maboru Posted December 10, 2011 Share Posted December 10, 2011 The 4gb mod will allow the game to use more than the default 2 gig it's coded for. As long as you have more than 2 gig installed system RAM then it should make the game much better for you. Display Memory: 4064 MB - This is your total available video RAM Dedicated Memory: 1248 MB - This is the installed VRAM on your card (DDR5 - fast RAM) Shared Memory: 2815 MB - This is shared RAM, it is the installed system RAM (DDR3 - slower) that is assigned to handle overflows (when the game, at certain points, needs more RAM for display purposes than your video card has installed on it.) The problem we seem to be having is that when the game calls for the shared RAM after the video card RAM is full it doesn't release it when it's through and when you get to a point where your card fills up again it can't use all the system RAM again because some of that RAM is still flagged as in use so you sort of run out of RAM and the game crashes. This is referred to as Memory Leakage or Memory De-fragmentation. The game should be coded to release shared RAM when it's done with it but (like many other programs) that function seems either not implemented or poorly implemented in Skyrim. The best fix for this is for Beth to re-code that function to clean up after itslf but video card makers can also implement a work around, in systems with much more RAM, to allow the card to address even more shared RAM through a driver update. This is not the optimum solution however. The truth is that 1 gig of VRAM should be more than sufficient for this game but the game doesn't seem to even release the VRAM it uses after it's no longer needed so after a period of gameplay it eventually fills up everything and the crashes begin. Thus the only thing we can do at present to account for this is to re-set the VRAM by powering down our rigs for a short period of time and starting back up, or quitting the game and running a memory de-fragger before starting the game again (this will only clean up system RAM though.) I am by no means an expert on this and perhaps some one can explain it better but the thing is that not all rigs are affected to same degree, part of the reason for this is the amount of extra texture mods you install in your game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackrain69 Posted December 10, 2011 Share Posted December 10, 2011 Here is the 4Gig Mod, not sure if i should use it thoughhttp://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013 What is VRam and is it a Graphics Driver, since im waiting for the New Nvidia Driver and im Not downloading Beta Drivers :) Here is my PC Spec if you want it :)http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showpost.php?p=5809128&postcount=31 You might consider trying the Nivida Beta drivers as they are more stable then ATI and may fix you're CTD's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daventry Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Nah, im waiting for the Official Release :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PositivelyNegative Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 (edited) I have the same problem, and also a good computer. It's annoying, but doesn't freak my computer out so much and bring it to a crawl as far as speed goes, so I merely boot the game up again...then wait another 2-3 hours like you before it crashes. But damn, problems like this on an alienware computer?! I've heard they're great gaming PCs. Their performance of course varies depending on size and model, but for the most part, they have excellent specs. I considered getting one, but ended up getting an xps instead. That really speaks to how bad some of the problems are with this game - when a high-performance gaming machine can't even run it without problems. Of course, I love the game, and have been a fan of the series since I first played Morrowind when it came out, but there are some serious stability issues that have plagued each and every game. Morrowind crashed often; Oblivion crashed way too often and nearly blew up my previous computer a few times, and Skyrim crashes often too. I had no idea that they are still working off of an 11 yr-old engine; I have little to no programming know-how, but I can definitely see how that would probably complicate things. Kudos to Bethesda I guess if they're able to make it work, but it's too bad for a lot of players. Edited December 12, 2011 by PositivelyNegative Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daventry Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 I think its because Bethesda is working on a 32bit System, they dont know how to Upgrade to a 64bit system, hence i have Win7 64 and Skyrim is meant for Windows 32bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maboru Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Except for the fact that most people aren't having problems (over 4 million units sold) with 64 bit systems so there must be at least a set of common denominators that could narrow down the problems that some people are having. We can only hope that Beth, nVidia and AMD continue working to resolve or at least identify why some people's rigs can't handle the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WolfStark Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 "Most people" is relative. Consoles have different problems that occured but they have no real crashes. So they are out. Many people report PC problems small and bigger, some play with this, some with that patch. Many people like me just wait for solutions here in the forum just saying once or twice something. I remember IGN made a poll and the result were 25% without problems from 30.000 users or so. That is enormous and it doesn't seem that "most people" aren't having problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maboru Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Well Steam reports hundreds of thousands of people actually playing the game at the same time. That sort of dwarfs the thousands(?) of people on the tech forums reporting game breaking problems. Ergo the game works for most PC gamers. What we're trying to do is to find out why it isn't working for the rest. Every technical problem has a solution, we just need to find the various sets of common denominators for those having problems. Most of us here are not experts but if we can narrow things down it will help the experts in finding solutions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracion Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 Ya my alienware shouldn't have these problems. But it does have these problems. I mean I got it last year for christmas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanilladafunk Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 (edited) Hello mate, and I have a (possible) solution to your problem.I have noticed that quite a few people have said to use the Skyrim 4gb patch to help stop the crashes, due to Skyrim only using 2gb's of memory (not one of Bethesda's best moments.)Well, ive tried it out, and it did absolutely nothing to help me. So I kept looking for a solution until I came across a person who mentioned, if your using windows 7, you need to run it as an administrator. I did that, and im having almost no problems with the game. I highly recommend it. If you havent tried this yet, I recommend getting the 4gb patch. Hope this helped mate. Best of luck. Edited December 13, 2011 by Vanilladafunk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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