a while.

I recently bought a new SSD because i thought it was my harddrive. I'm thinking this is ram related because it only happens with pagefile on. I still have 50% of ram free so it shouldn't even be using pagefile in the first place.

I have ran memtest for 2 hours and got no errors. I do have single channel ram. Maybe thats a problem aswell.

Ryzen 1600
GTX 1060 3GB
8 GB 2133 Single Channel
AB350M-HDV
1TB HDD + 250GB with OS and Game
500W Evga PSU

 

[smashjohn]

Memory management is constant, so the percentage free is irrelevant. What OS are you running? Most memory management is invisible these days. I used to be a huge proponent of disabling the page file, but now days, it doesn't seem to help at all because pages are placed on the hard drive 'just in case' memory needs to be cleared in a hurry. New operating systems aren't as 'swappy' as they used to be.

Keep in mind that very few applications, and no games that I know of, use more than 4GB ram. Windows doesn't generally use more than 3. So if it is paging, you can safely turn that off is gaming is the only thing you're doing. If you want to be safe, pickup a 16GB kit and you'll have plenty of headroom.

 

[Confer]

Memory management is constant, so the percentage free is irrelevant. What OS are you running? Most memory management is invisible these days. I used to be a huge proponent of disabling the page file, but now days, it doesn't seem to help at all because pages are placed on the hard drive 'just in case' memory needs to be cleared in a hurry. New operating systems aren't as 'swappy' as they used to be.

Keep in mind that very few applications, and no games that I know of, use more than 4GB ram. Windows doesn't generally use more than 3. So if it is paging, you can safely turn that off is gaming is the only thing you're doing. If you want to be safe, pickup a 16GB kit and you'll have plenty of headroom.

I run Windows 10 64bit. I had to tweak my windows a ton just to stop most of the stuttering. The thing is even with pagefile disabled i get random microstutters every minute or so. Do you think 16gb would solve this? it just doesn't seem right to me because like you said most is invisible but the game i play only uses 1.4gb and while playing i'm at 34%.

 

[smashjohn]

Memory management is constant, so the percentage free is irrelevant. What OS are you running? Most memory management is invisible these days. I used to be a huge proponent of disabling the page file, but now days, it doesn't seem to help at all because pages are placed on the hard drive 'just in case' memory needs to be cleared in a hurry. New operating systems aren't as 'swappy' as they used to be.

Keep in mind that very few applications, and no games that I know of, use more than 4GB ram. Windows doesn't generally use more than 3. So if it is paging, you can safely turn that off is gaming is the only thing you're doing. If you want to be safe, pickup a 16GB kit and you'll have plenty of headroom.

I run Windows 10 64bit. I had to tweak my windows a ton just to stop most of the stuttering. The thing is even with pagefile disabled i get random microstutters every minute or so. Do you think 16gb would solve this? it just doesn't seem right to me because like you said most is invisible but the game i play only uses 1.4gb and while playing i'm at 34%.

I doubt it. You'll probably need to setup some kind of logging to determine what's bottlenecking. It may be a hard drive issue that just manifests more with more i/o. Since turning off the pagefile reduces i/o, it would reduce the symptom. This seems likely to me. I wonder if there is something else running that might slam you hdd i/o. Maybe make sure your anti-virus to turned off for testing. Stutters can be really difficult to diagnose since they generally stop by the time you pull up your monitoring software. I hope I helped.

 

[Confer]

Memory management is constant, so the percentage free is irrelevant. What OS are you running? Most memory management is invisible these days. I used to be a huge proponent of disabling the page file, but now days, it doesn't seem to help at all because pages are placed on the hard drive 'just in case' memory needs to be cleared in a hurry. New operating systems aren't as 'swappy' as they used to be.

Keep in mind that very few applications, and no games that I know of, use more than 4GB ram. Windows doesn't generally use more than 3. So if it is paging, you can safely turn that off is gaming is the only thing you're doing. If you want to be safe, pickup a 16GB kit and you'll have plenty of headroom.

I run Windows 10 64bit. I had to tweak my windows a ton just to stop most of the stuttering. The thing is even with pagefile disabled i get random microstutters every minute or so. Do you think 16gb would solve this? it just doesn't seem right to me because like you said most is invisible but the game i play only uses 1.4gb and while playing i'm at 34%.

I doubt it. You'll probably need to setup some kind of logging to determine what's bottlenecking. It may be a hard drive issue that just manifests more with more i/o. Since turning off the pagefile reduces i/o, it would reduce the symptom. This seems likely to me. I wonder if there is something else running that might slam you hdd i/o. Maybe make sure your anti-virus to turned off for testing. Stutters can be really difficult to diagnose since they generally stop by the time you pull up your monitoring software. I hope I helped.

I disabled all my anti virus and i even bought a 250gb SSD which i have my os and games. I reinstalled windows and even tried changing sata ports. I have had this issue for 3 months and i'm finally narrowing it down to this. I tried without the HDD plugged in aswell and only the ssd.

 

[Confer]

So is it my ram?

 

[smashjohn]

I've never seen this behavior from 'slow ram', but anything is possible. You might want to run memtest86 and try a hard drive diagnostic tool for your ssd. If all else fails, at least RAM kits aren't too expensive these days. With problems like this, you only know you found the problem after you successfully test the solution.

 

[Confer]

I've never seen this behavior from 'slow ram', but anything is possible. You might want to run memtest86 and try a hard drive diagnostic tool for your ssd. If all else fails, at least RAM kits aren't too expensive these days. With problems like this, you only know you found the problem after you successfully test the solution.

I can try to run memtest for longer then 2 hours. That would be some really bad luck for the hdd and ssd to both be bad, I bought the hdd 3 months ago, and the ssd 1 month ago. If not i'm going to buy new ram because those are the only 2 that it could be honestly.

 

[smashjohn]

If your memory makes it through 2 passes, I'm sure it's fine. Stuttering can be so many things. Underpowered GPU, CPU pegging 100%, impacted i/o on your hard drive, not enough RAM, etc. When you're gaming, you tax every component of your system together and that when these failures are the most prominent. So you have to stress test each component to see where any weaknesses are.

You thought you had an issue with the page file. But if you can test your memory and SSD as good (right speed and throughput), then this probably isn't the root problem. Next, I'd look at the graphics card. Does it have enough power (either a 6pin or 8pin PCIE cable?). What happens when you drop your graphics setting to Medium or Low? Turn off Gsync or Vsync?

You might also need to monitor your CPU load. Is your CPU pegging 100% while you're gaming? This will cause a serious stutter. If you do see your CPU spiking at 90%+, check what other processes are stressing it.

Triple check that your Antivirus is turned off. Any anti-virus or anti-malware service could be grabbing files that you're game is trying to use and causing issues. I don't see this very often these days, but it's one of the few programs that can directly impact your disk i/o and cpu.

Lastly, search for "Ryzen 1600 game stutter". There are reported issues with everything from power management to some conflict with the Corsair Link software. Most of these issues have posted resolutions, but you'll have to determine if they could be affecting your system.

 

[HollowSavant]

So. After replacing all components on a windows 10 system, excluding RAM and CPU, the stutter remained for my issue.
The page file is the culprit. for some reason on my second system, almost identical parts besides M.2 drive at this point, the stutter remained. This is with the page file on. With paging off, it did not stutter, but the RAM would quickly fill up and the computer was just "slow." I just added 16GB of additional RAM and the stutter has been non existent for a few days. this is with the page file on.
I would recommend those who are getting random system stutter in games, browser, desktop, etc to add additional memory to your system. The funny part is, the only difference between the two systems I have are the case, the M.2, and now the Ram. The system with 32 GB of RAM used to always stutter. The other one, still with 16GB of RAM, never had this issue.
All of the "check processes" and "disable antivrus" threads became me chasing gremlins for months. It caused me to start replacing all the parts like crazy.

If you are wondering what lead me to this originally, I will explain.
I recently installed ARCH Linux onto an additional drive. I forgot to create a swap partition and all of the windows problems, the other computer was having, were present on my ARCH install. So it got me thinking to check page file settings in Windows, on the other machine. Sure enough, every time the computer attempted to write RAM contents to disk, it started stuttering like crazy and the CPU usage spiked to 100 percent. This was done by adding a counter to the "paging file" item in Performance Monitor. At first I thought the RAM was bad. So I bought a 16GB set from corsair. Then I decided to troubleshoot and mess around. Both systems were running the same Trident Z RAM. I took the 16GB from the system without stuttering and added it to the system which stuttered. Now it does not stutter at all. I placed the 16GB of corsair in the other system(which no longer had RAM) and they both still work just fine.

TLDR: Added 16GB of RAM to the stuttering system and it no longer stuttered. Don't go chasing fixes if your stutter effects more than just one application.
EDIT: Specs for stuttering system
Ryzen 2700x
GTX1070
Sandisk 500GB m.2(OS)
1TB Sandisk SSD (games)
Asus prime x470-pro
16GB of G.Skill Trident Z RGB 3200Mhz.(now 32GB after fix)
Corsair RMX white 750W power supply.
Gremlins=none

 

[USAFRet]

So. .....

So, considering this is a 4 year old thread....

Please don't dredge up ancient threads.