Hi, my computer is now 7 years old and recently when I play WoW I get a system message telling me I am low on memory and I need to shut a program. That would be fine if I had a bunch running but I don’t - only WoW. I used to be able to play and have a web browser up at the same time.
My question: is this a memory problem due to RAM (I have 8GB) or memory on my graphics card (2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770)?
My current RAM is 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24). I have 2 sticks of 4gb.
I would like to go to the store this week and pick up some more RAM but is there anything I should look for when buying for a computer of this age? I’m thinking the current RAM might not be compatible? Also, I looked inside my computer and it appears that although I have 2 free slots, one of them is not accessible due to a heat sink/fan for another component. Is it okay to purchase 1 stick vs 2? I have limited computer knowledge and don’t want to make a mistake when purchasing something.
The motherboard I have is ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z87-A (SOCKET 1150).
Thank you for your time and any suggestions.
What is Task Manager reporting when you are playing WoW?
What graphic settings do you have WoW at and resolution?
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Monitor resolution is 1920x1080
In game graphics levels are mostly set to Fair and Low.
I don’t think this is VRAM related. Minimum system requirements are 4gb of main system ram and a 2gb graphics card.
If your VRAM is being overtaxed, it will spill into main system ram (slow) which then if insufficient will spill over to the hard drive page file/virtual memory. In this case, you’re likely to just get virtual memory and page filing with poor performance. But I suppose an error could happen like this.
Make sure your memory is actually set up properly. Look at task manager and ensure that you don’t have 4gb of your 8gb as hardware reserved or something.
Also report back main memory usage while playing the game.
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I agree with Sal, does not look to be video ram. Most likely system ram but we can’t confirm that until you look at task manager while playing.
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I opened Task Manager while in game and it varied from 45% to 71% of Memory. The categories across the top of task manager are cpu, memory, disk and network.
Also I have a program called Speccy which tells me what hardware I have and it says I have 8gb of RAM, and doesnt say anything is wrong with some of it.
During the test where you had 71% usage, did the game crash?
Go to task manager and see what this says underlined in green:
https://i.imgur.com/6wlQUE1.png
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Even just firefox browser open it tells me I hav 2.1gb in use and 5.8gb available. Cached is 2.7gb…is that normal or something I can clear out?
Yes, the game crashed when it was around 70ish%.
My Hardware reserved is 62.4MB
I don’t have many addons. I’m on 64bit and this is what I have:
Operating System
Windows 8.1 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 4770 @ 3.40GHz 21 °C
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z87-A (SOCKET 1150) 28 °C
Graphics
BenQ GL2450H (1920x1080@60Hz)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 (Gigabyte) 26 °C
Storage
111GB Samsung SSD 840 EVO 120GB (SSD) 24 °C
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-1E6164 (SATA) 23 °C
Optical Drives
ASUS DRW-24F1ST a
Audio
High Definition Audio Device
I will try those steps. Do you think if they don’t work that buying an additional memory stick would fix it?
I don’t think it’s a hardware problem, try the steps above.
More information on this error:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/not-enough-memory/375807/6
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I just tried those steps but it didn’t seem to fix it. I changed the names of the folders, and restarted the game but it crashed again without any addons or anything. By the way, I really appreciate the time you are taking to help me.
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How about this method, did you try this?
EDIT: nm seems like you did…hmm…can you show us what other background processes you have running while playing WoW in the task manager?
Also, how much free space is there on your windows installation drive and the game install drive?
Are you using DX11 or 12? If you are DX12, try DX11. That card is quite old so perhaps it doesn’t like the featureset of DX12 if you are using that API.
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my SSD with windows has: 27gb free (of 120gb), my harddrive with WoW on it has 680gb free (of 2TB).
I’m not sure about DX11 or 12, where would I find that? I’m not sure what it is.
I tried to include a pic of my task manager but it says I cannot include a link in my post
It’s under advanced graphics settings under graphics API.
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same error message each time? “low on memory and I need to shut a program”
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Yes, except a couple times the whole thing has just locked up and I’ve had to restart the computer so I couldn’t see the text of the message. But 95% of the time it’s low on memory and you need to shut a program.
What do you think Lily? maybe run memtest?
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bad RAM would just crash and give another error
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