RAM and latency

Hi,

having massive problems with RAM latency causing all havoc on my pc (soundcard crackling, programs slow, occasional system lockup)



a) Is this normal for 3GB tri channel Corsair dominator 1600MHz RAM C8D?

and b) performance tab in task manager constantly shows around 1GB of physical memory usage at all times, then sky rocketing when I doing anything.. is this also common?

Any help would be awesome! This latency thing has plagued me for ages..

Dunno if this helps. It a i7920 @ 2.6GHz but only shows around 1.6GHz.. the CPU usage shows around 1 percent so I assume the CPU slows down when not under load.. correct?




:Luca

RAM latency is in 10s of nano seconds. This is not your problem.

Many of the performance measures (namely, clock speed and latency) in memory tend to only matter in synthetic benchmarks, so this is probably not your problem.

None of what you described is related to memory latency. It also does not sound like a memory issue at all. Can you provide a bit more information?

Ok so..

It started with crackling issues coming through speakers via soundcard (doesn't do it with onboard sound).

Pinned it to latency because I ran DPC latency checker and it showed massive amounts of latency.
Also when PC is idle, there a whole lot of loading going on for no reason sometimes and thats when the crackling starts. Upon PC restart, crackling goes away for a while but after PC been on for a while it starts again.

Updated all drivers, ran memtest 7 passes, stress tests and all show up ok, but still latency and crackling/popping.

Sold card (Xonar D2X) and bought new one (couldn't be bothered with RMA), all was good again until recently.

Fresh install of Windows 7 with latest Xonar drivers. Installed no other programs. After a hour or so crackling starts again, RAM shows constant 30 percent usage at all time, DPC shows red spikes of system latency




I trying to figure out what causing this latency as the crackling popping issue only comes on then. It even gets to the point where everything I do lags, even opening windows, running media player, shit like that..

My system is in my sig. Thinking about going to a X-Fi prelude if it the card.. but no other users of Xonar reporting this issue that I can find.. I just don't know...

Feels like something on mobo not communicating right and slowing stuff down, as in not the RAM itself but the way it communicating with other components.. but again.. a guess on my part..

Any ideas?..

:Luca

UPDATE!

PC just turned on, no progs installed except audio drivers.. playing a song in media player..





Turn off music and shut down media player

..


Same shit when I play games (COD4, Half life and the like)..

Looks to me like a OS problem. I would track down what application is making constant usage of the hard drive(s). File indexing for faster searches?

Originally Posted by drescherjm

Looks to me like a OS problem. I would track down what application is making constant usage of the hard drive(s). File indexing for faster searches?

Sounds smart. Where do I start?


This is what I have, no crackling at the moment, this is just desktop by itself running




:Luca

and now I play music through media player and...




Sweet as! This is the shit I put up with... crackle pop one second.. restart PC then... all good... for a while.. then the crackle will start again..

:Luca

Post the task manager output when things are going bad. This could also be caused by an incompatible audio driver.

What I noticed is when the crackling is going, I had a picture open in picture viewer (while listening to music). When I dragged the size of the picture window the crackling went bananas.. then when I let it sit, the crackling mellowed out but still there... then again I dragged the picture window wider and instantly the crackling went nanas again..

What could this be? Its like my pc cant handle even playing a song without dying in the ass..

:Luca

Uninstall the Asus sound card drivers.
Uninstall the sound card itself
Install the onboard audio drivers if they're not installed already
See what happens.

You said it' doesn't do it with onboard sound? that's indicative of a driver incompatibility, or the sound card itself is faulty. This used to be (may still be?) a common problem with Creative sound cards, but I don't know much about Asus cards.

Originally Posted by ryan_975

You said it' doesn't do it with onboard sound? that's indicative of a driver incompatibility, or the sound card itself is faulty. This used to be (may still be?) a common problem with Creative sound cards, but I don't know much about Asus cards.

The driver being incompatible with what though?

Can I stress test mobo, soundcard seperatly?.. to find out what it incompatible with, or is it likely the OS?..

It done this when I had Vista installed aswell, now moved onto Windows7. I don't think it did it with XP tho can't remember if there was one occasion..

Could it be my OS, slowing shit up, or my PC just not being able to run the Xonar aswell as media player?...

:Luca

Originally Posted by Luca1

The driver being incompatible with what though?

Can I stress test mobo, soundcard seperatly?.. to find out what it incompatible with, or is it likely the OS?..

It done this when I had Vista installed aswell, now moved onto Windows7. I don't think it did it with XP tho can't remember if there was one occasion..

Could it be my OS, slowing shit up, or my PC just not being able to run the Xonar aswell as media player?...

:Luca

Incompatible with the OS. Or it's just plain buggy.

Originally Posted by ryan_975

Incompatible with the OS. Or it's just plain buggy.

Yeah thats what I starting to think... but 'how' can I test those things to find out do you think?

Buy different brand soundcard.. try that out...

Try different OS again?

There gotta be heaps of people using this card with this OS and not getting problems.. so how do I find out why I am?...

:Luca

If you have a copy of XP, try it out. If the issue is still prevalent, then it's the sound card itself.

Or if you don't want to be lazy, just buy a different sound card. Either way, it looks like you will be getting a new sound card.

IMO, it's a buggy/defective sound card since the issue occurred in Vista meaning there's less of a chance of an OS issue.

Originally Posted by Danny Bui

If you have a copy of XP, try it out. If the issue is still prevalent, then it's the sound card itself.

Or if you don't want to be lazy, just buy a different sound card. Either way, it looks like you will be getting a new sound card.

IMO, it's a buggy/defective sound card since the issue occurred in Vista meaning there's less of a chance of an OS issue.

Yeah, I don't think really it the OS, it either the card, which I don't think it is, because the last one I had, I lent to a friend for him to test, and he had no issues with it on his PC..

Which is why I think it either shit drivers, but alot of people own this card and don't have issues, so that narrows that down I think..

Or its my system.. something is conflicting.. unless someone can tell me how to test if its conflicting with my hardware, then I will buy a Auzentech X-fi prelude and see if that does the same thing.. if it does, then I will definitely know its my system...

Sound?

:Luca

Originally Posted by Luca1

unless someone can tell me how to test if its conflicting with my hardware, then I will buy a Auzentech X-fi prelude and see if that does the same thing.. if it does, then I will definitely know its my system...

Sound?

You answered your own question: To test if there's a conflict, TRY ANOTHER SOUND CARD. In fact, get the same exact card if you want to and see if the issues still prevails. If it does, definitely shitty drivers.

With that said, you said yourself that the onboard sound worked fine.

So if its shitty drivers then theres not much I can do about that is there?