4GB patch and OBSE

[przemekG]

I have a question regarding the use of oblivion.exe patched with 4GB patch and obse loader. I mean the game works after using that 4GB patch and obse doesnt complain about modified exe, but there is new entry in obse log file that werent there when I was running unpatched version of oblivion.exe; it says

"clearing large-address-aware flag (flags offset = 0000011E checksum offset = 00000160)"

It's in the obse loader.log file located in main oblivon directory.

So, what does it means? Clearing as removing this flag? Or ...?

Right now I dont think patching Oblivion to force it to use 4GB of RAM and running it through OBSE works, but I would like to hear what are you thinking about it?

[Jenrai]

Unless you're running about 10 programs in the background (in which case you're never going to get good performance anyway) you don't need to be telling Oblivion to use 4gb of ram. That won't change anything because it'll just use the first two as normal and then think "Oh... ok... 2gb left... what the smeg in hell am I supposed to do with that, then?" and carry on using the first two gigs as normal, as the engine simply won't know what's going on with the other 2.

 

Best performance, without running any risky tweaks, is found by simply having more than 2gb in the first place, allowing your computer to run anything else its running on the spare ram, and dedicate the 2gb Oblivion needs to run fine in the first place to Oblivion in its entirity.

 

By the by ... do you have a 64 bit version of windows? because if not your computer on the whole, not just oblivion, can only detect 3gb anyways, and forcing it to pick up more than that is very likely gonna cause you problems.

 

Jenrai

[przemekG]

Yes, my Windows is 64 bit.

And yes, I think you might be right about oblivions memory usage; next time I will run Oblivion with some monitoring software in backgroud to see what is happening with memory. But on the other hand patching oblivion to use more than 2GB may prevent the game from crashing when it reaches 1.6- 1,8GB... check the thread on Bethesda forums: here

But what about obse - is it really removing 4GB flag from the exe?

[bben46]

As Jenrai says, Oblivion will only use a maximum of 2G anyway. When I was on WinXP I saw a huge improvement when I went from 1G to 2G. Then another large improvement on going to 3G. But almost no improvement when I upgraded to 4G. 3G seems to be the sweet spot for a 32 bit Oblivion system. Any more than that is not going to be noticed. The maximum memory a 32 bit Vista system can use is between 3.12G and 3.2G, depending on the other hardware installed. Things like the BIOS, IO cards, Network, PCIe bus and other stuff all take some ram. But not enough to use up the entire 1G that is not being taken by the game.

 

PAE, the Physical Address Extension that allows some applications to run using that extra ram sound too god to be true, and it is as far as Oblivion is concerned. The reason is applications have to be written specifically to take advantage of PAE, and the only applications that do that are very specialized tools or server applications like SQL Server, which don’t usually require that much RAM when running on a desktop OS. So, PAE won’t make your Oblivion faster.

[VictoriaG]

I just patched the exe here and for me anyway it seems to have cured many crashes when attempting to get to the IC waterfront and around the IC in general, I have many large texture packs installed plus better cities so I figure before the game just ran out of memory and crashed.

[przemekG]

I just patched the exe here and for me anyway it seems to have cured many crashes when attempting to get to the IC waterfront and around the IC in general, I have many large texture packs installed plus better cities so I figure before the game just ran out of memory and crashed.

 

Are you using obse? If yes can you check what obseloader log says about your patched oblivion.exe?

[Jenrai]

I can only speak from personal experience of course, and I don't use a patched exe, so I honestly can't tell you whats going with OBSE there. However, due to the fact I line my pockets with a bit of extra cash by building and maintaining high performance PCs specifically for gaming, that experience is perhaps a little higher than most peoples, though I would always advise people to learn to tweak their systems themselves, as they know better than me what they like and it will help them troubleshoot in the future, but hey-ho.

 

On my personal playing install (important difference. :D ) I run QTP, Full B&M Better Cities, high rez texture replacers for all races, and hi rez faces, & armor & weapon replacers (where they are available. Modelling is something I just can't seem to get my head around so I can't make them for myself. /sadface) and Region Revive, Lake Rumare & AFK Weye, so yeah, whilst I do get drops in FPS around the IC, I do know its the actual drop I'm noticing, not so much the resulting FPS. I run on an XP 64bit system, not because I think theres anything wrong with Win 7 but because I've kinda fallen out with microshaft due to bad experiences with Vista. I know, I know, everyone had a bad experience with Vista. Well, I took it personally, especially when their response was "Well, we did kinda tell you we released it as a Beta for the public to test for us." And then they charged us £100 for the pleasure. **nk*rs.

 

Anyways. I was making a point... ah yes... depending on your videocard's memory and processing power, you're going to take a hit around the IC if you're running a lotta things that affect that area, regardless. Patching up the ram might stabilize it, but it won't eliminate that hit.

What would lessen the hit further than patching up the RAM is just using better RAM. I noticed a huge, and thats not an understatement, huge difference in just the general power & performance of my system when I finally managed to afford to be able to switch it up to Corsair RAM. I didn't take the amount up. Just the make. People think its just a name, but it isn't. Its not a pair of Nike trainers. When it comes to computers, most of the time, you really do get what you pay for. I'm not daft enough to think money is no object for everyone (hell, I had to scrounge and save like a bloomin vulture to be able to afford that update, but it was well worth it) but if the kick is that bad for you it might be worth considering.

Especially seeing as I don't think you'd be here asking this if your four gig patch actually had any notable effect. I don't know if OBSE does shoot them down, but even if it does, more or less every mod these days requires OBSE, so loosing that probably isn't a valid option.

 

Happy Hunting.

Jenrai

[VictoriaG]

I just patched the exe here and for me anyway it seems to have cured many crashes when attempting to get to the IC waterfront and around the IC in general, I have many large texture packs installed plus better cities so I figure before the game just ran out of memory and crashed.

 

Are you using obse? If yes can you check what obseloader log says about your patched oblivion.exe?

 

I'll check that later, this was the patch I used: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23254

 

Edit: I see in the log OBSE says it removes it, but I read on another forum that it doesn't really.

[IamDUFF]

I realize it's a tad late, but here goes: XP x86 (32bit) can only handle 2GB for any and every application, but it totals a potential of 4GB, the other 2 (if you have it) for system performance. (the kernel and drivers) And Vista/7 can use 3GB for it's applications but the total amount (because it's x86) is still 4GB.

x86-64 (64bit) or simply x64, is much more dynamic, and can pretty much use all it's RAM if needed. (however, you need the hardware; Multiple CPU cores and lots of RAM, otherwise there's not much point in doing x64)

 

@przemekG all you're seeing is hex values that OBSE is automatically correcting. That could be a value for ANYTHING, but it would be intelligent to assume it's something related to the havok engine. (possibly from your patched exe, but maybe not) In any case, it's doing it's job. Unless you feel like learning hex and dissecting the exe, i wouldn't worry about it unless things start lagging suddenly or you see artifacts or glitches, etc

 

=)

 

And thank you, you reminded me to use CFF for it. I've been using these high res mods in junction with increasing my LOD x∞ (but i also quartered the texture resolutions) so i could really use some more RAM. I got 6 more GB to spare =P

[adderek]

I realize it's a tad late, but here goes: XP x86 (32bit) can only handle 2GB for any and every application, but it totals a potential of 4GB, the other 2 (if you have it) for system performance. (the kernel and drivers)

In fact it could use more. Unix was supporting >4GiB of RAM a long time ago while being 32-bit. If you look at the Windows versions (especially "server" versions) you would notice that it supports over 4 GiB of RAM.

By the way: GiB stands for giga-binary which is 2^32=4294967296 bytes while 1 GB could mean either 1 000 000 000 bytes or 1 GiB.

The application however is restricted to 32 bits thus cannot cannot address (use) more than 4 GiB of memory.

XP added PAE which was available as separate patch or/and included within the service packs. I guess that XP SP3 allows 3.25 GiB of RAM to be addressed by the applications.

Kernel and drivers are running in a different layer. This was originally marked by a single bit - thus the memory was divided into 2: 2^31 + 2^31.

As long as the application is restricted to use less than X GiB system is still using remaining memory for the caching and similar things.

It is more or less as described by you but some differences are present - I just wanted to add some light here.

 

And Vista/7 can use 3GB for it's applications but the total amount (because it's x86) is still 4GB.

I guess that you are referring to Vista x86 and Windows 7 x86.

You should use there "application" as every application can have its own address space. But you are right - Microsoft does not provide support for extended amount of memory... unless you are using some "extra" version (ex. windows 2008 server).

x86-64 (64bit) or simply x64, is much more dynamic, and can pretty much use all it's RAM if needed. (however, you need the hardware; Multiple CPU cores and lots of RAM, otherwise there's not much point in doing x64)

Again - Microsoft adds some limitation. Supported amount of RAM could be for example 2GiB (Windows 7 starter edition) just because they wanted to drain more money from users if they want to use more memory. The same for the number of CPU's.

There was a known limitation about x86 implementation (I guess that it was XP professional x64) where they have used 40 bits for memory addressing initially (and this was supported by Intel). If I remember correctly (someone might correct me if I am wrong here) then AMD supported 40bits, 48bits and 64 bits while Intel only supported 40bits. I guess that now both CPU's support 64bits.

Something from that left till now - windows cannot use full 64bits for addressing... If I remember correctly then maximum memory that can be addressed in Windows 7 is 192 GiB.

 

@przemekG all you're seeing is hex values that OBSE is automatically correcting. That could be a value for ANYTHING, but it would be intelligent to assume it's something related to the havok engine. (possibly from your patched exe, but maybe not) In any case, it's doing it's job. Unless you feel like learning hex and dissecting the exe, i wouldn't worry about it unless things start lagging suddenly or you see artifacts or glitches, etc

8MiB of code if I remember it right... so it is doable :)

 

Regards

 

P.S.

I just wanted to add some technical mummble-bummble to this thread... not to attack any other posts. Possibly my comment needs correction (it is late and I'm quite drunk ;) ).