Windows – Why Intel Core i3 processor with enough free RAM and low CPU usage become very slow

cpumemorytask-managerthreadswindows

In a computer with Intel Core i3 and 4GB of RAM running Windows 8.1 build 9600, in conditions I expect no have performance problems it become very very slow and it's close to freeze (or even freeze it)

see UPDATE at bottom

Conditions:

  • Enough free RAM
  • Enough free HD for swapping
  • 125-135 "processes" (*)
  • No database services such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc BUT Java and .NET frameworks
  • Some I/O unexpected peaks when I just using Chrome web browser and I'm not expecting swapping because free RAM

I guess "multitasking" is not so good when threads are >= 100, but it's empirical in an Intel with 2 cores.

Questions:

  • What other informaion I need to make the correct guess about my problem ?
  • More RAM (I'm not sure) could help me ? maybe decreasing I/O for swapping ?
  • A better processor with more cores ? 8 cores ?
    (Is any linear relationship between number of cores and thread limit ?)

Maybe related with:
https://serverfault.com/questions/365061/high-load-average-low-cpu-usage-why

Process Hacker screenshot:
Process Hacker screenshot

EDIT:

As @Roland Smith suggest, Google Chrome is a MONSTER consuming resources, I did the following experiment in Chrome / Firefox:

  • 29 tabs
  • More or less same extensions (I could disable all but I don't think it could change much)

Measure of RAM / CPU usage in both web browsers:

Chrome:  116  threads / 2-12% CPU / 60-70% RAM

Firefox: 72 threads / 2-6% CPU / 39% RAM

Google Chrome can gain stability and be very fluent using 1 thread for every tab / extension but definitely it's a cons when you need to have a lot

Best Answer

In google Chrome, every tab, web app and running extensions has its own process (not thread). In your screenshot you can see that this adds up to a lot of processes. Each process consumes memory and has to contend will all other processes for CPU time.

If you have enough processes, you can make every computer slow.

Close some tabs in Chrome and/or see if you need disable some extensions/plug-ins.

If the memory usage in the screenshot is correct, try adding more memory first. You CPU usage isn't that high.

I have a quad-core intel CPU. Under FreeBSD it has routinely >200 threads running without problems. The amount of cores limits the amount of threads that can (more or less) run at the same time. But since your CPU usage is low (again based on the screenshot) I don't think this is a problem.

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