jedexodusp8987

Join Date 05/2009

Big Horrible Memory Leak in Vista SP1

Have I missed something...?

Hey everyone. I'm new to Sins (as in got it in last few weeks). I went through a stage of updating it and finally going for Entrenchment which is EXCELLENT. I love the game completely but I can't seem to get it to stop eating up all the available RAM and CPU until it just jittery-jerks when zooming in all stages of game-play. This renders it unplayable. Now I read about this problem at the beginning of 2008 but then it seemed to have disappeared. Do you think I am the only one who is still stuck with it? I let Impulse do all the downloading and updating and I guess I should list my specs now:

Windows Vista Home Premium SP1, Intel Core 2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz, 2GB DDR PC2-5300 RAM, GeForce 7900GS, DirectX 10. It's a standard Dell Dimension 9200 with no upgrades or crack-software and I've made sure I've got all the updated drivers and win-updates sorted.

The game doesn't leak on my slow-a*s Compaq work-laptop which is incredibly annoying. Please can someone let me know what to try next?

Many thanks in advance,

Antony V.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Is it actually leaking, or just running out of memory? I found Entrechment betas would tend to slow down as the game went on, but that was mostly due to thousands of mines being created. That problem isn't nearly so bad in the current version.

Does it happen on maps of all sizes, or just big ones?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Thanks for your response Tridus. It happens withint the first 30 seconds of loading a game - whether it be a new small one or a previously played half-colonized large map (note that the game worked before I installed Entrenchment but now both versions behave in the same fashion). I find that everything that it loads is never dumped from the RAM so as soon as you have zoomed in on more than 2 planets, it has already began to get stuck. An interesting point is that the game actually freezes when it is stuck (as in the time doesn't carry on in the background) so this means it is not a graphics problem unless such a problem wouldn't cause just a loss of frame-rate. I suspect it's more a processor problem because even the mouse is freezing during these 1-3 second 'stucks'. They definitely occur more when zooming to planets.

I should add that, while I said it works fine on my laptop, I just mean that it doesn't get stuck. While playing the game and looking at task-manager on the second display, I notice that it is using 100% of the CPU but RAM usage remains normal. On my desktop (the computer I use for gaming), both resources are maxed.

I can't imagine what differences between the computers are causing this contrast in behaviour! Maybe I have bad karma.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Yeah, I'm honestly not sure what is going on there. They should behave the same way on both machines, and that early in a game there really shouldn't be those sorts of problems due to performance.

Have you tried doing a "verify" on Sins and Entrenchment in Impulse? It's possible a file got corrupted somehow. I think Impulse has an option to verify the installation (don't have it on this computer to check though).

Other then that, I'm really not sure what to tell you.

Successfully updated karma reason!

ShadowMastiff2468

Join Date 08/2008

+67

Well I think I can help you!!!

You're using Vista and you only have 2gb of RAM!

VISTA IS YOUR HOG! It takes 2GB to fire the sucker up...so by my guess you're lucky you're even getting the game to work (say good night to Crysis,Empire: TW, etc..).

I would suggest adding a few more 2gb sticks in...personnaly I have a Intel Quad Core @ (2.66ghz), Vista SP1, 6GB RAM, Gefore 9500GS (9800 on its way ), Direct X 10

And I'm sure its those RAMs...

I have the RAM monitering Vista device...and am writing this with NO OTHER PROGRAMS ON! Yet it states that 45% of my RAM is being used (45% of 6GB is a fair amount for a single OS).

So yeah my reply stands...add in a few GBs of RAM if you can!

Successfully updated karma reason!

Sins actually does a lot of caching and memory work in the first minutes of game start. It does it in the background, but as you do have Vista with only 2gb of memory that can hog system resources and create what you're seeing.

I actually used to get similar "freezes" when I had Vista with 2gb, with some of them lasting upwards of a minute or so (especially if the PC has been running for a while), but after I upgraded to 64-bit with more memory, the problem went away.

I'm not saying there isn't a possibility of a memory leak somewhere in there, but Ironclad has worked very hard on squeezing out every last bit of performance from Entrenchment (the early betas crashed in about 10 minutes for the majority of the players on medium and above settings due to running out of memory), so it's much more likely that your system is just getting bogged down than a memory leak of this magnitude.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Thanks guys I understand that Vista with just 2GB RAM is daft nowadays. I'm willing to accept that it is because I've got the video settings up all highest and with only 2GB it's just not going to work. However, if when I turn down the video settings and it still gets stuck, with the fact that my laptop doesn't run out of RAM and it's got even less to play with, I must deduce that there is still more to this problem than RAM. If i double up on RAM that wouldn't be too expensive even though I'd only get half the advantage with it being 32bit so that is worth a try. A game called Supreme Commander seems to have so much more going on and that never has a problem. Crazy stuff but thanks for all your help. Definitely my settings+hardware at least we know that much now.

It's embarrassing to have to lower the graphics settings.......Guess it's that time again when we get out-teched. I'll be buying a flat-cap soon and knitting cardis.

Thanks again guys,

Ant

Successfully updated karma reason!

You could try throwing an email about it to [email protected]. They know better how their game works, and they may better help you

Successfully updated karma reason!

ShadowMastiff2468

Join Date 08/2008

+67

No problem at all!

Here to help!

Successfully updated karma reason!

EQ2 had a pretty bad memory leak.. Here is what I did to help with it (Not sure about vista as I use XP:

Start/right click My Comp/select properties/advanced tab/under performance select settings/then Advanced tab/under memory usage select "System Cache"

Not sure how to accomplish that in vista but I am sure there is a way..

Also, when I upgraded to 2 GB of ram, I set my virtual memory to 0 (Disabled it) and that reduced alot of the hard drive accessing that was causing alot of jerkyness ingame..

Here is a link that can help free up some memory and also be used as a troubleshooting tool to determine if certain services are causing problems in games..

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;331796

Give them a shot and see.. if they do not help then you can always go back to the orig setting..

Successfully updated karma reason!