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[Micro102]

I've first noticed this when playing tropico 4. As I played the game it would get slower and eventually crash. I found this was because the memory it was using kept increasing the further I got into the game. I base this on the memory listing in the task manager, showing the game starting up with around 1 million K (which I am assuming is KB).

This also is now happening with crusader kings 2 and given how much I love paradox games, I can't let this continue.


1) Does anyone know why my games start with more and more memory?

2) Is this normal?

3) Will buying more RAM help? If so, how much RAM?

4) My computer has far more then 1 GB of free space, so why are the games crashing at a little over 1 million KB?

5) Should I look for more technical help? If so, where?

[10ebbor10]

1) I suppose this is some kind of memory leak.
2) Depends on the game. It can be a bug, but it can be related to your system specs/ drivers
3) For new games, yes(You can never have to much RAM). 6 Gb should be enough for most recent games. If you're using a 32x OS, 4 gb is the max it can use.
4) No idea, though this makes buying new ram useless. (Though not really.)
5) I suggest the FAQ's of the games in question. Maybe check if you recently updated any drivers, and see if you can reverse it to a previous version.

[nenjin]

1) Does anyone know why my games start with more and more memory?

Before or after loading a save file? An older save file will have higher memory requirements than a fresh save game.

2) Is this normal?

Generally speaking, yes.

3) Will buying more RAM help? If so, how much RAM?

Depends on how much you have currently. If you're on less than 4 gigs, you absolutely should get more.

4) My computer has far more then 1 GB of free space, so why are the games crashing at a little over 1 million KB?

My first guess would be virtual memory, which uses hard drive space as extra memory space. Or maybe your swap file. Or something. I don't like having less than 1 gig on hand in case the OS needs to do something with that space.

5) Should I look for more technical help? If so, where?

Life advice

[Muz]

That's odd. Even if it runs out of memory, it should be using your hard drive for virtual memory to act as RAM. Nothing should crash, unless your memory is damaged or something.

What OS?

It's hard to say with operating systems. They'll try to use as much memory as they can, otherwise it's a waste. So you'll see the memory fill up no matter what.

[zehive]

How many GBs RAM do you have?

[Micro102]

I use windows 7.

I have 6 GB of RAM.

When I start up the game, it used to use ~250000 KB, now it uses ~400000, and after loading the save, uses an extra 500000+


What I'm really looking for is a website where I can find someone who can give me really detailed advice on what to do and look for. I'm expecting I'm going to have to post some sort of logs.

[nenjin]

At 6 gigs of ram you should be fine.

[Thexor]

First of all, Windows 7 64 bit or 32 bit? (Yes, there's a 32-bit Win7 - my sister is currently running it on her netbook.) If it's 32-bit, then your 6 GB of RAM isn't helping. That said, you still shouldn't be crashing, even if you've only got the ~3 GB of memory that a 32-bit OS makes available.

Try running Memtest, a handy free memory testing application. If there are any problems with your RAM, this will find them.

If that doesn't help, run a virus scan. I don't know what AV you've got, but if you're crashing, there's a chance a virus is behind it. When in doubt, run MSE, "Microsoft Security Essentials" (probably the only bit of MS software that techies don't smirk at).

If that's still not working... I'm not sure where to go from here. Use the Task Manager to check for large background tasks, though it sounds like you've done that already. It's possible there's a hard-drive fault somewhere, maybe when writing to the page file? Beyond that, I dunno. I'd recommend starting with Memtest and going from there.

[Girlinhat]

Generally speaking, any given program will have memory leaks.  Bigger leaks means it slows down more the longer you use it.  Smaller leaks mean it'll run for longer before you notice it slowing down.  Closing and restarting the program is the only real way to deal with leaks, unless you want to crack open the source code and fix the bugs.

This is a regular part of gaming, particularly older games it seems.  Restarting every hour or so won't hurt.

[Micro102]

I have a 64 bit computer, that memtest thing just gives me a disk creater, which I'd rather not mess around with.

Generally speaking, any given program will have memory leaks.  Bigger leaks means it slows down more the longer you use it.  Smaller leaks mean it'll run for longer before you notice it slowing down.  Closing and restarting the program is the only real way to deal with leaks, unless you want to crack open the source code and fix the bugs.

This is a regular part of gaming, particularly older games it seems.  Restarting every hour or so won't hurt.

As I said, tropico 4 and crusader kings 2. Both not old. I also stated that the games started up with massive amounts of memory usage. Already near or past 1 GB.

Anyone have a suggestion for a site I could go to? I was thinking bleeping computer, but only because I can't think of anything else. (Don't say steam forums, I need someone who can help me dig into my computer to find the problem)

[Djohaal]

My unmodded minecraft starts up with java nomming almost 500-600 MB of memory usage. Memory usage doesn't seem to be your problem given many heavy games can run with 1GB or more of memory. (My record is X3 with mods, about 1.8GB and a 2GB peak once). It'll start using "virtual memory" which is space on your windows partition as memory to swap files at a much slower pace what usually leads to performance degradation.

What you describe seems to be a typical case of memory leak, which can't really be fixed on your end unless you want to decompile a complex .exe and edit it in assembly to hunt for leaks. Best advice would be updating the games.

[Canisaur]

I don't know that anyone is going to be able to definitively tell you, "oh, the problem is X" without access to your computer.  However, my own two cents is that if you're having the problem with games, then it could be corruption in your DirectX libraries or (as 10ebbor10 suggested) video card drivers.  Either way, the simplest fix is to just reinstall Windows.  I do that whenever I have a weird problem, and after less than half an hour I'm playing my games flawlessly again.  I really don't understand why people feel the need to spend hours trying to "fix" Windows when it could be one of thousands of possible problems.

I myself own Tropico 4 (on Windows 7 x64), and I launched it for a minute to see how much memory it used.  It was about 200K.  I can run it for a few hours and let you know how much it's using if you want.

[Tellemurius]

I don't know that anyone is going to be able to definitively tell you, "oh, the problem is X" without access to your computer.  However, my own two cents is that if you're having the problem with games, then it could be corruption in your DirectX libraries or (as 10ebbor10 suggested) video card drivers.  Either way, the simplest fix is to just reinstall Windows.  I do that whenever I have a weird problem, and after less than half an hour I'm playing my games flawlessly again.  I really don't understand why people feel the need to spend hours trying to "fix" Windows when it could be one of thousands of possible problems.

I myself own Tropico 4 (on Windows 7 x64), and I launched it for a minute to see how much memory it used.  It was about 200K.  I can run it for a few hours and let you know how much it's using if you want.

or you can just reinstall the directx libraries and the video drivers, no need to reinstall the whole dang OS

Memtest requires you to burn a disc to run the utility outside of a OS environment, its the best way to check how much ram you got and if they are trash.

To check though how much ram is detected by the computer in windows is easy by
 go to your start menu>rightclick on computer or my computer> select properties> should open up a system window with basic information on your computer
that doesn't work go to your control panel and look for the system icon

[Micro102]

I myself own Tropico 4 (on Windows 7 x64), and I launched it for a minute to see how much memory it used.  It was about 200K.  I can run it for a few hours and let you know how much it's using if you want.

Well tropico 4 only increased it's memory when I placed a building. As I played more, the memory increased. If your tropico games does indeed reach 1 million K memory in the task manager then that would make this a lot simpler to solve.

[alway]

First: Dunno what the root cause is.

Second: Time to clear things up. A 32 bit application, which many applications are, due to the overabundance of 32 bit machines, can only allocate a specific amount of memory. By default, this limit is 2GB for a 32 bit application. Beyond this, the developer can set the 'Large Address Aware' flag on the executable, allowing for up to ~3.5 or so. If your application reaches the limit, it will crash; it runs out of pointer addresses to assign to memory (as a 32 bit pointer is limited to the 2^32 bytes of memory), new memory allocation fails, causing a crash.

64 bit applications, on the other hand, will consume memory until all 12GB of your RAM have been nommed, hard freezing the computer as the OS stuggles to grab RAM while the application keeps demanding more and more (which then goes to HDD, making everything slow to the point of freezing). I know because as a programmer, I've done all of the above.