Retribution Posted November 16, 2009 Share Posted November 16, 2009 Occasionally, games will slow down to about 1 fps, with everything being laggy. Menus are affected too. When I alt tab to desktop and then back to the game, it always fixes itself. Usually it happens a couple more times after it has done it once, and I'll need to restart the program. The games I have observed doing this are Borderlands and Dragon Age Origins. It didn't happen until I had played Borderlands for a while, same thing with Dragon Age. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Illiad86 Posted November 16, 2009 Share Posted November 16, 2009 Sounds like a memory leak in the games to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retribution Posted November 16, 2009 Author Share Posted November 16, 2009 Does anyone else have any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retribution Posted November 16, 2009 Author Share Posted November 16, 2009 Oh, also, my CPU is always at 100% while running Dragon Age. Here's a thread about it that I found. http://daforums.bioware.com/forums/viewtop...m=146&sp=15 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Illiad86 Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 Games are often coded inefficiently and can use all your CPU doing nothing. Usually it's because they constantly check if you're doing something, instead of waiting for something to happen. But, do you run any other things in the background while playing? Memory leaks are caused by the same thing, inefficient coding. The RAM gets all filled up because the code was written poorly and won't release the old data from the RAM so it can make room for the new data. The game just fills up all your RAM and in turn you get the horrible FPS you are getting until it eventually CTD This has been happening with a lot of newer games these days it seems...developers being lazy and not testing it enough on a multitude of systems and working out all the bugs before releasing it. There will always be bugs, but something as serious as this should have been addressed before the game even game out. It's annoying...and it's mind boggling that this has been happening to every anticipated game as of late... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retribution Posted November 17, 2009 Author Share Posted November 17, 2009 Why does it go back to normal after I alt tab and alt tab back into the game? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Illiad86 Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 because you're going to the desktop. The computer will clear up some RAM from the game you were playing in order to have RAM for the program that is the main thing at the moment (your desktop). So it clears some of it out and the game runs fine again, but the memory leak in the game's code just fills it all up again and doesn't clear the old data out like it should. Oblivion didn't have that problem, but it's a good example. Say you went to the Imperial City and bought some stuff...then you fast traveled to Bruma and did something, then traveled to Leyawin and did something. Normally the game's code would clear out the data from when you were in the Imperial City because you haven't been there in awhile. It then uses that cleared memory for when you are in another area. If the game had a memory leak, it would still have the Imperial City in your RAM, even though you haven't been there in awhile and it won't clear it out for other areas. How much RAM do you have? :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retribution Posted November 17, 2009 Author Share Posted November 17, 2009 4 gigabytes installed, but I'm running 32 bit Vista so games actually work. So, 3 gigabytes. Also, with your reasoning, it seems like it should happen gradually, not all at once. You know much more about computers though, so I don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Illiad86 Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 ahhh...alrighty. Vista and a game is pretty much filling up all your RAM. Most games now use about 1.5-2GB of your RAM to play...Vista uses like 1GB with nothing else running but that. So there's all your 3GB, then the computer uses the paging file off the HDD for "RAM" which is very slow and that's why you see a drop. Going up to 64 bit Windows 7 would solve that quick hehe ;) You'd be surprised how much an extra GB can do :) I kind of assumed it could be a memory leak because a lot of games that have come out in the past year have had it. The Sims 3 seems like it does, but maybe it just uses a ridiculous amount of RAM :closedeyes: The Witcher did it to me when I got it and Fallout 3 nuked my RAM as well...I kept on getting page fault errors every time I played Fallout 3 for more than 30 minutes... Everybody's computer is different though, I've had people say that they had very minimal problems with Fallout 3 (at the time, don't know how it is now, don't play it anymore) and absolutely no problems with The Sims 3. The 100% CPU usage on Dragon Age sounds like a bug from the posts on the support site. Guess you have to wait for a patch :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retribution Posted November 17, 2009 Author Share Posted November 17, 2009 I doubt that such a large problem as this would happen if you meet the recommended requirements for the game, along with the ram. Also, it happens just as often with lower settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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