Sudden performance issues

[Jameziam]

Find the computer specs at the bottom of the post!


My system has been running very smoothly with everything, from rendering, playing games and loading various programs, but all of a sudden, I have been experiencing small and fairly brief freezes. Most noticeably in games. One game, it has been worst in, is Smite, this is capped at 150FPS, which I run easily, but all of a sudden it freezes for second or two, then the FPS counter goes to about 11, then goes back to normal. I am not going to include a screenshot or anything of Task Manager since everything seems completely normal, my CPU usage is only ever normally at 5%, memory only goes to 5 out of 16 GB and the disk usage is very low usually at 0 - 5% if even that. I tried Resource Monitor, which I will put a screenshot in of, since I don't understand it fully.



In terms of computer maintenance, I regularly clean dust off of the hardware, so far I haven't replaced the thermal paste, which might be worth doing. I run disk cleanup and defrag on a regular basis and have scanned for errors etc, with non popping up. I have also ran virus / malware checks. I thought it could be something to do with Superfetch, I am still having problems after disabling it, I have disabled the option for it on chrome as well. My computer's power plan is also high performance. The temperatures are very low for my computer, the CPU reaches 30 degrees Celsius at the most, if even that.

I am really confused and would really appreciate any help, thanks in advance to anyone who tries to help!

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 750D FULL TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-5820K (3.3GHz) 15MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® X99-S: ATX, HSW-E CPU, USB 3.0, SATA 6 GB/s
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 970 - 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, 1 DP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON HYPERX SAVAGE SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W VS SERIES™ VS-650 POWER SUPPLY
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 8.1 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Windows 10 Upgrade
FREE Upgrade to Windows 10 with all Windows 7 & Windows 8.1 Purchases*
DVD Recovery Media
Windows 10

 

[ubuysa]

The clues are in that Resource Monitor output. There is one thing that leaps out in the graphs on the right:

You exceed 100 hard page faults per second several times, you'll notice that your CPU usage maxes out at the same time and your disk usage peaks at that time too. This is indicative of excessive paging which is a symptom of RAM exhaustion. Windows pages when RAM is in short supply; paging is a mechanism whereby the least frequently referenced pages of RAM are stolen and their contents written out to the pagefile, these RAM pages are then freed to increase the amount of available RAM. This isn't a problem at the time because no process was referencing those pages and so their loss from RAM isn't an issue. However, if a process later references those pages they have to be paged back in to RAM from disk - and this is a BIG issue because the process is delayed whilst this (slow) operation takes place. Paging requires both CPU cycles to move the pages and it can place a heavy load on the disk if a lot of pages have to be moved. The peak in CPU and disk usage at the same time is typical of excessive paging.

100 hard page faults per second is a very high paging rate (this is the page in rate) even for short periods and this is almost certainly the cause of your momentary freezes.

Basically, something is consuming all your 16GB of RAM and Windows is paging. The big question is what process? If you're exhausting 16GB of RAM it's most likely to be a memory leak from somewhere rather than just a big program. Memory leaks happen when a badly coded program acquires memory from Windows and then doesn't properly return it (i.e. free it up) when it's finished with it. The program's (or rather the process's) RAM usage just continues to grow until RAM is near exhaustion and Windows needs to page. Since you don't see high RAM usage all the time it's possibly a process that comes and goes? Browser add-ons are a very common cause of memory leaks as are the (typically free) utility programs you often see people installing.

I think as a first go at isolating this issue I'd suggest that you close everything except the game you're playing. Try to close all non-essential processes so that all you have running is Windows and the game. See whether the freezing happens then? If it doesn't then a process of elimination should help identify the culprit.

I'd also ask why you disabled Superfetch and what issues you think you were having with it?

 

[Jameziam]

Thank you very much for the help, I will try to do what you have suggested. I disabled Superfetch because I heard that it can slow down a computer, so I thought it was worth trying, should I just enable it again?

 

[ubuysa]

Thank you very much for the help, I will try to do what you have suggested. I disabled Superfetch because I heard that it can slow down a computer, so I thought it was worth trying, should I just enable it again?

Yes, enable Superfetch. There are a lot of myths about concerning Superfetch. In brief, Superfetch is designed to speed up your computer by pre-loading into RAM those programs you frequently use. It's very intelligent so it's behaviour changes with yours, it can load the code for different programs at different times of the day for example, based on your usage patters. Some people worry about Superfetch because it seems to 'use' a lot of RAM. Actually this is a good thing because the RAM is most likely being used by programs you're about to use! In any case, Superfetch loaded pages are treated as cache and can (and are) overwritten if another process needs them, in addition Superfetch runs at a fairly low priority and does not impact user programs (which run at higher priorities). In short it does not (of itself) slow your computer down, on the contrary it can speed things up.

Some people get really worked up about RAM usage. Using most of your RAM is a good thing - you paid for all that RAM and so you want it to be used. Superfetch is just one of the memory management components that manage memory, their goal is to use as much RAM as possible (because programs and data MUST be in RAM for the CPU to be able to use them) but not to exhaust RAM. Thus high RAM usage is a good thing, but exhausting RAM is not. Paging (which I'm certain you are seeing) is the result of exhausting RAM.

 

[Jameziam]

It is a bit weird. I through multiple programs on and off, didn't make a difference to the game. I feel it could just be the game, but I really don't know, since I tried to play battlefield 1, being much more resource intensive. And it ran as smooth as it ever did, with literally no FPS drops. Overall my PC is running much slower, especially when loading pretty much anything. Thanks.

 

[ubuysa]

It is a bit weird. I through multiple programs on and off, didn't make a difference to the game. I feel it could just be the game, but I really don't know, since I tried to play battlefield 1, being much more resource intensive. And it ran as smooth as it ever did, with literally no FPS drops. Overall my PC is running much slower, especially when loading pretty much anything. Thanks.

It could well be that game, you'll see that your network activity peaks at the same time too. It might be worth checking the game's forum to see whether other users are experiencing the same issue. With 16GB or RAM you shouldn't really be paging at all, 100 page faults per second is a lot so something RAM related is going on (for you at least) in this game.

If your PC is running slow in general I'd do a thorough malware scan first, ideally with two different scanning engines. It's not impossible that the slowdown (and possibly the paging) is malware related.

It might be worth defragging the HDD (but not the SSD of course). Are all programs installed on the SSD? Have you moved the pagefile.sys file to the HDD? The commonest cause of PC slowdowns is file fragmentation of the hard disk, if Windows and your programs are installed on the SSD they won't be affected of course, but if your data files are badly fragmented on the HDD things may well run slower.

It might be worth running the Windows Performance Monitor to see whether it can identify what's causing your issues. Obviously it needs to be running when you're having problems but as a baseline (and to get used to using it) you can run it at anytime - it does no harm whatsoever. You'll find it in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Performance Monitor. Here's how to do a basic run...

1. Expand the Data Collector Sets menu section.
2. Then expand the System section.
3. Click on the System Performance entry and then click the green (start) arrow on the top menu line.

The performance monitor is now running collecting performance data. By default it will stop after 60 seconds (and you can't change that in this data collector set). When it stops (the start arrow will go green again) you can look at the results. Here's how to analyse those results....

1. Expand the Reports section.
2. Expand the System section.
3. Expand the System Performance section.
4. There will be an entry there for every time the Performance Monitor has been run, the entries are data stamped.
5. Click on the latest entry in there to see the data collected.

You get a summary with red, yellow, and green 'lights' for each resource type to quickly identify any bottlenecks and an overview of the maximum load that each resource sustained. This is to enable you to quickly focus on the problem area.

You can also expand any of the resource areas, and expand the sub-sections you'll find in some of those. You'll see that you can click on most of the headers in these reports to sort in either ascending or descending order on that field. Much of these numbers might not make much sense to you but enough of them will to probably let you figure out what is consuming your resources.

You can create your own performance counters to measure almost anything you want, you can also extend the time the data collector runs for. To do that you need to create your own data collector set. Here's how to do that....

1. Under Data Collector Sets, right click User Defined and select New and then Data Collector Set.
2. In the dialog box that opens give the collector set a name. Leave the radio button Create from a Template checked and click Next.
3. In the template list select System Performance and click Next. Also click Next to accept the report file location default.
4. Check the radio button to Open Properties for this Data Collector set and click Finish.
5. The new data collector set dialog box will open. Click the Stop Condition tab.
6. Change the Overall Duration to whatever value you want. NOTE: Long run times will generate a LOT of data, make sure you have lots of disk space!

It's worth playing around with the performance monitor so that you know how to use it when you need it. You might also try running a System Diagnostics report, though don't get too excited if it finds some errors, these are not always a problem!

 

[Jameziam]

Would you like some screenshotes of Performance Monitor? I don't really understand the standard for what is good or bad on it, but it doesn't seem to be bad to be honest. What is a good standard for Disk Activity in terms of KB/sec Disk I/O? It seems to be very active, at one point it went to 240,000 KB/sec Disk I/O, which seems very high to me.

 

[ubuysa]

Would you like some screenshotes of Performance Monitor? I don't really understand the standard for what is good or bad on it, but it doesn't seem to be bad to be honest. What is a good standard for Disk Activity in terms of KB/sec Disk I/O? It seems to be very active, at one point it went to 240,000 KB/sec Disk I/O, which seems very high to me.

By all means post screenshots but you can if you want post the whole report. If you right click on the report entry in the performance monitor and select View > Folder you'll see all the files that make up that report. The file 'report.html' contains all the data so if you copy that and either post it here or PM it to me I'll gladly take a look. Obviously to be of any use it needs to be run at a time when you're having problems, and ideally when you get the in-game freeze. You might have to create a user defined data collector set with a longer run time to capture the freeze event. You might also want to capture a second report when your "...PC is running much slower, especially when loading pretty much anything" and post or PM that report as well. If the files are too big to post upload them to a public space in the cloud and PM me the link and I'll grab them from there and take a look.

It's vital though that the performance monitor is running and collecting data at the time you're having problems, it's obviously of no use when things are going well.

BTW. How much disk data is too much is like asking how long is a piece of string, it depends on the data and on your config. You have a lot of RAM a big CPU and an SSD, so 240 MB/sec doesn't sound like very much at all to me, but that not based on anything factual just my gut feel.