RAM being overwhelmed suddenly when playing games. . . why?

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

So recently, the last few days, I have closed games to find the windows warning saying that I am low on memory and to close programs to prevent memory loss. I have never had this, and I have 6GB RAM which should be plenty.

This seems to have happened in correspondence with me ditching Norton for BT Netprotect plus (Which is literally just Mcafee but given to BT customers for free) My memory hangs around 40-45 percent when I am just running simple processes like chrome or word, which seems quite high, but not sure if that is higher than usual. There is one MCafee process that uses about 200mb of memory, called mcshield.exe, but this might go up while I am playing games. I tried turning live-protection off and played some blacklight: retribution, and it crashed about 40 mins into gameplay. In task manager the RAM was in the 90 percent area.

Any solutions for this? I really like Mcafee so I don't want to replace it, heck it might not be even causing the problem. Here are some specs if you need them.

Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit
Processor: Intel core i5-3201M (Dual core running at 2.50GHz)
GPU: Unfortunately an integrated one - intel HD 4000 I believe
RAM: 6GB (5.90 usable)
It's a samsung laptop, unsure on specific model, but I have owned it just over a year now.

Let me know if you need more info. Thanks if you have a solution!

[Legendary old man]

Your computer might be getting hot when playing games. The first thing it does is start to underclock the CPU. After that you will have a crash or lockup. Have you tried cleaning out the cooling?
http://netlans.com/articles/computer-tips-overheating-laptop-repair

This could also be cause by to many programs running in the background.

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

It's not overheating, I know that, I have a constant check on my CPU temp and I have a cooling pad that really keeps the temp down. I also maintain my laptop so background processes are at a minimum, and this problem is sudden, without me installing anything new, except MCafee, which has actually helped speed up my system, unless I am gaming for some reason.

[Legendary old man]

Uninstall your anti virus long enough to see if that is the issue.

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

I'll give re-seating a go. I found Mcafee to be way better than norton, which blocks chrome updates and deletes some downloads that are safe. But let's not get into a discussion about AVs haha.

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

I have reseated the RAM, and it is definetely not the heat! I keep a constant check on the heat of my laptop.

Still getting issues.

[UberFiend]

Because you don't have a graphic card with it's own vram, some of your ram is shared with igpu.

Reduce processes, bells & whistles.
Disable GPU Acceleration in web browser, Disable Aero, & set Desktop Appearance to Performance.

Consider going up to 8gb ram, or see if you can reduce the amount of shared memory in BIOS.

[Q2M]

Razer Gamebooster works great for easily disabling unnecessary processes while gaming.

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

I've never had these issues before though, so it's not that I don't have enough. I check when playing games an it's on about 30-40 percent, yet they suddenly crash/act slow or I close the game to find the 'memory low' error. It seems odd.

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

I had Razer Gamebooster before and it didn't make a difference but I guess I could try it again. I already have the running background processes at a minimum.

[UberFiend]

Originally posted by HairyDrummerGuy:

I've never had these issues before though, so it's not that I don't have enough.

Your computer disagrees with you, I am merely explaining why.

What games are you playing?

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

It happens on games such as Gmod, Portal 2, blacklight: retribution. I've had my laptop just over a year with no issues on these games.

Just played portal 2 with task manager running alongside so I can monitor, the memory stayed around 51-55 percent but the CPU and disk fluctuated, sometimes maxing out for a second or two. The CPU stayed at around 50 percent but dropped lower, while the disk stayed very low but sometimes shot up, presumably at loading times. (At some points I noticed it was steam itself using a lot of the disk up, not portal 2.

Portal 2 was running smoothly at around 60 fps the whole time. I was playing the chapter 'the fall' as that has a lot of large open areas n stuff.

Hope this helps :)

[Meow]

I don't know what all these other people saying to reseat the ram etc are talking about, it wont have to do anything with the ram or its positioning or the CPU. If you are hanging at around 50% ram when idle that is fine, i have 8 gig RAM and it is usually 40%-50% when idle. What you could do is look at the process list and sort by Memory, run up the games which cause the issue and see how much they use, i highly doubt that it is an issue with the machine physically, its more probable that either a driver or system update has decided to screw you over.

Your GPU is essentially your CPU, that is why it is spiking, from my knowledge all CPU's wildly fluctuate sometimes even when idle, its just what they do. If you could provide the specific model it would help.

Tbh it does not sound like there is an issue... also how much space do you have left on your HDD?

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

Finally, some sense :) I'll go boot up a game and look at what is using up more ram and return with results.

I have 325 GB free of 673 left on my HDD by the way.

[Meow]

Originally posted by HairyDrummerGuy:

Finally, some sense :) I'll go boot up a game and look at what is using up more ram and return with results.

I have 325 GB free of 673 left on my HDD by the way.

Ok, so atleast you are not one of those people that cannot understand why their computer is slow when they have 50 meg left on their HDD xD

But yeah just check how much RAM it is using, also it is windows 8.1, which is known to be very buggy. Have you updated the system recently?

[Heather.Punk.Fae]

Yeah updated it yesterday. Played some portal 2 again and it was using up around 300MB and my RAM, as before, sat around halfway.