overload Mods Memory usage leaks

[Herolegend]

hey thought this might be a bit wrong lol, right lets see well as you can see in the pic the memory is what 1gig in taskmanager? I guess its my own fault for running 252 mods? but it doesn't always stay that way, i was running the game in window mode at the time. with a few things running in the background,

 

I got ample enough 2 gig memory on my pc and g-card memory is 512ddr3 2.22ghz cpu overclocked, but I might not have this issue in full screen mode, and its only happend once so far in window mode, but I'm suspecting that the fault is too many mods running can sometimes leak memory in game and i end up with crashes in game? at the time i was riding on a Drake dragon, and the screen went all glitchy and then froze for the first time heh..

 

so my question is: Is there a mod out there that free's some in game memory? I hear oblivion has memory leaks of some kind, or the memory gets filled too quickly, perhaps a mod that does something to help? or is my best bet to stop using some mods?

[Vagrant0]

Nope, there's nothing that can free up memory while the game is being played. All the memory being used by the game is needed to keep that game working. You should really try to use fewer mods, and refrain from using windowed mode unless you have more than 2GB ram since both can lead to issues. Naturally having fewer other things running while playing Oblivion can decrease your risk,

[Storm Raven]

Nope, there's nothing that can free up memory while the game is being played. All the memory being used by the game is needed to keep that game working. You should really try to use fewer mods, and refrain from using windowed mode unless you have more than 2GB ram since both can lead to issues. Naturally having fewer other things running while playing Oblivion can decrease your risk,

 

Vagrant0,

 

How does the mod Streamline play into this? Its supposed to clear cell buffers or somthing like that, therebye freeing up the ram that oblivion is using for other things. What do you think?

 

Also is there a list somewhere on the background processes you can't kill without messing up the game?

 

Thanks,

 

Stormraven aka Darkstormraven

[WoogieMonster]

I do not know if there is an actual list anywhere, but there are programs that will let you look up your processes and tells you what they are connected to and if they are needed for that item to function. One such program is called Quick Access and you can find in the downloads section of PCWorld.com.

 

I mentioned this before and someone said that there is a better program, however I can not remember what it was called.

[Herolegend]

Streamline mod? hmm I guess i will be running the game in full screen since then i have no issues really but if the mod Streamline free up buffer? than anyone know if thats a good mod to use? like it wont invalidate or mess up save data? lol that memory usage was i think off scale its so wrong its not that high really, i think my game just crashed so it seem to have some sort of leak and it ended up crashing. if i can patch the leak or mod it to free more in game should be all good I might try Streamline if its got no problems, however i hear it might cut out some sounds that npc's are talking?

[TheTerminator2004]

purging the cell buffer can help, but it can also cause problems, and doesn't always free much memory... what you have to remember is that every mod you have running has to be loaded up into RAM while you're playing the game, so that many mods is always going to cause problems. The best thing to do is stop using several mods... preferably, you shouldn't have more than a hundred loaded at any one time, max.

[Herolegend]

what kinds of problems can purging cell buffer cause? missing sound clips? does it fix itself eventually? oh damn I'm running 243 mods lol well i used to be running 254 I wonder if bethesda will bring a patch out for the game to allow 500mods running without any issues. Going above 255 will not run the game, see the problem is though what if you turn off some mods your save data needs to work properly and you like them also so you want to keep them? Maybe the best thing would be a merging of mods then like one companion mod that gives you 9 characters instead of 9 seperate mod companions? or a set of armors and weapons instead of a single armor or weapon seperate esp's. Hey if that helps modders should merge a bunch together so we can still use them but delete some old esp's taking up space?

[Vagrant0]

what kinds of problems can purging cell buffer cause? missing sound clips? does it fix itself eventually? oh damn I'm running 243 mods lol well i used to be running 254 I wonder if bethesda will bring a patch out for the game to allow 500mods running without any issues. Going above 255 will not run the game, see the problem is though what if you turn off some mods your save data needs to work properly and you like them also so you want to keep them? Maybe the best thing would be a merging of mods then like one companion mod that gives you 9 characters instead of 9 seperate mod companions? or a set of armors and weapons instead of a single armor or weapon seperate esp's. Hey if that helps modders should merge a bunch together so we can still use them but delete some old esp's taking up space?

Purging cell buffers reverts those cells back to their original condition. In the case of things like player houses where you tend to have things outside containers... This can be very bad. Clearing RAM with a 3rd party program however would be worse in that it can't actually differentiate as to what ram is being used for what. This means that using a 3rd party program may lead to unpredictible loss of information. EVERYTHING which is not in its startgame place has its positions recorded in RAM. this means containers, NPCs, and mod data. Purging this after that data was loaded may cause mods to completely break. It wouldn't fix sound clips, it wouldn't fix itself eventually. Every time it was attempted, things would only get worse.

 

The 255 limit is there because that's the highest number which can be expressed in 2 bytes 00-FF. Going beyond that number is not possible from any standpoint. Form IDs are contained as 4 sets of 2 bytes. The first set for the load order, the second set for the Form ID. Trying to allow for a 3-4 byte loading order would require a larger address. I'm not really versed in all the specifics about memory, but I do know that trying to do anything like that just for the sake of using more mods is just a bad idea. It's not a limit that can just be changed with a setting, this is one of those fundimental things that the game needs to function.

 

More to the point, the more mods you have, the less room you have free to start with. Combining come can help, but you really should just get rid of anything that you aren't actually using at that time. Even if you combined all your weapon mods into a single .esp, you would still need to restart from scratch, and may not actually gain any performance (especially if you're just going to end up adding more mods). How many of those weapon mods are you actually using? how many companions do you actually intend to have following you?

 

The other end of the problem might be the mods themselves. Some mods, although cool, aren't designed very well and fill up alot of RAM very quickly by placing new activators and other things to perform their effects. Every entityor item that is created by a mod is tracked in RAM. This was one of the reasons why SI caused the hell it did when it first came out, there were scripts constantly generating items, filling up ram. This has been fixed somewhat by the newest patch, but you still have mods that manage to just bog down your system.

[Herolegend]

you sure know your stuff m8, sounds pretty bad to clear cell buffers, I think i wont use it just in case, and thats true its possible you think to disable some mods, and enable them at later time in your save point to play with them again, it shouldn't hurt your save data right? I got you I think I'm going to reevaluate my mods list thanks for your help filling in the blanks I did not know about, I may even rebuild the whole game from scratch mod wise lol. I really did have no idea mods make that much impact on the game, glad to know this I really appreciate your post Vagrant0.

[Vagrant0]

When you can enable/disable the mod really depends alot on the mod. Most generic (add a piece of equipment to the game) mods can be enabled/disabled with minimal complications, you'll still lose/have to regain that item. Mods that add areas can be a bit more tricky, you can usually remove them with little problem as long as you aren't currently in the area they add/edit and if there aren't any unrelated NPCs inside that area. Companions can get more complicated since these often have their own quests, scripts, and who knows what else associated with them. Mods which change alot of different things, affect races, meshes, or textures pretty much require a new game since removing these tends to screw up everything badly. If you're wanting to keep your saves, you're best off taking it slow, removing only a few at a time, testing, saving, cleaning with wyrebash, removing. You're really better off just starting a new game, or using someone elses clean save though.