RAM memory leak? 100% usage.

Discussion in 'Support!' started by Natima, October 7, 2013.

?

Have you experienced this?

  1. Yes

    75.0%
  2. No

    25.0%
  1. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    Let's keep issues separate. Srysbizness, this is a discussion about actual memory usage, yours could be anything. Could you start a new thread, so we can not derail this one? I'd like to get to the bottom of both. :)
  2. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    SXX - a single planet at 1391 uses approximately 2.5GB, based on my tests - fairly consistently, if using planets with very active biome types (trees, rocks, ravines, etc). The bigger it is, the more features it has, the more memory it will use.

    And yes.. 4πr^2, Mr. Pedant. :)
  3. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    For me generation of exactly the same planet as on screenshot took 3GB :)
  4. srysbizness

    srysbizness New Member

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    You want me to post the whole 13 pages?
  5. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    You know how to attach a text file? You can simply upload a file, rather than copy/paste. :)
  6. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    And I still would appreciate you starting a _different_ thread. This is not the same topic.
  7. srysbizness

    srysbizness New Member

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    I guess I can do that. Im just a bit irritated, I really want to play this game ive been looking forward too for weeks :)
  8. benipk

    benipk New Member

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    I'm finding that some games (not all) will use all available remaining RAM in my system (I have 8gig), regardless of whether the system contains a single planet with a radius of ~800, or up to 7 planets with radii ranging from 200-1000. Usually with these matches too, the game will never load and progress to selecting a landing zone and I'll alt-f4 after 10 minutes or so. RAM usage doesn't appear to be consistent using the same saved solar systems, so my hunch is that there's a fairly significant memory leak somewhere.
  9. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    Benipk - Any other commonalities? 10 players? A bunch of AIs? Playing through Steam? Team play vs. free for all? Any other common things going on when you see the memory usage go crazy?
  10. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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  11. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

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    YES, please. Just show the surface area of the radius you've chosen, it would help a lot of people gauge the performance difference between larger planet sizes.
  12. doud

    doud Well-Known Member

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    This makes me think awesome comes at a price ....
    hopefully i won't have to replace my GTX660ti for a Titan (6gigs of VRAM) in order to experience awesome :)
  13. benipk

    benipk New Member

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    Both player numbers and AI have varied, I guess it's the sort of thing that I should probably check in depth with a slightly more scientific approach to testing. I've just tried a suggestion of SXX and enabled threaded optimisation for my Nvidia card. At this stage all games are played through Steam, I've also tested switching the in-game overlay on and off, this used to result in coherent UI crashes if it was accessed for things like taking screencaps - but that seems to be fixed as of last patch.


    Edit: Ok, after spending an hour or two doing some testing. It seems as though the bug lies in system selection. If I load up the game, select my custom system (stats at the end) and then start a FFA game with two AI and myself, then the following typical load times/RAM usage occurs:

    - When first run PA.exe uses ~100mb of RAM, after one or more games this will be anywhere from 500mb to a gig of RAM after exiting matches and getting back to the menu, but not quitting PA.

    - Loading seems to be in two stages, I assume it's first the planet mesh then things like the flora etc. Usage for the test system rapidly climbs to around 2.9gig @ 20s into loading, then picks up again at ~1 minute climbing again to 3-3.3gig @ 1:20m. At the point the game starts and I can choose a spawn location as normal. I've repeated this a few times and the results seem pretty similar.

    ONE factor changes all of this. If I start a second custom game, after playing one where I got 'normal' loading times (above), the saved test system that I last used is displayed in the custom game without needing to select it, but none of the planet names are displayed, although the icons for planet type and size are correct, the system also tends to have a randomly generated name. Using the 2 AI and myself again, the following will occur UNLESS I go and re-select my test system when creating the game:

    - Loading is still two-stage, but this time the first stage levels out at 5-5.5gig of RAM @ 40s. After around 3 minutes, all available RAM in my system is consumed (about 6.4gig), then the usage sometimes (but not always) drops back to ~5gig and the game starts after ~3:40 to 4m of loading. The high RAM usage in this case does not appear to drop over the course of the game. When loading finishes, my commander has already spawned.


    The test system I used has planets with the following radii:

    1x 1337 (haha)
    1x 1000
    1x 700
    3x 200

    With the second longer loading case, the primary planet also tends to be a completely different biome than what was saved for the custom system. The planets also all have randomly generated names. If I quit the match, create a new game, re-select my custom system, everything is back to normal.

    Also FYI, for this testing I've not played any of the games for more than a minute after getting in-game so I can't say yet how RAM usage changes in the long-term over a match.

    I've not played another game yet where loading simply never finishes as I described, but I'll keep an eye on system stats in case it does happen again.

    Edit 2: These test were done with Steam overlay disabled. I've played matches with it on as well, but I've not done any testing to determine if it has any effect.

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: October 8, 2013
  14. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    I'm curious about not playing with the Steam Overlay even enabled, as we're also gathering reports on how it impacts things. There is more evidence pointing to the fact that there is a pretty serious performance bug with our game (or possibly simply Open GL) as it relates to the Steam overlay - especially when combined with Nvidia. Hence my questions on that particular topic. :)
  15. doud

    doud Well-Known Member

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    For those who might be complaining about configuration requirements, "Watchdog" recommended configuration has been announced :
    Windows 64bits only (even for minimum requirements)
    Core i7 3770 @ 3.5Ghz ou AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0Ghz
    8gigs of memory
    Video card with 2gigs of VRAM,DirectX 11 w/ Shader Model 5.0

    So at some point, modern games require modern machines.
    (I even did not mention BF4 recommended configuration).
  16. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Oh YES
  17. eukanuba

    eukanuba Well-Known Member

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    I tried to join a game earlier, 9 players and 6 planets, and it topped out at 7GB usage before I had to kill it (I have 8GB RAM). It would be good to see exactly what the planets will be like when joining a game, presently I prefer to host games that I know will work OK.

    As for the system specs, I think that what doud posted is a bit high. I have an i5-2500k @3.7Ghz, 8GB RAM and a 1GB Radeon 6850, and it takes a pretty big game before I get noticeable slowdown, and my FPS rarely goes below 20 (and as high as 70 on small single-planet systems).

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