I have 16 GB of system RAM. While playing Horizon Forbidden West, the game itself appears to use around 6 GB, and the applications listed in Task Manager add up to less than 8 GB. However, the performance view reports almost all of my memory—about 15.9 out of 16 GB—as used. I also notice performance dropping after roughly 30 minutes of gameplay. I have a dedicated graphics card, so the RAM should not be heavily shared with integrated graphics. Is this normal, or could it indicate a memory problem?
3 Answers
If the slowdown happens over time, check the Details or Performance tabs for committed memory, hard faults, and available RAM while the problem is occurring. Also monitor GPU VRAM usage, CPU/GPU temperatures, clock speeds, and frame times. A gradual drop is more likely to be paging, a game memory leak, overheating or throttling, or running out of graphics memory than simply Windows using cached system RAM. Restarting the game and checking whether the issue resets can help narrow it down.
A dedicated graphics card normally avoids most integrated-GPU memory sharing, although Windows may still reserve a small amount. If your page file is disabled or set unusually small, enable a system-managed page file. That gives Windows somewhere to move less-used data when physical RAM fills up, but it will not fix a genuine leak or thermal problem.
The memory number in the performance tab includes more than the RAM actively allocated to visible applications. Windows also counts cached, standby, compressed, and system memory, much of which can be reclaimed automatically when another program needs it. The per-process totals therefore will not necessarily add up to the overall figure, and high usage alone is not a problem if the system is not paging heavily.
That makes sense, but I do get a noticeable performance drop after about half an hour of playing.