LE Possible solution to 3.1gb Memory Cap?

[Xiox420]

Alright so this is my first post here, so forgive any sort of ignorance I've got going on in this post, such as the location of this post and to see if any of you well known technical dudes will agree with the concept or if there is some sort of inherent flaw with the idea.

So aside from Skyrim I've been really big on SWTOR, but like Skyrim SWTOR's application is 32bit where as the application can only really allocate 4GB of ram at a time, right now i've got the game running in the background, I've got 12GB of RAM, 1.5GB is being used by Windows and the rest is being used by Skyrim itself and just sits maxed at 5.50GB and the rest of which is just sitting there doing absolutely nothing.

Now SWTOR does the same exact thing being the 32Bit application that it is as well, but at SWTOR they have a workaround that I would think might work in this situation as well, there is an application thats been developed that I use called "SWTOR Unleashed" (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=529567) and it serves a very simple function, it tricks the OS and the Application into using more RAM than it is accustomed to by using ImDisk located here: http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk

Its a command line that allows the user to allocated free ram into a virtual disk, all the person did for SWTOR Unleashed was create a simple front-end that copied individual files that were selected by the user to this disk and I guess symlinked it before the game was loaded, for SWTOR it definitely works, PVPers loaded particles and animation and it cut down on the lag significantly, a similar setup for people who raided with 16 to 32 people on the screen at the time flashing pretty pretty lights everywhere, as the game tried calling for files that would normally be on the HDD/SSD for data the system would find it on the RAM already loaded and would happily utilize that data, which would normally be benefitial for anyone with a big fat chunk of RAM just chilling out on their system.

I think this would be especially helpful for people who use very high resolution textures and high resolution meshes, even though all that is done with VRAM at least the swap time will have very little lag, not to mention the benefit of cutting down on Load times between cells by about half as well.

So anyway I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about this in regards to how Skyrim handles its resources vs what is dealt with on other games, I'm not exactly an expert on the engine and modders will likely have a better idea on it than I would, it would be cool to see this feature in MO considering how awesome that program is and also because of how exactly it handles the files themselves, would be nice to be able to flag certain resources to be put on the ramdisk before loading the game and still maintaining the priority that was set in its list.

Anyway thanks for giving this a lookie, I just wanted to get this out there as I couldn't find a thread anywhere with the same suggestion other than the few people who were crazy enough to install the entire game on a RAMdisk and watch all the freaking load-screens completely disappear (seriously, it was insane) Anyway share this post around and I hope to get some feedback on it, and if anyone out there is crazy enough to work something out and try it let me and everyone else know of the results, it could be a definite solution to the issue.

Good Hunting folks,

~Xiox

[Shanannigan]

If it's possible I'd love to see it done. Anything that can help fix Skyrims memory issues is great.

[bben46]

The 3.1G limit has nothing to do with allocating an amount of memory - 32 bit programs can ONLY see 4G maximum memory - it doesn't matter how much you allocate in windows, the game can only SEE that 4G - no more, no matter what. It has to do with memory addressing. in a 32 bit program - there is not enough system ram address space for any more memory. And no, the address space cannot be made larger ( it has to do with binary arithmetic. You can't put 10 pounds of stuff in a 5 pound bag)

 

Your SWTOR unleashed does not allow any more ram, And does not even simulate more ram. It is just doing the same thing as the standard windows page file does but using a ram disk it creates in the ram above the 4G for a dedicated swap space. That has been done on Skyrim before and still does not prevent the crash when you go over the actual Ram limit. It can speed up things like loading a new world space in the game though.

 

If you use a 64bit version of windows, AND you have more than 4G of RAM, you can use nearly all of the 4G (much more than the 3.4 or so max that can be used on a 32 bit windows version) The reason is that the Windows Operating system files that MUST be loaded into RAM can now be loaded into the Ram above the 4G and leave more space for the game. But in order to do that the LAA flag must be set in the program ( LAA is also called 4G patch)

 

This RAM limit has been a part of these games for many years, do you not think that if it could be done, some one would have done it by now? :confused:

 

Hopefully the next Elder Scrolls will have a new 64 bit engine that doesn't have this limitation. :thumbsup:

[Lakan]

Is there a petition out there by any chance bben? If not, perhaps we should start one, to at least kind of ensure that we're not having a hard time with their future games and it being 2017 :P

[Notanon81]

Given that Skyrim's engine is based on the Gamebryo engine, it'll be interesting to see what OpenMW come up and if a fix of some description can be ported forward as a result.