7GB RAM used in lobby and ingame/need help

Discussion in 'Support!' started by azuna1, November 11, 2013.

  1. azuna1

    azuna1 New Member

    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    2
    Hey so today i wanted to host a game on my own..
    i created a 2 team 6 total player 2 planets(size 1190/800) & 3 moons system
    When people joined my lobby it became a bit laggy as usual but when i started the game i got a blackscreen for about 5 minutes followed by a short view of my spawn location till it crashed

    i tried it again watching cpu & Ram usage
    each of my 8 cores were more or less idle while even in the lobby PA consumed 7GB RAM (out of my 8gb in total)

    i gave up to host a game and joined one, checking ram it also went up to 6GB
    I have no idea what causes this insane consumption... my graphic settings are low already

    ps: attached my dxdiag as i saw people asking for it in other threads
    ps also PA runs on my SSD OCX Vertex 4

    Attached Files:

  2. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

    Messages:
    6,896
    Likes Received:
    1,812
  3. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

    Messages:
    6,896
    Likes Received:
    1,812
    And now about memory consumption...
    Can you say what exactly settings you used to generate those two big planets?

    There is known problem that waterless earth planets use tons of RAM: PA#2466
    Is there any chance it's was earth-type planet with low water height?
  4. azuna1

    azuna1 New Member

    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    2
    ss (2013-11-12 at 12.12.24).png ss (2013-11-12 at 12.12.49).png
    just 2 autogenerated planets but i guess this might be it with negative water hight

    about the driver... i wonder why since my catalyst control center is up to date and last graphics driver update was done like 4 weaks ago
  5. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,208
    Likes Received:
    885
    A size 1200 planet is MASSIVE!!!
    That alone would eat a heap of ram,
    You said you have 2 of these and then 3 moons, .. wow.

    Try 2 600 size planets and 3 200 size moons.
    Let me know how much ram that eats up.
    The more info i can get on how much ram different systems use the better i can refine and update the information in this thread,
    https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how-to-improve-frame-rates-all-video-cards-driver-links.53165/
    I have added a how to minimize RAM usage bit to the thread, but more information from other testers always helps :)
  6. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,208
    Likes Received:
    885
    Also i would guess that system with 2 Massive planets and 3 moons would use more than 7gb of ram, anything above 7gb would be offloaded onto your swapfile/page file, if your OS and and HDD's are capable of running the game while a lot of the data is being offloaded to the page file you will notice a huge FPS drop too (i get this happening my end, may not be the same on all systems, but i have tested this on 3 machines with the same results)
  7. azuna1

    azuna1 New Member

    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    2
    i only have 1 @nearly 1200 the second is 600 as the screen above your post shows :D
    those 3 moons are the smallest of their kind
    maxpowerz likes this.
  8. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,208
    Likes Received:
    885
    Adjust the sliders on the earth planet so that all the numbers are integers with no decimal (this is a glitch) It may also be causing issues and making the game eat more ram than it should.

    Biome scale : 1 or higher with no decimals
    water height : 1 or higher with no decimals
    temprature : 1 or higher with no decimals

    If these numbers are negative it could cause glitches/bugs
  9. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

    Messages:
    6,896
    Likes Received:
    1,812
    Not really. Waterless planet eat 2-4 times more RAM than "normal" (I mean 50 50 50 defaults) earth planet.
  10. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,208
    Likes Received:
    885
    I notice that too, does your waterless planet generate a lot of mountain brushes and cracks ??
  11. nixtempestas

    nixtempestas Post Master General

    Messages:
    1,216
    Likes Received:
    746
    I find avoiding earth likes for the time being helps.

    The game currently eats massive amounts of RAM, and sometimes doesn't free it up very well, so if something weird happens, you may need to restart the game.
  12. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

    Messages:
    3,344
    Likes Received:
    5,376
    Water height set to a negative value (which, not supported currently by the way), is going to massively increase your memory usage. Some of this usage we expect to be able to improve upon, but also, the more big CSG features like mountains and ravines you have, the more memory it's going to use.

    On my machine, just in the system editor, a stand alone planet of size 800 uses about 510MB of system memory for the PA.exe client. Just increasing that single planet to 1200 ups the memory to 1200MB. And keep in mind, the amount of surface area for an 800 vs a 1200 is pretty radically different. 8042 sq. km vs 18,095 sq. km. (Assuming I didn't screw up the math there).. Point being, 1200 is over twice the size of the 800 in terms of surface area.

    If I take that same planet, and drop the water level down to 0, memory usage shoots from 1200MB to 4172MB. In other words, don't do that. ;)

    We expect to get the memory usage on that particular case down a bit, but it's always going to be true that the more features on a planet, the more memory it's going to use. This is simply how computer data structures work. The more complex they are, the bigger they are. And an earthlike planet with no water radius is one of the most memory intensive planets you can make.
    SXX, maxpowerz and azuna1 like this.
  13. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

    Messages:
    6,896
    Likes Received:
    1,812
    Yes, actual problem with waterless planet is number of "planet faces".
    Ninja'd by garat. :p
    maxpowerz likes this.
  14. azuna1

    azuna1 New Member

    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    2
    Ye i got it, just want to mention that those negative settings as shown ony my images were the default values when i inserted the planet i did not change them :)
  15. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,208
    Likes Received:
    885
    Have you been playing since early alpha/beta ??
    If you have you may have outdated stuck files from old builds.
    I think if you delete the PA folder and re-download the game and also maybe try deleting the folder that contains the saved planets you generate it should fix the default values on some templates being glitchy.
    I had this issue to and had to remedy it that way.
  16. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,208
    Likes Received:
    885
    Can i add that to the Framerate how to thread ??
    It could be useful to some people having issues and not realizing that they are filling the ram up.
  17. stuart98

    stuart98 Post Master General

    Messages:
    6,009
    Likes Received:
    3,888
    Hey, I can run the game with minimal lag on a 6 planet system, most of them in the 600-800 with one 1199 and one 249. I have only 6 gb of ram. :p
  18. vackillers

    vackillers Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    838
    Likes Received:
    360
    be curious to know what your system spec is, and how fast is your RAM? if your using 2100mhz or above that could be helping you out quite a bit, or an SSD, either way.

Share This Page