Memory Leak

[tramm]

BW can you fix the memory leak all i ask for.

[CrazyCanukk]

What are you seeing that is indicating there is a memory leak..

 

I'm just curious.

[Jack_Deth]

What are you seeing that is indicating there is a memory leak..

 

I'm just curious.

 

I'd be curious too considering I've run the game for 24 hours straight without any problems and this includes logging into all of my characters multiple times, doing warzones, flashpoints, etc.

[Alec_Fortescue]

There are still many playes with 4gb ram out there. No need for cocky comments.

[itsmymillertime]

There are still many playes with 4gb ram out there. No need for cocky comments.

 

so a memory leak is fixed by having more than 4gb of ram?

[DarthLeeloo]

When I've seen people mention memory leaks in regards to SWTOR it often involves memory usage constantly rising while playing and then ending with a crash. Or not a crash, but memory usage staying up in the 90s and slowing the computer down significantly.

[Ighten]

Never seen any thing to show there's any memory leak..

 

Its just become one of those thrown about statements..

 

Inefficient coding / engine .. now thats another matter.

[Malastare]

There are still many playes with 4gb ram out there. No need for cocky comments.

 

Adding more memory doesn't fix a memory leak. If it exists for people with 4GB of RAM, it also exists for people with 16GB of RAM. I have 16GB of RAM. I've watched the memory allocation. It's high, but nothing sets off any bells to indicate that its leaking. When left running for multiple hours doing nothing, the allocation doesn't grow. When playing the game, the allocation grows and shrinks, as one might expect.

 

Now, I do believe there was some acknowledgement of a memory issue on 32bit machines. From the descriptions I've seen, this isn't a "leak" exactly. Rather, it seems like a memory management issue dealing with the case where the game attempts to allocate over its 3GB limit (on 64-bit machines, the limit should be 4GB). In most cases, the problem would be caught (at which time the process should try to clean up some of its unused memory), but its possible that in some cases it's not.

 

Nonetheless, I still haven't seen credible evidence of a leak on 64 bit OSes.

 

And before people start whipping out Process Manager: No, using 3GB of memory is not evidence of a leak. MMOs use a ton of resources and a lot of those "optimizations" you wanted (and still want) are accomplished by through the use of extra memory. 3GB is a huge chunk, but considering the graphics, animations, and audio involved, it's not shocking.

[Malastare]

When I've seen people mention memory leaks in regards to SWTOR it often involves memory usage constantly rising while playing and then ending with a crash. Or not a crash, but memory usage staying up in the 90s and slowing the computer down significantly.

 

That's not evidence of a leak. In an MMO, you should expect the memory allocation to constantly rise. The game is loading and caching resources as it needs them, and should keep them in memory until it either lacks the structure to manage them or runs out of system memory.

 

There are some optimizations which can be added to detect low-memory systems (and for MMO gaming, sadly 4GB on a 32bit system is "low") and decrease memory usage, but that's going to result in lower general performance.

[Cretinus]

Dunno about a memory leak, but a 64bit version of the client would be highly welcomed. I have 16GB of RAM and it would be great if the game could use more than only 4GB. People on Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate with 32GB or 64 GB could even load the game completely to RAM. Imagine the performance boost.

It's 2013 and nobody will buy 32bit computers anymore. Without a 64bit version, SWTOR will look more and more outdated.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Cretinus

[HoloTweed]

That's not evidence of a leak. In an MMO, you should expect the memory allocation to constantly rise. The game is loading and caching resources as it needs them, and should keep them in memory until it either lacks the structure to manage them or runs out of system memory.

 

There are some optimizations which can be added to detect low-memory systems (and for MMO gaming, sadly 4GB on a 32bit system is "low") and decrease memory usage, but that's going to result in lower general performance.

 

I've got the problem, as do many, many other players. I believe it was introduced in version 1.4 - since then, I get maybe 1 - 2 hours play time before the game flickers then crashes to desktop. The problem is very real.

 

It's not my machine; the game ran splendidly prior to 1.4. The problem is within whatever changes BW made to 1.4 that causes those of us with 32-bit boxes to suffer this crash. It certainly does look like a memory leak. The crash can happen any time from loading screen to opening in-game mail to standing around chatting.

 

Anyone who says "well, *I* haven't seen any problems with memory leaks" should consider themselves lucky, because it is infuriating to those of us have it. Nothing like dropping after completing 90% of the Kaon FP and finally re-connecting to find you've been kicked from the team.

[Malastare]

Dunno about a memory leak, but a 64bit version of the client would be highly welcomed. I have 16GB of RAM and it would be great if the game could use more than only 4GB.

 

To what end? The majority of the memory is used for caching static resources (models, animations, textures, sounds...) not code or dynamic data. Keeping them around saves load time and reduces memory-management load while running, but having twice as much cached isn't really going to dramatically improve the game. It might reduce some load screen times (but not by much) and it might be able to be more aggressive in how it pre-loads some resources, but even then, the bottleneck will be the processing power to fill and manage the memory, not the amount of memory in itself.

 

Imagine the performance boost.

 

What sort of performance boost were you expecting? A move from 32bit to 64bit compilation usually sees an improvement of about 1-2% memory bandwidth and 5% increase in large-value floating-point calculations. As SWTOR doesn't heavily rely heavily on either of those, there is no immediate performance boost.

 

On Windows, you'd be able to drop the WoW64 emulation, but the performance hit of that is also negligible, as evidenced by hardware review sites repeatedly showing that the difference between WoW64 and native execution is less than the margin of error on their benchmarks.

 

There have actually been some games released with native 64 bit compilation. Valve did some tests on it with Halflife 2. For a while, you could download a 32bit or 64bit version. It was the same code, optimized for both instruction sets. While the 64 bit version suffered from some configuration/scripting bugs, there was virtually no difference in performance between the two.

[Malastare]

I've got the problem, as do many, many other players. I believe it was introduced in version 1.4 - since then, I get maybe 1 - 2 hours play time before the game flickers then crashes to desktop. The problem is very real.

 

Yes, this is the 32 bit issue I mentioned, and I believe Bioware had acknowledged its existence.

 

The point here is that it doesn't necessarily exhibit as a memory leak. It's likely a problem with handling low memory. To a novice, it might sound like the same thing. To an engineer, they are drastically different and require different strategies to isolate them. People who stubbornly insist on calling it a memory leak aren't helping the community.

 

Analogy: Imagine that you are driving your car and start to hear a constant squeaking. You take it into a mechanic, he asks what is wrong, and you declare: "The bearings on the driver side front wheel are wearing out. Fix it." The mechanic then spends the next couple hours taking off the wheel and poking about at your bearings, trying to figure out where the issue is. Of course, the actual issue is the brake rotor, or the shocks, or maybe some piece of plastic rubbing the tires. But you don't know that, because you're just an amateur and are taking guesses about the cause.

 

Lesson: Unless you know how to properly profile a memory leak, don't call it a memory leak. Just describe exactly what happens and let someone with actual experience make the call, otherwise you might be sending them on a wild goose chase based on your uninformed guess.

 

To be clear: Yes, I've seen enough evidence to suggest there is an issue with 32bit systems after the 1.4 update. But I haven't seen anything to suggest the issue is a memory leak and insisting that it is a memory leak does nothing to help Bioware fix it.

[Choffware]

Yes, this is the 32 bit issue I mentioned, and I believe Bioware had acknowledged its existence.

 

The point here is that it doesn't necessarily exhibit as a memory leak. It's likely a problem with handling low memory. To a novice, it might sound like the same thing. To an engineer, they are drastically different and require different strategies to isolate them. People who stubbornly insist on calling it a memory leak aren't helping the community.

 

Analogy: Imagine that you are driving your car and start to hear a constant squeaking. You take it into a mechanic, he asks what is wrong, and you declare: "The bearings on the driver side front wheel are wearing out. Fix it." The mechanic then spends the next couple hours taking off the wheel and poking about at your bearings, trying to figure out where the issue is. Of course, the actual issue is the brake rotor, or the shocks, or maybe some piece of plastic rubbing the tires. But you don't know that, because you're just an amateur and are taking guesses about the cause.

 

Lesson: Unless you know how to properly profile a memory leak, don't call it a memory leak. Just describe exactly what happens and let someone with actual experience make the call, otherwise you might be sending them on a wild goose chase based on your uninformed guess.

 

To be clear: Yes, I've seen enough evidence to suggest there is an issue with 32bit systems after the 1.4 update. But I haven't seen anything to suggest the issue is a memory leak and insisting that it is a memory leak does nothing to help Bioware fix it.

 

To be fair... If the sw engineer listens to the forum and doesn't do proper testing and just assumes there is a memory leak than that engineer is not good at their job. I'm a sw engineer and my customers tell me this or that is broken and often times it has nothing to with what is actually broken. It might not have anything thing to do with a memory leak but if they can't figure it out with all the info that's been reported than they aren't very good at trouble shooting.

[Malastare]

To be fair... If the sw engineer listens to the forum and doesn't do proper testing and just assumes there is a memory leak than that engineer is not good at their job.

 

Yup. I learned this long ago: "Ignore the customer's guess at a cause. Most of them don't know what they're talking about and its not worth your time to try and figure out if they do."

 

And I'm sure the devs at Bioware have learned that lesson, too.

 

The result is that I send back any bug reports that do not describe the series of actions that cause the problem. I can't trust what they say the problem is, so if they don't give me enough information to figure it out for myself, then I'm not going to waste time poking about looking for it. People saying: "There is a memory leak. Fix it" are the poster children for that problem. Not only have they diagnosed a problem they are unqualified to analyze, but they've given no information to reproduce the problem. If this report came to me, I'd note that there was a crash report and then toss it. There is zero usable information and its not worth my time.

 

Instead, people should be reporting exactly what happens, with a description of the environment: "SWTOR crashes to desktop with no error message after 1-2 hours of play. At the time of the crash, system memory usage is high. I'm using Vista, 32-bit, with 4GB of RAM on a dual core processor and an AMD 6850 video card." That is a report that gives a dev something to work with. If they get a dozen of these, they can start to isolate the things the reports have in common. It also gives them confidence that you're not just whining about a one-off crash.

[Lostpenguins]

I will say that I don't know why the game is crashing, but it does randomly crash. Luckily it's never been in an operation for me (has for other guildies), but I have had it happen during cut-scenes and conversations. Always happens to me when doing FP's where there's a hyperspace jump (like Esseles or Foundry), but I've noticed it while leveling my alts. For no reason whatsoever the game just crashes to desktop.

 

I also notice that when I log out sometimes, it doesn't log out, but instead goes to "not responding" and I have to force-close the game.

 

It's been over a year and I'm still running into these problems. Haven't had these experiences in WoW or Rift... just as an fyi to you BW devs. Shows some serious incompetence on your end.

[Cretinus]

To what end? The majority of the memory is used for caching static resources (models, animations, textures, sounds...) not code or dynamic data. Keeping them around saves load time and reduces memory-management load while running, but having twice as much cached isn't really going to dramatically improve the game. It might reduce some load screen times (but not by much) and it might be able to be more aggressive in how it pre-loads some resources, but even then, the bottleneck will be the processing power to fill and manage the memory, not the amount of memory in itself.

 

 

 

What sort of performance boost were you expecting? A move from 32bit to 64bit compilation usually sees an improvement of about 1-2% memory bandwidth and 5% increase in large-value floating-point calculations. As SWTOR doesn't heavily rely heavily on either of those, there is no immediate performance boost.

 

On Windows, you'd be able to drop the WoW64 emulation, but the performance hit of that is also negligible, as evidenced by hardware review sites repeatedly showing that the difference between WoW64 and native execution is less than the margin of error on their benchmarks.

 

There have actually been some games released with native 64 bit compilation. Valve did some tests on it with Halflife 2. For a while, you could download a 32bit or 64bit version. It was the same code, optimized for both instruction sets. While the 64 bit version suffered from some configuration/scripting bugs, there was virtually no difference in performance between the two.

 

Then how comes that SWTORUnleashed (loads stuff to a virtual RAM drive) provides such a performance boost, at least on my system?

 

BTW I was not talking performance boost due to 64bit computation, but due to having more RAM available to the game.

[Caesar]

just get all the schematics for your crafting profession and open and close your crafting windows repeatedly and you will crash eventually. some members in our guild were able to duplicate the leak caused from generating all the schematics from opening and closing the crafting windows. for some reason it doesn't clear out the cache when it closes.

[Ifolad]

just get all the schematics for your crafting profession and open and close your crafting windows repeatedly and you will crash eventually. some members in our guild were able to duplicate the leak caused from generating all the schematics from opening and closing the crafting windows. for some reason it doesn't clear out the cache when it closes.

 

Yeah i noticed that too, i'm a big crafter and i have to toon hop sometimes. After about the 3rd toon I get on I have to restart my computer or it WILL crash to desktop for no rhyme or reason. It has taught me to be efficient with my crafting jobs.

[Neoforcer]

64 bit os crashes to desktop just like the 32 bit. This happened in 1.4 and has not been addressed. It all started when they added the shadows improvements in 1.4. At the same time boarding party and Foundry crash to desktop started happening. So if they ever fix Boarding Party and Foundry crash to desktop it would probably fix the crash issue since most likely there related.

[tramm]

Sorry for my blunt response let me add to this.

 

Windows 7 Pro 64BIT 6GB of memory

 

SWTOR will launch with about 1.4 GB in use from both swtor.exe's

 

Over the course of a few hours game play from switching of characters to loading zones to crafting the memory on the larger swtor.exe will grow to about 3.2GB and eventually textures and load times will strain to load if at all. Even closing the client and going back in the performance is not the same. restarting the computer is obviously a clean slate and restores the game performance back to normal.

 

so while it may not be a memory leak it sure seems like it to me. or the client doesn't know how to dump things out of memory as it moves forward with other tasks. but once that memory fills up to 3.2GB or so the client crashes to desktop.

[BlinkingNapalm]

so a memory leak is fixed by having more than 4gb of ram?

no, i fixed mine by going from 32 bit os to 64bit still just have 4 gigs. run everything on high with good fps no probs since change before the switch my memory would max out and lock up about every hour, after switch as i said, no probs at all for hours straight. ram stays around 60 percent.

[Malastare]

so while it may not be a memory leak it sure seems like it to me. or the client doesn't know how to dump things out of memory as it moves forward with other tasks. but once that memory fills up to 3.2GB or so the client crashes to desktop.

 

What you described is not evidence of a memory leak. Rather, its the behavior of a single process overloading the system memory. If you're running a 32-bit OS and a video card capable of good performance in SWTOR, then 3.2GB is probably your limit for usable RAM. (EDIT: You're on 64, so your process limit is 4GB, but some of that is lost to memory mapping and you still have OS overhead, so the likelihood of hitting your physical RAM limit is still pretty likely) Once SWTOR exceeds the amount of available physical RAM, performance will go down the tubes in a hurry, and you'd probably prefer a crash-to-desktop to the memory thrashing that would normally occur.

 

Modern computers don't really ever have unused memory. Memory that isn't being actively used is often used as a quick-cache for data on disks, recently run applications, and a bunch of other minor stuff. When a process eats up a lot of memory it pushes all of those things out of memory, along with the working memory of a bunch of background applications, forcing some of them into the pagefile. Even when the process dies, it will take time to re-populate the cache and move those applications memories out of the pagefile and back into physical memory. While that is happening, you'll see a lot more disk activity and a lot more stuff getting pulled in and out of memory as the system works to reach normality again. It'll be rough for a while, but its totally expected behavior for a system recovering from a single process eating all the physical RAM.

 

Can a memory leak cause an application to use up a huge amount of memory? Sure. But it is far from the only way, and it shouldn't be your first assumption.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Malastare

[LadyVix]

Sorry for my blunt response let me add to this.

 

Windows 7 Pro 64BIT 6GB of memory

 

SWTOR will launch with about 1.4 GB in use from both swtor.exe's

 

Over the course of a few hours game play from switching of characters to loading zones to crafting the memory on the larger swtor.exe will grow to about 3.2GB and eventually textures and load times will strain to load if at all. Even closing the client and going back in the performance is not the same. restarting the computer is obviously a clean slate and restores the game performance back to normal.

 

so while it may not be a memory leak it sure seems like it to me. or the client doesn't know how to dump things out of memory as it moves forward with other tasks. but once that memory fills up to 3.2GB or so the client crashes to desktop.

 

I had the exact same issue with my X58 system, 6GB memory and 64 bit OS. The game would slowly consume more and more memory space until everything crashed to desktop when memory utilization hit approx 90%. The only way to resolve the issues, unfortunately, was to add more RAM.

[tramm]

running a 64BIT OS