I want to expand my RAM capacity

[sammy2]

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233254

 

I already have those ^^ - When I do research - multiple Journal pdfs/nytimes etc are opened for days before i'm done writing and I find my PC slows down a bit..I don't mind going above 16gb... but I see some deals here I can afford.  

This is my MB - http://www.advantionline.com/ASRock-B85M-Pro4-LGA-1150-Intel-B85-HDMI-SATA-6Gb-s-USB-3.0-Micro-ATX-Intel-Motherboard.html 

and here are the deals... 

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000147%20100152&IsNodeId=1&name=Desktop%20Memory

[Roger H. Veteran]

Looks like you got 4 slots on there so just slap another 2 x 4GB in there and be good to go.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313355

Those look good to me :p (Might even buy them for my MicroServer now that i saw them).

I'm however wondering why opening a bunch of PDFs should be slowing your machine. I got 5GB on my work machine and generally never have any issues (dual monitors) with multiple PDFs, Word Docs and browsers (along with Outlook and a few other programs in the background constantly).

--------------

Edit -

Wait - Hold the phone:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313355

in USA they are $80!! :o No wonder i thought those were stupidly cheap.

[sammy2]

Looks like you got 4 slots on there so just slap another 2 x 4GB in there and be good to go.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313355

Those look good to me :p (Might even buy them for my MicroServer now that i saw them).

I'm however wondering why opening a bunch of PDFs should be slowing your machine. I got 5GB on my work machine and generally never have any issues (dual monitors) with multiple PDFs, Word Docs and browsers (along with Outlook and a few other programs in the background constantly).

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231416

what about that ?

 

I usually have 100 Tabs opened aswell... watching streams..and watching videos etc... I just noticed a bit of lag when I reach 70% of Ram usage

[Roger H. Veteran]

I guess i should have checked buy any reason you are going for crazy "gamer" RAM or something? Neither of those will make a difference in regular everyday use and your only benefit is if you plan on overclocking them (the heatsink). Regular RAM will run just as fast and more RAM will be better regardless of how fast they are.

[sammy2]

None has the 7 cas latency has my original ram... guess problem I guess from judging the other thread about this here ? 

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

I don't think RAM is going to solve this issue...

 

How much RAM do you have and are you actually pegging your current RAM to the max? You really should be checking the RAM usage before going out to buy more RAM and making the assumption that it is the problem.

 

If 4GB, you could definitely peg it with a modern browser etc, if 8GB, it is far less likely. I only see 7-9GB usage even when running another virtualized OS on my desktop machine, various IDEs/program editors, dissembler instances, hex editors and such. Right now that machine is using 7.8GB with a Linux instance using 2.8GB and a Windows instance using 0.5GB of that space. Of that, chrome is about 1.5GB.

 

I think the slow down you are seeing is probably just the result of the browser caching things to disc (this is outside of the context of a page file -- I really mean it is just doing a browser cache to/from disc). I noticed the same thing back when I use to run HDDs. It was an issue regardless of whether I was peaking on the RAM. Became a non-issue after I moved to SSDs.

 

EDIT: Just noticed your, "I notice slowdown at 70% of RAM usage". So exactly as I said - that doesn't fit with your scenario of buying more RAM. You aren't even pegging your RAM so you clearly won't be paging memory in/out or memory thrashing... so why would buying more RAM do anything for you?

 

EDIT2: You can test this easily by disabling your paging file and seeing if your slowdown issues persist.

[Roger H. Veteran]

None has the 7 cas latency has my original ram... guess problem I guess from judging the other thread about this here ?

Wont matter so much as the MOBO will just run your current ones as CAS9 instead. Only in benchmarks will there be an actual difference between 7 and 9.

[+theblazingangel MVC]

As others are pointing out, you have absolutely no need for "performance" RAM, just get cheaper standard RAM such as that from crucial.com. More RAM though could make a huge difference.

 

Providing more info about your current system could help with providing you with suitable suggestions. You've shown us what motherboard you have, which is Intel Haswell based, excellent, so what about:

 - How much RAM do you currently have?

 - What CPU do you have?

 - Do you have an SSD?

 

Edit, ah 100 tabs inc. videos and such, yeh, I could see how it's likely you might need more RAM...

 

I don't think RAM is going to solve this issue...

 

How much RAM do you have and are you actually pegging your current RAM to the max? You really should be checking the RAM usage before going out to buy more RAM and making the assumption that it is the problem.

 

If 4GB, you could definitely peg it with a modern browser etc, if 8GB, it is far less likely. I only see 7-9GB usage even when running another virtualized OS on my desktop machine, various IDEs/program editors, dissembler instances, hex editors and such. Right now that machine is using 7.8GB with a Linux instance using 2.8GB and a Windows instance using 0.5GB of that space. Of that, chrome is about 1.5GB.

 

I think the slow down you are seeing is probably just the result of the browser caching things to disc (this is outside of the context of a page file -- I really mean it is just doing a browser cache to/from disc). I noticed the same thing back when I use to run HDDs. It was an issue regardless of whether I was peaking on the RAM. Became a non-issue after I moved to SSDs.

 

EDIT: Just noticed your, "I notice slowdown at 70% of RAM usage". So exactly as I said - that doesn't fit with your scenario of buying more RAM. You aren't even pegging your RAM so you clearly won't be paging memory in/out or memory thrashing... so why would buying more RAM do anything for you?

 

EDIT2: You can test this easily by disabling your paging file and seeing if your slowdown issues persist.

 

Actually that's not true, Windows pre-emptively moves things into the paging file, it doesn't wait until you're at 100% RAM usage. I.e. the fact that RAM usage is at 70% does not mean that the page file is at 0%. Right now, on my system with 16GB of RAM, according to rain-meter on my desktop, I'm using just 28% of my RAM, but I am also using 19% of my page file! (That reminds me, I never checked how big a page file Windows created when I built this new system of mine, I will go check...)

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

Actually that's not true, Windows pre-emptively moves things into the paging file, it doesn't wait until you're at 100% RAM usage. I.e. the fact that RAM usage is at 70% does not mean that the page file is at 0%. Right now, on my system with 16GB of RAM, according to rain-meter on my desktop, I'm using just 28% of my RAM, but I am also using 19% of my page file! (That reminds me, I never checked how big a page file Windows created when I built this new system of mine, I will go check...)

 

You are misunderstand how Virtual Memory works. Just because you have a allocated space to your paging file doesn't mean it is actually being used. Windows pre-allocates the paging file based on your memory size + prediction mechanisms. It may even duplicate pages into the paging file based on those prediction mechanisms (I don't know if Windows does this, but is a feasible strategy for paging). None of this means that you actually getting page faults though. You can check this via Resource Manager by looking at Memory. It is listed as Hard Faults/Sec. I get about 0-3 per second on a machine with 4GB of RAM; 77% used; and 2.5GB paging file. You'll get them even if you disable the paging file though because they also occur if you have memory mapped files and parts of those files are not mapped to memory yet. My point here though is that they are very low despite the the large page file and 77% ram usage because none of my memory is really paged out.

[sammy2]

I don't think RAM is going to solve this issue...

 

How much RAM do you have and are you actually pegging your current RAM to the max? You really should be checking the RAM usage before going out to buy more RAM and making the assumption that it is the problem.

 

If 4GB, you could definitely peg it with a modern browser etc, if 8GB, it is far less likely. I only see 7-9GB usage even when running another virtualized OS on my desktop machine, various IDEs/program editors, dissembler instances, hex editors and such. Right now that machine is using 7.8GB with a Linux instance using 2.8GB and a Windows instance using 0.5GB of that space. Of that, chrome is about 1.5GB.

 

I think the slow down you are seeing is probably just the result of the browser caching things to disc (this is outside of the context of a page file -- I really mean it is just doing a browser cache to/from disc). I noticed the same thing back when I use to run HDDs. It was an issue regardless of whether I was peaking on the RAM. Became a non-issue after I moved to SSDs.

 

EDIT: Just noticed your, "I notice slowdown at 70% of RAM usage". So exactly as I said - that doesn't fit with your scenario of buying more RAM. You aren't even pegging your RAM so you clearly won't be paging memory in/out or memory thrashing... so why would buying more RAM do anything for you?

 

EDIT2: You can test this easily by disabling your paging file and seeing if your slowdown issues persist.

I have a SSD... the lag came I tried openings videos flies that were really large while already running at 70% of RAM.. and my video card is poor ..460,,

I would like to have three browsers..20 tabs in each... and 20 PDFs... also while doing my regular browsing... as you guys should know nyt etc all have limitation on free articles.. therefore you want to keep these windows/tabs open..

I feel like IE with adblock is a huge RAM drainer tho..

 

Today I took a break from my studies -- went to lay down and came back to be PC restarted so it probably even crashed on the huge load..

 

[+theblazingangel MVC]

You are misunderstand how Virtual Memory works. Just because you have a allocated space to your paging file doesn't mean it is actually being used. Windows pre-allocates the paging file based on your memory size + prediction mechanisms. It may even duplicate pages into the paging file based on those prediction mechanisms (I don't know if Windows does this, but is a feasible strategy for paging). None of this means that you actually getting page faults though. You can check this via Resource Manager by looking at Memory. It is listed as Hard Faults/Sec. I get about 0-3 per second on a machine with 4GB of RAM; 77% used; and 2.5GB paging file. You'll get them even if you disable the paging file though because they also occur if you have memory mapped files and parts of those files are not mapped to memory yet. My point here though is that they are very low despite the the large page file and 77% ram usage because none of my memory is really paged out.

 

Well admittedly I feel as though my knowledge of the details of memory management could be perhaps be improved to some degree, but I do feel that I have a decent grasp of the fundamentals, and I do of course absolutely agree that sluggishness relating to memory management would be a result of thrashing not simply utilisation. Now perhaps with your particular example system with 77% RAM utilisation you're experiencing very little trashing, but that doesn't mean the OP isn't; I do not believe that high frequency thrashing only occurs near 100% RAM utilisation, I believe (and perhaps I need to do more research into this) that Windows pre-emptively moves pages into the page file, keeping some RAM free allowing for quicker response to spikes in demand, and that the higher the utilisation, the more likely and frequently that thrashing could be occurring. Thus I feel it is entirely feasible that you could see a system with only 70% utilisation (which I consider fairly high) and yet with a large (relatively) amount of thrashing. For example, a user may have a browser with a large number of tabs open, and only 70% RAM utilisation, as here, and see thrashing because firstly, Windows is keeping the remaining 30% open in order to allow other applications to be opened quicker (as a measure to try and provide a better user experience), and secondly, the browser may be causing pages to be moved back and forth between RAM and the page files as tabs do stuff such as load new content via AJAX or continue buffering video, or simply as the user switches between tabs in the interface. That's just my speculation though. If I'm right, adding more RAM could result in Windows allowing a larger proportion of the browser's pages to remain in RAM, thus reducing thrashing and thus reducing lag. I do have a PC here used by other members of my family, which previously had only 2GB of RAM; this was never maxed out but utilisation was quite high. Increasing this to 4GB resulted in a definite improvement in performance, which I feel supports my hypothesis.

 

Of course I'm not stating out right that thrashing is absolutely the issue here, I may be wrong; we know nothing about page file utilisation and fault frequency on the OP's system itself to say such a thing and there could be other causes. The OP states that lag is noticeable at 70% RAM utilisation and the implication is that this is a result of an increase in the number of tabs, not other applications that are then consuming significant resources. Perhaps the additional tabs result in an increase in CPU cycle consumption by the browser; perhaps as you suggested there's an increase in HDD activity related to caching; both sound reasonable to me. Perhaps it's a combination. However my gut feeling, based on the fact that the OP has a recent Haswell based MB, and likely a decently fast enough CPU to go with it, and that the lag occurs at high memory utilisation, is that increasing the amount of RAM is going to result in an improvement. Regardless, I feel that the OP could benefit from the extra headroom.

 

With that said though, perhaps checking disk activity might be a good idea to be certain. I still feel that more RAM to give more headroom would be good, but of course if disk activity is high, whether from frequent page faults or caching, an SSD is going to be the best solution if the OP doesn't have one.

 

Edit: backing up I've noticed that the OP has actually stated how much RAM they have (presuming the link is the actual item, not just the same model with a different capacity), I was assuming the OP had something like 4GB. So you have 8GB. That's actually a pretty decent amount. What browser are you using. I ask this because on my previous system (which I replaced a few months back) I had 6GB of RAM and shortly prior to replacing it I was doing some research with a ton of tabs open in both Firefox and Chrome, and a few times maxed out both my RAM and page file resulting in Windows issuing memory errors. Chrome was the culprit, consuming a huge amount of RAM across it's large number of individual processes. If you're using Chrome, you may find that using Firefox instead will reduce your RAM consumption enough to negate any need for purchasing hardware. (Disclaimer, I'm a fan of both browsers, I'm not acting as a fanboy here).

[+theblazingangel MVC]

I have a SSD... the lag came I tried openings videos flies that were really large while already running at 70% of RAM.. and my video card is poor ..460,,

I would like to have three browsers..20 tabs in each... and 20 PDFs... also while doing my regular browsing... as you guys should know nyt etc all have limitation on free articles.. therefore you want to keep these windows/tabs open..

I feel like IE with adblock is a huge RAM drainer tho..

 

Today I took a break from my studies -- went to lay down and came back to be PC restarted so it probably even crashed on the huge load..

 

 

You have an SSD, excellent. And you're actually experiencing lag when loading videos taking you BEYOND 70% RAM utilisation. I'd say that significantly supports the suggestion of getting more RAM. First I suggest you try a different browser though and look at the difference!

[sammy2]

Yes I was using Chrome..yesterday I actually got the memory error and the tabs closes/went to an error page - reloading them fixed the problem.. I'm currently testing it out..running at 85% at the moment and it's better..

 

I have music playing...two videos playing..and about 200 tabs with chrome and explore... but it's not lagging at much..  only lag I notice comes from me adding all my music to the windows media player playlist..now I can't click anything in the music folder...

 

CPU usage is only at 20% Runnings Haswell i7s 

[sammy2]

You have an SSD, excellent. And you're actually experiencing lag when loading videos taking you BEYOND 70% RAM utilisation. I'd say that significantly supports the suggestion of getting more RAM. First I suggest you try a different browser though and look at the difference!

 

Yeah it's running better today... Yesterday I had a bunch of lag.. browser tabs shutting down due to memory problem - I even got the warning..but it's above 85% and okay at the moment.. 

[CrossCheck]

i am just wondering why you need so many tabs open on your browser..... 200? how do you know which tab is which. i usually have no more than 15 or so. but then again...i dont have to worry about a ram issue due to running with 20gb of ram (2x8 and 2x2). it never hurts to have more ram. i say pull the trigger

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

I have a SSD... the lag came I tried openings videos flies that were really large while already running at 70% of RAM.. and my video card is poor ..460,,

I would like to have three browsers..20 tabs in each... and 20 PDFs... also while doing my regular browsing... as you guys should know nyt etc all have limitation on free articles.. therefore you want to keep these windows/tabs open..

I feel like IE with adblock is a huge RAM drainer tho..

 

Today I took a break from my studies -- went to lay down and came back to be PC restarted so it probably even crashed on the huge load..

 

 

You are being inconsistent in what you say your RAM usage is  :huh: 70% or 70%+large video files? SSD wise, I'd find it even harder to believe that you are experience noticeable paging thrashing if you have a page file now (sure possible, but I don't think it is likely). Fortunately, there are two really easy ways to see if this is from the RAM: (1) disable you page file and see if the issue resolves, (2) Look at the hard fault rates. Those are pretty much guaranteed to rule it in or out.

[sammy2]

You are being inconsistent in what you say your RAM usage is  :huh: 70% or 70%+large video files? SSD wise, I'd find it even harder to believe that you are experience noticeable paging thrashing if you have a page file now (sure possible, but I don't think it is likely). Fortunately, there are two really easy ways to see if this is from the RAM: (1) disable you page file and see if the issue resolves, (2) Look at the hard fault rates. Those are pretty much guaranteed to rule it in or out.

 

I have the videos files/Music files on a HDD...

 

70% caused the lag yesterday.. i'm currently trying to stress this the system but it's doing better... even tho i'm currently at 84% .. I don't know if it's because yesterday the computer was already running for two days... 

[Praetor]

200 tabs :woot:

i only have 50 at a time and even i think it's too much. then again..could have more :D

 

you can see how much memory each tab uses in chrome, too see where's the bottleneck.

[Marshall Veteran]

Off-topic: I'm curious to see what it looks like with 200 tabs open, can you take a screenshot?

 

On topic: Why don't you give FF a try, it's usually low on system resources as long as you don't have a ton of extensions?

[sammy2]

This is what i'm talking about ... 

 

86% and error message.. IE seems to be the main culprit 

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

Yeah it's running better today... Yesterday I had a bunch of lag.. browser tabs shutting down due to memory problem - I even got the warning..but it's above 85% and okay at the moment.. 

 

Are you saying you 

 

Well admittedly I feel as though my knowledge of the details of memory management could be perhaps be improved to some degree, but I do feel that I have a decent grasp of the fundamentals, and I do of course absolutely agree that sluggishness relating to memory management would be a result of thrashing not simply utilisation. Now perhaps with your particular example system with 77% RAM utilisation you're experiencing very little trashing, but that doesn't mean the OP isn't; I do not believe that high frequency thrashing only occurs near 100% RAM utilisation, I believe (and perhaps I need to do more research into this) that Windows pre-emptively moves pages into the page file, keeping some RAM free allowing for quicker response to spikes in demand, and that the higher the utilisation, the more likely and frequently that thrashing could be occurring. Thus I feel it is entirely feasible that you could see a system with only 70% utilisation (which I consider fairly high) and yet with a large (relatively) amount of thrashing. For example, a user may have a browser with a large number of tabs open, and only 70% RAM utilisation, as here, and see thrashing because firstly, Windows is keeping the remaining 30% open in order to allow other applications to be opened quicker (as a measure to try and provide a better user experience), and secondly, the browser may be causing pages to be moved back and forth between RAM and the page files as tabs do stuff such as load new content via AJAX or continue buffering video, or simply as the user switches between tabs in the interface. That's just my speculation though. If I'm right, adding more RAM could result in Windows allowing a larger proportion of the browser's pages to remain in RAM, thus reducing thrashing and thus reducing lag. I do have a PC here used by other members of my family, which previously had only 2GB of RAM; this was never maxed out but utilisation was quite high. Increasing this to 4GB resulted in a definite improvement in performance, which I feel supports my hypothesis.

 

Of course I'm not stating out right that thrashing is absolutely the issue here, I may be wrong; we know nothing about page file utilisation and fault frequency on the OP's system itself to say such a thing and there could be other causes. The OP states that lag is noticeable at 70% RAM utilisation and the implication is that this is a result of an increase in the number of tabs, not other applications that are then consuming significant resources. Perhaps the additional tabs result in an increase in CPU cycle consumption by the browser; perhaps as you suggested there's an increase in HDD activity related to caching; both sound reasonable to me. Perhaps it's a combination. However my gut feeling, based on the fact that the OP has a recent Haswell based MB, and likely a decently fast enough CPU to go with it, and that the lag occurs at high memory utilisation, is that increasing the amount of RAM is going to result in an improvement. Regardless, I feel that the OP could benefit from the extra headroom.

 

With that said though, perhaps checking disk activity might be a good idea to be certain. I still feel that more RAM to give more headroom would be good, but of course if disk activity is high, whether from frequent page faults or caching, an SSD is going to be the best solution if the OP doesn't have one.

 

Edit: backing up I've noticed that the OP has actually stated how much RAM they have (presuming the link is the actual item, not just the same model with a different capacity), I was assuming the OP had something like 4GB. So you have 8GB. That's actually a pretty decent amount. What browser are you using. I ask this because on my previous system (which I replaced a few months back) I had 6GB of RAM and shortly prior to replacing it I was doing some research with a ton of tabs open in both Firefox and Chrome, and a few times maxed out both my RAM and page file resulting in Windows issuing memory errors. Chrome was the culprit, consuming a huge amount of RAM across it's large number of individual processes. If you're using Chrome, you may find that using Firefox instead will reduce your RAM consumption enough to negate any need for purchasing hardware. (Disclaimer, I'm a fan of both browsers, I'm not acting as a fanboy here).

 

The 8GB RAM thing is what initially made me skeptical. I would be totally willing to agree with you otherwise about the RAM thrashing and things. Now, he states he has an SSD, has upped the RAM usage to 85%, claims he uses three browsers open at the same time, and is opening huge movie files. At this point, I am just assuming the OP wants more RAM and is just saying whatever to justify it. That's fine by me given that I was just trying to get the OP to check if this was the issue or not. I've already told him how to verify whether it is so I don't really have much more input all points considered -- other than eye brow raising faces  :laugh:

 

On a side note, I do believe that Windows preemptively drops pages into the paging file also. I don't believe it is necessarily removes the original copies though _unless_ they actually need to be evicted. The idea would be to keep the copy in memory until you are forced to evict it for other data. Remember this is a least-recently-used policy, so the things you evict shouldn't be recently used -- so it stands to reason that you could do this without too much trouble. Windows has some list for "cached" memory that may account for this. I haven't looked at it in fine enough detail to conclude exactly what it is though. 

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

This is what i'm talking about ... 

 

86% and error message.. IE seems to be the main culprit 

 

Yeah it is trying to use something that requires more RAM than you have total evidently. Do you even have a paging file enabled? Sounds like no since it normally would tell you it is expanding your paging file...

 

EDIT: your disc I/O looks super low also in that picture. Basically you ran out of memory and the system is grinding to halt from what it looks like. In my experience that is what happens if you don't have a paging file and run out of memory...

[sammy2]

Yeah it is trying to use something that requires more RAM than you have total evidently. Do you even have a paging file enabled? Sounds like no since it normally would tell you it is expanding your paging file...

yup it's enabled on the SSD - 500 -2000MB

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

yup it's enabled on the SSD - 500 -2000MB

 

Oh that makes sense after all. Your paging file is also completely used up and isn't set to expand beyond that point. The system isn't thrashing, it is just killing things because it can't do anything else. Instead of getting 8 more GB, you should probably just pay for however much your board supports (32GB or 64GB). You have after all are going to hit the maximum regardless since you evidently just leave everything open and never close anything. This has officially become absurd. I'm honestly not even sure if you are being serious at this point or if you just didn't just open 500 thousand tabs take that screen shot. I'm probably not the only one...

[T3X4S]

I am going to stop telling people what I always tell them about RAM usage and modern necessities.  I always tell people, "unless you use VMs, Photoshop, media editing - you will never use more than 4GB, for most people 8GB is more than enough.."  OP has me confused. 

How in the world can someone "use" 200 tabs ?  More than 20 and they dont even show up, just pile up.  200 tabs ?  why ?  Does the OP simply never close them after using them ?

Anyway, its not my place to question another person's usage - it just seems like something can be done better before adding RAM.  FWIW