Adding another monitor has slowed my computer right down

[josshhh]

hello

i have been having afew problems ever since i got another monitor (running two 1336x768 monitors) and my RAM cannot seem to keep up [ link http://imgur.com/MNtDxRn ] And as you can see my ram is available but not free , i feel it is the RAM which is the problem here but not sure how to get this memory free as i never had memory problems before i added the other monitor.

Specs
- 32GB Ocz Onyx SSD (Boot drive)
- Various HDD's
- ASUS 2GB Dual Fan 7770 1.2GHZ core clock
- AMD 960T Quad core , Core unlocked and overclocked to AMD 1160T 6 Core at 3.85ghz
- 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz Ram
- XFX 850W PSU
- Creative Audiology SoundCard
- Asrock n68c-s Motherboard


Thanks in advance

 

[wanderer11]

Your specs all look fine. What exactly is slowing down?

 

[wanderer11]

Your specs all look fine. What exactly is slowing down?

 

[josshhh]

i have no idea my memory no longer seems to be free , here is another view i can see a problem with very little memory is ready its all on standby but i need that free

http://i.imgur.com/23kzVhx.jpg

 

[willard]

You are not running out of memory, you're using less than half of it. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely nothing wrong.

Did you actually notice slowdowns, or just notice that you've got a lot of memory listed as 'standby' and assumed that was a problem?

 

[getochkn]

My RAM usage is almost exactly the same as yours and no issues. Don't worry about the terms MS uses in terms of free or standby, if something needs it, it will be available.

 

[josshhh]

In reply to Willard : I notice Google chrome can freeze up and some programs freeze up time to time , and ive just done some research and found out like you said available ie ready to be used wherever and the amount free needs to be as little as possible so yes i just assumed that without thinking

 

[getochkn]

Are you trying to game on the 2 screens or what is the "slowdown" you are noticing?

 

[josshhh]

no i use only one monitor for gaming , and the slowdown is as said above google chrome and photoshop and lightroom seem to freeze up , while gaming on BF3 i can max it out and not encounter any issues providing i have it on one monitor but i don't want dual monitor gaming. I can play eve online with 2 clients maxed and its still fine

 

[josshhh]

Also google chrome likes to close and restart saying it crashed

 

[willard]

Reinstall your video card drivers.

 

[wdmfiber]

Are you gaming at 2732x768? Then you should lower your settings, as that's pushing as many pizels as one 1920x1080 monitor. A bit much for a 7770.

For general browing with crome? 8 gigs is lots, you wouldn't notice a problem with half that amount.
_________________
*edit
I see you provided more info. Only gaming with one monitor.

 

[getochkn]

Sounds like a chrome issue. Maybe uninstall and reinstall that, delete some of the cache stuff from it. It happens. My IE freezes from time to time now and I don't know why. Doesn't bother me, I only use it for a few specific things.

I think it's just something that happened around the same time you hooked up the second monitor but not neccesarily related.

 

[josshhh]

i game on one monitor at 1336 , one of my friends mentioned a point , my chrome install is currently on my SSD which only has 2gb free maybe it struggles to cache files? photoshop and lightroom could just be small things as they are on separate HDD's.

i have also completely removed all graphics drivers and re-installed

 

[getochkn]

Is your scratch disc in photoshop set to use your SSD or HDD though? it normally defaults to C all the time. Virtual memory or page file on the SSD or HDD? And yes, clear up that SSD as SSD's can get wonky when they get low on space or so I've read.

 

[willard]

my SSD which only has 2gb free maybe it struggles to cache files?

Ding ding ding, we have a culprit!

1. NEVER let an SSD fill up that much. You're burning through your write cycles many times faster than you would with 20% or more free space.

2. NEVER let your OS drive fill up that much.

3. Do NOT use a 32GB drive as an OS drive. This is not close to enough space, if you stripped Windows bare you can get it down to maybe 20GB. Stock Windows is going to use about 120% of the space you want used on a 32Gb SSD.

Either get a bigger SSD, swap it to cache mode (never done this, will probably require a Windows reinstall) and install Windows to an HDD, or aggressively cut down usage in the SSD to get at least 20% free space. You can't fill your system drive 99% full and expect the system to work well.

[Edit] It's worth clarifying here, I think. Was in a hurry this morning and didn't get to dive very deep on this.

Filling up a system drive is bad, because Windows is constantly reading and writing things on the drive. With a mechanical drive, this results in very high fragmentation, which directly increases latency and reduces performance. I can't tell you how many computers I've seen where performance had been completely crippled by a full system disk, though this is much less of a problem now than it used to be. When I was in high school, a 2+ GB disk was practically unheard of and required using the brand new FAT32 filesystem to support. The most common form of storage? A 0.00144GB "high density" floppy disk.

On an SSD, you don't have fragmentation, which is good. You do have wear leveling, however, which can be far more sinister. Basically, your drive is made up of a bunch of "cells", each of which can only be written to so many times (reads are effectively unlimited). So, if you write to one cell more than the others, it dies sooner and you have a problem.

To combat this, SSDs will move data around in order to free up low use cells, and stop using high use cells. If you fill the drive to 99% capacity, however, it can't really do this anymore. It will end up just hammering on the same small set of cells over and over again, until they fail. In addition, SSD performance drops as usage increases, and this drop can be very severe, particularly in older or cheaper drives.