Good bang for my buck upgrade?

[Deja Thoris]

Hey there. I'm apparently pretty terrible at this these days so advice would be welcome! From 6.0 I've been getting the following system log warnings and my memory usage is through the roof (80-90% utilisation is standard with wow and a couple of browser windows open but cpu usage is low)

The warning:
The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention.
Scenario : Video memory resources are over-utilized and there is thrashing happening as a result. Reducing number of running programs and open windows may help resolve this condition.

My system specs:
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67GHz, 2668 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti
Adapter RAM 1.00 GB (1*073*741*824 bytes)


My nooby diagnosis is that my gfx card is struggling and using my physical memory. Would that be accurate or worthy of a lol noob comment? :P

Questions:
1) Is this something its worth throwing a few $$$ at?
2) Where is that $$$ best spent?
3) How does my cpu look these days. I get that its not bleeding edge by a long shot but is it still in the realms of acceptability?
4) If the gfx is a problem is going to a gtx760 a worthwhile upgrade?

Thanks!

[solvexx]

Hey there. I'm apparently pretty terrible at this these days so advice would be welcome! From 6.0 I've been getting the following system log warnings and my memory usage is through the roof (80-90% utilisation is standard with wow and a couple of browser windows open but cpu usage is low)

The warning:
The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention.
Scenario : Video memory resources are over-utilized and there is thrashing happening as a result. Reducing number of running programs and open windows may help resolve this condition.

My system specs:
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67GHz, 2668 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti
Adapter RAM 1.00 GB (1*073*741*824 bytes)


My nooby diagnosis is that my gfx card is struggling and using my physical memory. Would that be accurate or worthy of a lol noob comment? :P

Questions:
1) Is this something its worth throwing a few $$$ at?
2) Where is that $$$ best spent?
3) How does my cpu look these days. I get that its not bleeding edge by a long shot but is it still in the realms of acceptability?
4) If the gfx is a problem is going to a gtx760 a worthwhile upgrade?

Thanks!

A 650ti series graphics card is more than sufficient to play WoW.
My girlfriend plays on a 560ti and has seen no issue with the release of the 6.0 patch.
I mean, your CPU is several generations old, but I still don't see why it would fail completely if you were playing on low settings.

If it were me, I would save the graphics card and rebuild your entire system, but not everyone has that sort of money.

Perhaps someone with real IT trouble shooting experience can chime in on the error that you are receiving.

[Fascinate]

You dont need an upgrade tbh, and 1gb video card is enough for 1080p from my testing. You have a problem going on with your PC somewhere, 8 gigis of ram is plenty. I have WoW open and 7 tabs of chrome and my ram usage is 5.4gb's.

650ti is about as fast as my old gtx 465 and it played WoW great, i upgraded to a gtx 760 and i didnt notice any performance improvements. You are going to want to check what programs are being started when you turn your PC on and disable the ones that arent necessary. I use the program CCleaner to do this, im kind of embarassed i dont know how to do it in windows cause ive been using that program for so long lol. A last resort but pretty much guaranteed fix would be a reformat if you dont have a ton of stuff on your pc. Might be worth it if you cant find the fix, especially with WoD just around the corner.

[Deleted]

Hardware wise the best upgrade is the cpu. That i5 is one of the first ones and is a 2 core not 4 cores like todays. I got an i5 650 at work and at times its slow as hell. You may also have 1066 DDR3 which also adds up to that. Also look up that ram of yours, how many mhz is it, 1066 or 1333 cause if 1066mhz then you'd need a new pair of ram sticks as well. Additionally, you have the pc 4-5years and if you haven't changed the power supply i would upgrade that as well.

Not to the memory usage. 90% of 8gb isn't justify by just having wow and few chrome tabs open. That at best would use say 4-5gb or ram. What o/s you got? If you go to windows task manager how many stuff are running when windows loads up? To check when o/s loads how much memory usage you have, then with wow only and then open bronswer tabs as well. I suspect ram leakage from bronswer.

[Deleted]

Hardware wise the best upgrade is the cpu. That i5 is one of the first ones and is a 2 core not 4 cores like todays. I got an i5 650 at work and at times its slow as hell. You may also have 1066 DDR3 which also adds up to that. Also look up that ram of yours, how many mhz is it, 1066 or 1333 cause if 1066mhz then you'd need a new pair of ram sticks as well. Additionally, you have the pc 4-5years and if you haven't changed the power supply i would upgrade that as well.

Not to the memory usage. 90% of 8gb isn't justify by just having wow and few chrome tabs open. That at best would use say 4-5gb or ram. What o/s you got? If you go to windows task manager how many stuff are running when windows loads up? To check when o/s loads how much memory usage you have, then with wow only and then open bronswer tabs as well. I suspect ram leakage from bronswer.

So you say intel lies about this cpu being 4 core? And OP lies that he have 4 cores? ARK says it's 4 core.

[Fascinate]

Kosta i asked you once already to do your research before posting advice but you are still posting bad info and confusing people. His CPU is indeed a proper quad core and has nothing to do with the problems he is having in WoW. On top of that memory speed has very very little effect on gaming performance, ive seen benchmarks of ddr2 800 memory vs 2400mhz ddr3 and there was like 3 fps difference, varying depending on the game. The exception to this is AMD APU's, memory can have a massive advantage in games with those, but not standard desktop setups.

[tumppu]

I run wow with a i3, 4Gb RAM and ATI HD5670 :P Occasionally I get to a situation when memory is at about 80-85% usage and generally I just kill the browser at that point.

CCleaner and others like that I would not use, unless you really know what can be cleaned at what not. Anyway, sounds like there's an actual issue with either the hardware or the OS. Obvious question, have you upgraded all the drivers? Not just gfx.

[Fascinate]

Ccleaner is an awesome program actually, it sounds like you may be unfamiliar with it tumppu. There is a tab that says something like "startup" there it lists all the programs that start up with your PC. Many viruses can enable programs to start with your PC, using Ccleaner is a good way to identify them and disable them.

[tumppu]

Ccleaner is an awesome program actually, it sounds like you may be unfamiliar with it tumppu. There is a tab that says something like "startup" there it lists all the programs that start up with your PC. Many viruses can enable programs to start with your PC, using Ccleaner is a good way to identify them and disable them.

I'm familiar with it, I'm just wary of suggesting those to people, whose IT skills I do not know. It's not once or twice I've had to repair/reinstall PCs on which someone was a bit too trigger happy with CCleaner or similar software.

** It might have improved from the last time I checked it out. It's been a while, because I personally don't use those, I just look stuff up myself.

[Deleted]

So you say intel lies about this cpu being 4 core? And OP lies that he have 4 cores? ARK says it's 4 core.

Meh morning before coffee, was carried over by the 650 which is like todays i3, 750 is idd 4 cores.

[Fascinate]

Well im not suggesting he starts willy nilly deleting everything that shows up in startup lol. Clearly he would list everything on there and ask the forums what is supposed to be there and what isnt.

[Deleted]

Those specs seem fine for wow, the biggest bang for buck you can get right now would be a SSD hard drive (if you don't already have one) and a fresh install of windows and wow. It sounds like you haven't formatted in a long time, no doubt that's causing the issues.

[Deja Thoris]

Thanks a lot for all the insights folks! To healplix, yea this computer hasn't been reformatted in forever, that may be a large part of the problem.