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

Question

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:

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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

Although this answer doesn't apply to the OP, I'll keep this answer for reference by future readers.

Your hard drive may be failing

• Slow I/O performance can be caused by hard drive problems. If the media is degrading, the hard drive will repeatedly attempt to access the data, which can cause significant delays in accessing data. Use a program such as CrystalDiskInfo to check the state of the hard drive, and be sure to post an image of the results. If it says Caution or Bad, you should back up your data and replace the hard drive as soon as possible as the hard drive could fail soon, resulting in data loss.

Upgrading memory and storage can help

• Your computer has 4 GB of memory. While this may be sufficient to handle all of the applications you're running, your computer still needs to hit the hard drive quite often to start up applications or load data because there isn't a lot of free memory. Windows (and other operating systems) use free memory to preload data from disk, so adding more memory will allow more data to be stored in memory and reduce slow disk accesses.

• Replacing the hard drive with an SSD will dramatically increase performance as well. SSDs are significantly faster than hard drives because they are entirely electronic and do not rely on mechanical seeking to access data the way hard drives do. However, I'd consider this less important than a memory upgrade in your situation, since upgrading to an SSD can be expensive and requires migrating data to the new drive.

Alternatively, you can use Windows ReadyBoost to increase performance

• If neither of the above upgrades are options, ReadyBoost can increase your system's performance by using USB your flash drive or other flash memory device as a cache. ReadyBoost takes advantage of the fact that flash memory has fast random I/O performance to speed access to data.