CPU Bottleneck / Overheating

[Csargo]

Wouldn't it throw an error when booting if the ram was faulty? I was thinking that before, but I thought it wouldn't boot properly if one of the ram sticks was faulty?

[Husar]

Wouldn't it throw an error when booting if the ram was faulty? I was thinking that before, but I thought it wouldn't boot properly if one of the ram sticks was faulty?

I guess that could depend on the exact bug. Some RAM faults just lead to bluescreens for example. It is just very weird trying to make sense of these things all together:

1. Task Manager shows 8GB.
2. Diagnosis says with 4GB in use, 80% of the RAM are used (=5GB total?)
3. A game with recommended specs of 4GB stutters despite there being 8.
4. Alt-Tabbing is slow as though the RAM were full.

If it's not some kind of weird bug, then it could be malware of some sort hogging the resources.
I'm just really confused now.

On second thought, and after testing an Attila battle, maybe it is the CPU after all, I'd try reducing the settings, beginning with unit sizes. After all, even if the CPU is not at 100%, one single core could be, and that would then delay everything else.

Might also help to check which processes are using which resources and to what extent. After the last big Windows update for example, I had some update process go crazy and only deleting some cache files it creates caused it to calm down.

[edyzmedieval]

I don't understand why do I have 3.2 GB of RAM used at idle. When I have only 4 GB available left of course things are not gonna work well.

[Husar]

I don't understand why do I have 3.2 GB of RAM used at idle. When I have only 4 GB available left of course things are not gonna work well.

That's relatively normal because Windows, your drivers and so on will use RAM even at idle. When a game for example needs more RAM, Windows can also use less, not just by putting things into the HDD cache I think. On my tablet with 2GB RAM, Windows also uses less than 2GB of course, so the usage is dynamic to some extent. I upgraded my notebook from 4GB to 8GB and that increased the idle RAM usage but still made multitasking a lot faster. There's probably a maximum that Windows will use and a minimum, but between that it can obviously be a bit dynamic.
Plus that should be factored in when developers recommend a certain amount of RAM I would think. After all one can't play a game without an OS.

Basically I do not think the amount Windows uses is the big issue.

I just started the Ravenna Historical Battle in Attila, which takes place in a city, and Task Manager says Attila uses ~1.2-1.3GB of RAM while my overall RAM usage went up from ~4.0GB to ~5.7GB of 16GB. I don't think with that usage Attila is overloading your 8GB RAM, there has to be another problem.

[edyzmedieval]

I think it's because of ultra settings on Attila unit size and high-ultra graphics, it overloads the RAM.

When you technically only have 4GB of RAM available, things get choppy. I will upgrade my RAM and see if it's the case.

[edyzmedieval]

Cortana ate up 1 GB of my RAM... deactivated Cortana, suddenly my COD works almost perf.

[Xiahou]

Cortana ate up 1 GB of my RAM... deactivated Cortana, suddenly my COD works almost perf.

Nice find!
I don't have a gaming PC on Win10, but I always recommend auditing Windows10 privacy settings to people who do use it- a step of which is turning off Cortana.