LE Skyrim's memory leak

[Mar123]

Most of us who use texture packs regularly experience this so called "memory leak"

 

As soon as memory usage exceeds are certain value (somewhere around 2gb) the game starts hard drive swapping and it doesn't stop. Even when standing still and not touching the controls.

Obviously the bigger the textures used the sooner it happens, but it happens. Personally I even have it with vanilla textures. It just takes a few hours, but it will happen. With vanilla you can just restart, but with texture packs it happens every time you enter and exit a house in some places. Having more Vram fixes the problem for some, but that doesn't mean the root of the problem lies in our system specs.

 

Ergo: my suggestion is to patch this problem or at least find a way for the game to empty it's memory before it reaches critical mass.

 

I ask you to please sign in this thread if you agree. The more attention this problem gets, the higher the chance someone will notice.

I think this is a necessary fix, because using texture packs makes the game much more enjoyable.

[David Brasher]

I think they ought to fix the Navmesh bug.

[RaktoastTheSandwichTopper]

agreed pisses me the hell off >:(

[uk33]

Most of us who use texture packs regularly experience this so called "memory leak"

 

As soon as memory usage exceeds are certain value (somewhere around 2gb) the game starts hard drive swapping and it doesn't stop. Even when standing still and not touching the controls.

Obviously the bigger the textures used the sooner it happens, but it happens. Personally I even have it with vanilla textures. It just takes a few hours, but it will happen. With vanilla you can just restart, but with texture packs it happens every time you enter and exit a house in some places. Having more Vram fixes the problem for some, but that doesn't mean the root of the problem lies in our system specs.

 

Ergo: my suggestion is to patch this problem or at least find a way for the game to empty it's memory before it reaches critical mass.

 

I ask you to please sign in this thread if you agree. The more attention this problem gets, the higher the chance someone will notice.

I think this is a necessary fix, because using texture packs makes the game much more enjoyable.

 

I can see where you're going with 'the more attention it gets the higher the chance someone will notice'

...but

 

... wouldn't posting it on a Bethesda forum give it more chance of receiving the 'right' attention?

[Rennn]

As much as I'd like Skyrim to have fewer, smaller memory leaks, if I had to pick one thing for Bethesda to fix it would be the navmesh bug. That thing ruins entire mods, and entire games. In Oblivion we had the Deserts of Anequina, Valenwood, and High Rock. Since Fallout 3, with the switch to the navmesh system and the introduction of the bug, we've had zero large land mods. Coincidence? Unlikely. It's even breaking Open Cities for Skyrim. Without a fix for that, Skyrim will never reach even Oblivion or Morrowind in mod capacity.

 

Memory leaks are annoying, but it takes a few hours to accumulate. It'll disappoint the OP, but if you get lag after entering a single building, your VRAM isn't enough for the HD texture packs you're loading. My 768MB doesn't lag for three or four hours after starting to play, with HD textures for mountains and water. My friend's 1GB doesn't start to lag until five or six hours of playing, with HD textures for water, mountains, trees, and grass.

 

Both scenarios are easy to cope with, and realistically, using full resolution normal maps will do far more to improve textures than just quadrupling the resolution of the base texture. For some reason, Bethesda compressed and downsized the normal maps way too much. They make the textures look horrible, and since the regular textures are still a solid resolution it doesn't help VRAM usage much either.

 

In short, yes, I want Besthesda to reduce the memory leak, but there are more serious things wrong with Skyrim, and there are workarounds for the memory leak.

[johnxalice]

im also getting this problem i think. if someone has already found a fix for this so call memory leak then it would be nice to see a link or something.

my computer is way more the good enough to run skyrim. its totally smooth for about 3 minutes, then the fps take a dump and it doesn't get better.

[vardath]

Signed, it only takes 5 minutes, sometimes 1 minute, to CTD.

[acidzebra]

Signed, it only takes 5 minutes, sometimes 1 minute, to CTD.

 

Sorry, but that doesn't sound like memory leak, that sounds like serious mod conflict.

 

For the main topic, can't say I have really noticed serious memory leak issues, 1GB VRAM, 12GB sysRAM, but I rarely play for more than 4 hours in one go. Wish I could :)

 

I agree with the other guys, if we're going to petition, I really wish the navmesh bug would go away.

[AnkhAscendant]

I thought the navmesh bug was fixed like two patches ago. (Although I couldn't point you to my source. I was googling a problem with my CK and wandered into an unfamiliar forum...)

 

I also thought the fact that Skyrim was fixed to actually use 4gb of RAM now... well, maybe didn't fix the memory issue, but made it a whole lot less of an issue. I have to say, the only time I ever crashed with vanilla Skyrim was when I tried to push my subpar machine unfairly by riding my horse through 8 or 9 cells... I really should have known better ^^;

[chrisbolling2]

It was sort of fixed to use 4GB, but if you are running a 32bit OS it only sets aside 2GB for applications. Try enabling the 3GB switch using this command in command prompt in windows. bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072. restart your pc after and see if it helps with the lag or CTD's. There are posts here about this very thing as well that explain it much better than I am.