I5 2500k system problems

[ozsa]

Hey all, I have a few problems and I cannot find a solution for them, so I thought I will ask you guys.

Here's my build

i5 2500 K, Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen 3, Corsair 600CXV2 600W PSU, HDD WD 1TB Blue, Cooler Master Hyper TX3 CPU cooler, Mushkin 4GB CL7, Sapphire HD 6570 GDDR5 512MB, Raidmax Altas RMX case, Asus Xonar DG Soundcard.

Now the story, I always used XP (after 2000) and never really tried Win7, now I did and I cant really understand alot of things...

1. My VGA is 512MB but when I check at "dxdiag" its between 1228 and about 1690MB, why does it take memory from my RAM ? How can I make the VGA use only its own 512MB RAM without touching my real RAMS ?
2. When I check my PC at the "System" in Win7, it says 4GB ram (1.92 usable) where the hell is the rest of my 2GB ram ? I understand my mainboard has a vga card aswell, and when I go into CPU-Z, at graphics, it tells me this. HD6570 788 MB, and Intel HD 2000 GT2, 512 MB. How can I disable the onboard VGA card ? In bios I have PCI-E as first GPU.
3. In the bios I set the multiplier for the CPU at 45x and at boot it says the CPU is running at 4500mhz, but CPU-Z shows 1600Mhz @ x16 multiplier, and sometimes it jumps to 45x then back to 16x, is it a CPU-Z bug or the CPU is not running on a stable 45x ? Asrock Extreme Tuner also shows 45x, and its running at a cool 35-40 degree C. At first sight overclocking is easy, just set to 45x, put the ram to 1600Mhz and its done... is there anything else I need to do ?
4. How can I make the Win7 not "waste" any RAM for stuff like VGA card, onboard VGA or anything at all really ?
5. My HDD is really slow, copying a big file cannot ever reach 50mb/sec (just in the beginning), it goes around 30-40MB all the time, but the most disturbing thing is, whenever I use a torrent client like uTorrent and I download, after 4-5MB/sec speed, it says disk overload and the speed keeps falling, like the HDD couldnt handle the speed...which is ridiculous at 5MB/sec speed. Also when the torrent is going and I open a movie or an SQL (or any heavier program) the disk overload stars and the speed falls down... what should I do ? The HDD cannot possibly be that bad, I just cannot believe that simply, this must be something with Win7 or the torrent client, but what is it ?

These are my problems, the PC is 1month old, just had no time to check for these things, if anyone could help I'd appreciate it alot.

Thanks for reading!

 

[jsc]

1 & 2. Don't know.

3. The i5 version of SpeedStep is kicking in and dropping the multiplier to X16 during idle times.

4. Don't know.

5. I use WD Greens in my torrent box (3.3 GHz Q6600) for storage. And the drives have no problem keeping up with uTorrent.

 

[phyco126]

1 - Don't worry about it using your RAM, it won't affect system performance. If anything, it will boost performance in gaming.

2 - Your system is pulling some of that RAM for either video or some other reason, so its untouchable. Don't worry about it, its only .08 GB of RAM. A browser uses more RAM than that. You won't miss it.

4 - It's not wasting RAM on anything. It will use it as needed when its needed. If you really want to not waste RAM, I suggest going into your start-up manager in windows and disabling programs that automatically start when entering windows. If you need any help with that, google it as it is really easy to do.

5 - Now of all the things you mentioned, this is a problem to show concern for. Is there any way to run a diagnostics on the hard drive to make sure it isn't bad? WD has one for free on their website, just go there and find your HDD then under support they have a diagnostic tool you can download and run.

Are you running any other programs or downloading multiple things at once?

 

[ozsa]

2. Its not .08GB RAM, I can use only half of my 4GB, and I dont use my system for gaming at all, sometimes I'm going out of memory and that sucks...if I know this stupid win7 does this, I buy 8GB cheap ram, half the price of the mushkins...
5. I looked after it, and people said utorrent version 3 has this bug, 2.2.1 is going ok for me now. The HDD is not fast, but it cannot possibly ever be that slow to not keep up with an 5MB/s download.

I think putting main VGA the PCI-E in the bios, disables the onboard VGA, but the CPU VGA is still working in the i5 2500k, is there a way to disable that ?

Thanks!

 

[ozsa]

Also how can I make the CPU run stable at 4.5ghz without dropping down to the 16x multiplier ?

 

[k1114]

To disable the igpu, do not have a monitor in the mobo and do not have virtu running. There has to be something more than your igpu taking your ram because it can only take a max of 512mb. The extra ram amount shown in dxdiag is shared ram that is dynamically shared between the discrete gpu and system. There is no way to change this but it only uses ram when you run out of vram. You can also check msconfig, boot tab, advanced options, nothing should be checked.

It drops to 16x to save power, this does not affect performance at all. So unless you like more power consumption and heat, keep it on.

 

[phyco126]

2 - I get it, I miss read that as something else. That is indeed weird, but it is possible that the igpu is sucking all that RAM and holding it hostage, though I have never seen an integrated gpu take away that much RAM.

As k1114 said, make sure that you have your monitor plugged into your dedicated GPU and not the motherboard slot. Ensure that every option in bios forces your PC to use your dedicated card, not integrated. The GPU in the 2500 shouldn't run at that point, possibly freeing up some RAM.

 

[ozsa]

In BIOS I cannot change anything to free up the reserved RAM, my monitor is plugged into my HD6570..what else I could do ? its pretty stupid I will have to buy 4g more ram just because win 7 takes it all and reserves for things I never wanted to...

 

[k1114]

Did you check msconfig?

 

[ozsa]

Did you check msconfig?

At msconfig boot,advanced, nothing is checked. Even if the igpu takes 512ram, where is the rest of the 1.5g ram ? the VGA card takes another 250 (if cpu-z is showing it correctly) but then its still 1250 missing...

 

[k1114]

Have you tried different ram slots and reset the bios? A discrete card will not steal ram, the system will still be able to use it.

 

[ozsa]

I will try it, but in bios there's nothing to set for the ram, it recognizes as 4GB, this is a windows 7 stuff...I might just install a 64bit version of XP, really hating win 7 for this thing, its just stupid

 

[phyco126]

I have never seen Windows 7 do that, and I have used several W7 machines. But if you like XP, go with XP. Personally, I have XP and Vista on my computer.

 

[ozsa]

I did something and achieved 1G more ram, so now I have 3g usable, 1g reserved.
1. disabled intel virtualization tech -->> restart, I had 3g ram.
2. went back to bios, enabled it, again I had 3g ram..I was like wtf..?
3. I disabed Render Standby (North bridge) and IGD multimonitor aswell, restarted, had 2GB ram again.
4. disabled those at step3, had 3g ram again.

So those to things at step3, disabled the GPU of the i5 CPU, at least I didnt have other GPU source in CPU-Z. But there is still 1G ram that is reserved. Now in dxdiag my HD6570 has 1777RAM, so it takes 1265MB from somewhere...searching how to disable that now..

Strangest thing, if I enable the CPU's internal graphic card, it will have 512MB, and the HD6570 will have 1200, so that means I should have 3gb usable ram, but instead I have 2gb. I just dont get where the hell it disappears.. I'm not using VIRTU btw at all.

 

[k1114]

You could go to display settings>advanced settings, and it breaks down the vram or save the dxdiag. The extra memory is the shared memory which is part of the usable. I have those bios settings default which I think are on and all my ram is usable. This is definitively not normal. I'd hate to ask but are you sure you're 64bit? Or else it maybe an issue with the ram slots or even bent cpu pins.

 

[ozsa]

I use Win7 32bit, but the bios recogizes the 4GB, also the windows, and it cannot be a ram error since I managed to use 3GB of it, I cannot believe that the half of a ram is bad..i mean, thats just impossible, its all bad, or none.

Now I see that my VGA card has hyper memory, thats why it has 1777 ram, on the hypermemory sheet it says "at 3GB system ram, your 512VGA card will have 1700MB, but I have 4GB ram, so the card should run at something like 22xxMB, now I dunno why. If it regonizes as 4GB ram the vga card should take even more ram. now im searching if i can disable this hyper memory... there is one in the bios, but dont know if thats for the CPU or the VGA card..will get back later

btw at advanced settings it says clearly, dedicated video memory 512MB, shared 1274MB

 

[ozsa]

I asked it from sapphire website, they said this.
Dear Sir:
It is hyper memory function. Also sorry, there is no way to disable hyper memory function.
thats sad.

 

[ozsa]

so k1114 you have the same setup as I do ?

 

[k1114]

Shared can be used by the system and as vram, it is dynamic. The system can use all of that amount and the gpu can use all of that amount or either can use any amount in between at the same time. The shared amount is only used by the gpu when the gpu runs out of dedicated vram. You can't disable it or change it and it's always around 25% of total ram. All gpus integrated and discrete have shared memory. System video memory is the amount that the system can't use and is being "stolen." I have asrock z68 pro 3, 2500k, 560ti so just the same bios settings.

32 bit cannot use all 4gb of ram, it's a limitation of 32 bit, it will see all 4 gbs though. So there is no issue, usually everyone uses 64 bit to use 4gb or more of ram as there really is no drawback of 64 bit unless you want to run 16 bit software. Which can actually still be done with the use of dosbox or virtualization software.

 

[ozsa]

So you say with win7 64bit you have no reserved memory at all ? do you know a good ram tester program to check if they both actually work fine ? (I doubt they are faulty but just to see)

 

[k1114]

Do you have 2x2gb sticks? You never really said in the op, although you said both so I assume yes. Half a stick can't be bad but you can run memtest if you want to test it. The memory is not being reserved, 32 bit just cannot address that much memory for the system so instead of wasting it, the os uses it elsewhere. But yes with 64bit and a discrete gpu, all ram should be usable.

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html