[SOLVED] Top process in TM is only using ~1 gig of my 16, but I'm lag spiking and showing 80-95% memory usage

iiSlashr

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Mar 10, 2019
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I haven't really had any issues running games, discord, etc. on my PC, up until about a week ago. Suddenly, I can't even play half the time because I get second-long freezes when my memory usage spikes to 100%. Task Manager and Resource Monitor show only one program above 1GB usage, which is VALORANT.

Any ideas for reasoning or fixes greatly appreciated.

Here's my full PC: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/LppMBZ
 
Solution
Commited is somehow 19.5/48 GB, so no, it's not... is that bad?
It's not per se, but depending on how memory is being used by the other programs, you are pushing memory usage into the page file. However this doesn't mean that all 16GB of physical RAM is used up, but considering the commit usage is over that amount, the chances of hitting the page file are much higher. And hitting the page file means some poor app is going to stall.
What might have changed in the past week?
Sometimes a windows update does strange things.
Windows keeps many things in ram in anticipation of fast reuse.
A high percent used is not, by itself a problem.

In task manager look at the memory part.
Look for the hard fault page rate.
If you see anything meaningful, like 1 per second, that indicates you are truly needing more ram.
 

iiSlashr

Reputable
Mar 10, 2019
380
41
4,840
What might have changed in the past week?
Sometimes a windows update does strange things.
Windows keeps many things in ram in anticipation of fast reuse.
A high percent used is not, by itself a problem.

In task manager look at the memory part.
Look for the hard fault page rate.
If you see anything meaningful, like 1 per second, that indicates you are truly needing more ram.

The chart looks like it's showing maybe 10 hard faults every 3 seconds all in little spikes.
 
Open Task Manager, go to the Performance tab, then the Memory page. Is the "Non-paged pool" more than a few hundred megabytes?

If so, something in the system is leaking. This is commonly a driver and from the times I've seen this, the network driver. Microsoft's RAMMap might locate what's leaking, but I haven't encountered this condition myself to see if the tool can.
 
Sep 2, 2020
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And what are your criteriae or references for that affirmation ?
Tests I've seen and experience. Defender is comparatively slow, might not be THAT big of a difference on new and powerful systems but it's worth noting, and a few "bad boys" slip past + had clean game files detected. It's gettings better by the day but it's not quite there.
Anyhow, AV discussions are a bit off-topic.
 
I'm assuming this is during the conditions when you normally see the issue.

Two other things to poke at:
  • In Task Manager, is the "Committed" section maxed out or close to it?
  • Is the second number in "Committed" the same as how much RAM you have in the system?
(it might be easier to post a screenshot of that page when the computer is in the conditions you normally see this problem :p )
 
Commited is somehow 19.5/48 GB, so no, it's not... is that bad?
It's not per se, but depending on how memory is being used by the other programs, you are pushing memory usage into the page file. However this doesn't mean that all 16GB of physical RAM is used up, but considering the commit usage is over that amount, the chances of hitting the page file are much higher. And hitting the page file means some poor app is going to stall.
 
Solution