Any way to monitor current memory ACCESS usage?

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 26, 2023

Everywhere I look for monitoring memory, I see USAGE monitors, as in how MUCH memory is in use. I want to see how much data is being transferred to and from memory, to see if it's a bottleneck. Performance monitor I thought might do it, I found something called "page reads per second", but it's showing a read every several seconds and I'm sure it's busier than that. I don't understand the terminology, is it sometimes not reading a page? I want to see how many bytes are being read and written to memory per second, or the % time the RAM is busy, etc.

DigitalGoat · Jun 27, 2023

Try Resource Monitor in the Start Menu, All Apps section. It allows you to pick any service/ task currently running to monitor for memory/ network/ CPU and disk use.

TairikuOkami · Jun 27, 2023

System Informer

System Informer, A free, powerful, multi-purpose tool that helps you monitor system resources, debug software and detect malware.

systeminformer.sourceforge.io

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 27, 2023

I can't see anything about RAM bytes transferred per second in either of those screenshots. I want something similar to this, but for RAM:

DigitalGoat · Jun 27, 2023

I don't think you will find anything like that, data in RAM tends not to change that quickly in general and a lot of the contents of memory is cache and working pages.
You can certainly measure the overall throughput of system RAM using WinSat but that is a snapshot measurement, probably not of use to you.
Task Manager's Memory tracker page is probably the closest you can get as it has a graph showing memory usage increasing/ decreasing at a set interval.
The other methods referenced in this thread will show you in figures how much memory useage changes byte by byte and what is using the memory, but this may be too detailed a view for what you want.

Depending on your skill level and knowledge you could get one of the 'AI' bots to write some code that will allow you to flesh it out into a custom utility for graphing memory read/ writes in MBs/ GBs per second.

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 27, 2023

I'm running programs I suspect are being limited by RAM access. The CPU is not producing much heat, but claims 100% usage. I also have rather slow RAM.

There are bots to write code? I got one to write a summary of a webpage, which it did quite well, I didn't know they could do programming. If they are able to write something like the above, aren't human programmers out of business?

pparks1 · Jun 27, 2023

Lamberto Vitali said:
I'm running programs I suspect are being limited by RAM access. The CPU is not producing much heat, but claims 100% usage. I also have rather slow RAM.

There are bots to write code? I got one to write a summary of a webpage, which it did quite well, I didn't know they could do programming. If they are able to write something like the above, aren't human programmers out of business?

Your system specs show a bunch of machines. What CPU, mobo chipset and speed memory are your currently running on the machine you suspect has resource contention?

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 27, 2023

Ryzen 9 3900XT
AMD Ryzen SOC
2132MHz DDR3 (should be 3200, but it crashes at that speed), and it's single channel as I have 3 chips and it stupidly doesn't duel the first two.

pparks1 · Jun 27, 2023

I assume you meant DDR4.

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 27, 2023

Correct.

pparks1 · Jun 27, 2023

have you tried running your RAM at DDR4 3200 with just 2 sticks? The more sticks you have, the harder it is for the memory controller to run them, especially at any overclocked speed.

Also, try to be sure that your sticks are on the qualified vendor list (QVL).

DigitalGoat · Jun 27, 2023

If you open a command prompt and enter the command winsat memformal you will see a performance score for your RAM, you can use this to test the different memory configurations to see which is optimal for your current hardware.
This score is not the be all and end all of system performance rating, but should allow you to see at a glance how different amounts of RAM in varying configurations is used by your system.

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 28, 2023

I used to have 2 sticks and they ran at 3200. I bought another 3200 and it caused the machine to crash in 2 minutes. Yet the stick works in another machine at 3200. So I stuck the stick from there into here, and it crashes every 6 hours, so I lowered the speed to 2/3rds, now it's stable. I'd rather have more RAM than faster RAM, so I'm sticking to this configuration.

WTF is a qualified vendor list? The MB is designed to take RAM at a certain speed. RAM at that speed should be compatible unless it's made incorrectly.

If anyone's interested, it's an MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max MB with two of Kingston KHX3200C16D4/32GX and one of Kingston 9905734-063.A00G

DigitalGoat · Jun 28, 2023

Lamberto Vitali said:
I used to have 2 sticks and they ran at 3200. I bought another 3200 and it caused the machine to crash in 2 minutes. Yet the stick works in another machine at 3200. So I stuck the stick from there into here, and it crashes every 6 hours, so I lowered the speed to 2/3rds, now it's stable. I'd rather have more RAM than faster RAM, so I'm sticking to this configuration.

WTF is a qualified vendor list? The MB is designed to take RAM at a certain speed. RAM at that speed should be compatible unless it's made incorrectly.

If anyone's interested, it's an MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max MB with two of Kingston KHX3200C16D4/32GX and one of Kingston 9905734-063.A00G

Not all RAM is made equally, different maufacturers use timings that may not be compatible with other manufacturers chips.
RAM on the QVL for a given motherboard has been tested on that board with a range of compatible CPUs and verified (for a given manufactured batch of RAM) that it works and is stable in the configurations tested.
Ram can behave differently depending on several factors, the power quality supplied by the motherboard, the controller on the CPU, the length of the traces, the chip timings, the number of RAM modules installed and many other variences.
Just because a RAM module appears on the QVL is still not a guarantee it will work, conversley RAM not on the QVL may well work just fine, the QVL is a 'this should work' guide.

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 28, 2023

The timings are stated in the SPD data given to the MB. The MB should then operate within those specs. When I've put two differing chips in, the MB goes at the slowest speed and the longest CAS timing. Virtually never do I find a problem unless the RAM is actually broken.

I'm using a decent Corsair PSU, and if the MB can't provide the correct power using that, then it's broken, it should adhere to the specs which will state the tolerances precisely.

Sounds rather like this QVL is pointless if you say it can be wrong either way.

pparks1 · Jun 28, 2023

Lamberto Vitali said:
I used to have 2 sticks and they ran at 3200. I bought another 3200 and it caused the machine to crash in 2 minutes.

Sadly, a lot of times memory controllers struggle the more chips you have, especially when they are running overclocked frequencies. The standard JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) speed of the chips is 2133Mhz. You have to enable the xmp (extreme memory profile) to get it to go over the stock frequencies up to the rated max speed of your DIMM's, which is 3200Mhz.

For example, on my machine, I wanted 64GB of RAM (as I run concurrent VM's in a lab and require memory), but even though my mobo supports 4 sticks of ram, I went with 2 x 32GB to get to 64GB of RAM. Had I run 4 x 16GB, I likely would have lost some of the speed and performance due to instability.

Lamberto Vitali said:
WTF is a qualified vendor list? The MB is designed to take RAM at a certain speed. RAM at that speed should be compatible unless it's made incorrectly.

QVL stands for Qualified Vendor List. It applies to each motherboard and is put out by the manufacturer (Asus, MSI, etc). Basically, this is a list of hardware that the manufacturer has specifically tested and knows will work with that motherboard. Chances are good that even if the RAM you pick is not on the list, it's gonna work. But the MFG does have a list of stuff that they can pretty much guarantee works. But even then, you may find and * in the footnotes saying it was tested using 2 x ##GB sticks and higher speeds aren't supported with more than 4 DIMM's.

pparks1 · Jun 28, 2023

Your HVL is here: X470 GAMING PLUS MAX | Motherboard | MSI Global

Notice how MSI says it's dependent upon which memory controller you have, and notice that based on the one I picked at ramdom, some chips are supported with 1/2/4 chip configurations and others aren't marked as compatible with 4.

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 28, 2023

Yeah that XMP annoys me. I've got in another machine a 3200 XMP and a 3200 normal. Alone, each one will go 3200. But the board will either do XMP or not, it won't enable it for one chip and not the other, so the two 3200 chips end up at a much slower speed which both are compatible with. The XMP stick won't go 3200 with XMP off, and the non-XMP stick won't do XMP mode.

Yikes, I just buy what memory I can find and live in hope. That last 32GB stick I bought, the price range was a factor of 2-3. I bought the cheapest. Pretty weird the Corsair memory isn't as good as the Kingston in that table.

pparks1 · Jun 28, 2023

Yeah, I haven't touched anything but G. Skill memory in probably the last 10 years. It's been fantastic for me.

Lamberto Vitali · Jun 29, 2023

Yet the table you posted shows GSkill is no good for my board, I can't use 4 sticks.

I just buy the cheapest with good specs and hope for the best (which usually ends up as Kingston). It helps having 8 computers so I can swap things about to make them all happy.

Any way to monitor current memory ACCESS usage?

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