CPU Bottleneck / Overheating

[Xiahou]

Maybe check Event Viewer to see if there's any clues (errors) to a problem there?

[edyzmedieval]

I actually switched the power usage to max power, so it doesn't change anything when it's on charge. Event Viewer showed me nothing.

Two things I noticed - Hard Disk is very often over 40-50% usage and whenever CoD is on - 100% + RAM is at 80%, using 4 GB.

This is what I found weird. Double checked - it has 8 GB, but it uses 80% and it's at almost 4 GB.

[Xiahou]

Ok, so that sounds like your system RAM is shared with your GPU. IIRC, this is pretty common on laptops.

Now it does sound like a lack of RAM. All of the hard drive activity is probably indicative of swapping- RAM contents writing itself out to disk to make room for more data. Swapping kills performance.

If it's an option, you might want to see if you can go into the BIOS and cut back on how much is allocated to the GPU, since it only seems to be using about 2Gbs. That might be a short-term workaround. Long term, get more RAM.

[Csargo]

Ok, so that sounds like your system RAM is shared with your GPU. IIRC, this is pretty common on laptops.

Now it does sound like a lack of RAM. All of the hard drive activity is probably indicative of swapping- RAM contents writing itself out to disk to make room for more data. Swapping kills performance.

If it's an option, you might want to see if you can go into the BIOS and cut back on how much is allocated to the GPU, since it only seems to be using about 2Gbs. That might be a short-term workaround. Long term, get more RAM.

So, he's only got 4gb of actual RAM then? The other 4 is from the GPU?

[Xiahou]

That's kinda what it sounds like to me.

[Csargo]

Ah, so is it keeping the other 2gb as a buffer for swapping in data from the HD? I'm guessing that's the case at least.

[Husar]

Well, if we employ some advanced mathematics here.....if 4GB usage are 80%, that would mean the system has 5GB available. Using advanced quantum physics, we can deduce from this, that 3GB might be reserved for something else. I think some of that info should actually be in the performance tab of the task manager, or whatever the second tab is called in non-German.

If that is the case, I would follow Xiahou's advice and see whether you can find the BIOS setting that allocates 3GB to the GPU and reduce that to zero, which should leave the GPU with the 4GB of its own memory and give the system the full 8GB.

[Csargo]

Is it using his hard-drive as virtual memory? That seems weird if your RAM isn't being fully utilized.