Memory leak!

[Circuit]

The memory leak thing bit me pretty hard the last time I played.



[edit - I make new thread like magic! - Ned]

[Creole Ned]

Yeah, for people who are getting hit by the memory leak (like me), it's pretty annoying. If I play for more than 20-30 minutes, I can count on the game crashing once or twice unless I pre-emptively restart it.

[Q]

I find it very strange that only some people are getting hit with the memory leak.

[bridude]

I don't crash that often but when I exit the game it locks up.

[Circuit]

I find it very strange that only some people are getting hit with the memory leak.

No, I think just not everyone's noticing. If you have more RAM you'd probably be able to play longer and I'm sure some people just don't play long enough in one sitting for the leak to affect them.

[Q]

No, I think just not everyone's noticing. If you have more RAM you'd probably be able to play longer and I'm sure some people just don't play long enough in one sitting for the leak to affect them.
I've been checking CoH's memory usage since people started complaining about it, and the memory usage seems to hold steady around 750meg.

[bridude]

mine stays between 550 and 750.

[Creole Ned]

I'm not sure what changed in I7 to cause the leak or why it only affects some systems. The game will play perfectly fine for me until it suddenly freezes. The freezes don't happen at any particular time, but if I tab out and check memory usage, it will always be over 1 gig and sometimes up to 2 gigs for CoH - and I have 2 gigs in my system.

I suspect this will be fixed in the first post-I7 patch, whenever they get that out.

[Circuit]

Well, I'm talking CoV, Q. I'm not sure about CoH. Mine starts out using 750mb or so and climbs very quickly when I'm just standing still.

[Q]

CoV runs the CoH exe, which is what I was referring to when I said 'CoH'. I've only been playing CoV anyway.

[Circuit]

Either way, it's affecting me enough that I'd rather not bother until they fix it. Just out of curiosity, how much RAM do you have and how large is your pagefile?

[Creole Ned]

The game dumped while I was zoning tonight from Talos to Peregrine tonight but I was able to play without any crashes on the villain side for the first time since I7 went live, so I'm guessing today's patch fixed some but not all issues.

[Q]

I have 1 gig, and I don't remember what my pagefile settings are. I suspect they're the default settings.

[Circuit]

See, I have 1.5gb with default pagefile settings. My graphics settings in the game are all the way up in game, short of the Bloom and DoF. Maybe that has something to do with it.

[Paladin]

From the CoH forums:


I've been having issues with the dreaded evil Memory Leak since Issue 7 went live. I'll be honest with ya... it's been kickin' my tailbone. Two to three minutes to log into a mission. Five to ten minutes to log to desktop. Choppy graphics after an hour's play.

Tonight, when messing with some settings - and keeping an eye on my Task Manager - I noticed something. When I switched from Medium quality World Textures to High quality World Textures, the amount of the pagefile being used dropped by 100MB. I figure (in my non-technical sort of way) that the pagefile was being used to store the Medium textures, and had to clean house to make room for the High quality ones. Sure enough, after a while, the pagefile bulked itself back up.

I mentioned this to my supergroup, and one of them mentioned that there was a command that would have much the same effect: /unloadgfx. So I tried it... and he was right.

I made a macro button..

/macro GFX "unloadgfx"

... and about every fifteen to twenty minutes, I hit it. Watching my Task Manager, I notice that it keeps my pagefile relatively stable. I was able to zone into missions quicker, as well as between city zones, and logging to desktop was immediate, just like it was pre-I7.

[Creole Ned]

Some people mentioned that playing in windowed mode and occasionally minimizing the game had the same effect, prompting the game to flush texture memory.

I suspect we'll see another patch soon. Dunno if they'll risk doing one over the weekend again, though.

[Paladin]

Some people mentioned that playing in windowed mode and occasionally minimizing the game had the same effect, prompting the game to flush texture memory.

I suspect we'll see another patch soon. Dunno if they'll risk doing one over the weekend again, though.

You can play in Windowed mode?!?!?

[Creole Ned]

It's listed as an option under the resolution settings.

[Creole Ned]

Official confirmation (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=info&Number=5795746&bodyprev=#Post5795746) of the memory leak:

We have been investigating a memory leak issue with some graphics drivers and have made progress in addressing it. While the fix is not ready yet, if you have a higher-end graphics card any one of the following setting changes may alleviate the issue in the meantime:

1. Under Graphics and Audio, turn down 3D Resolution Scaling.

2. Under Graphics and Audio, under Advanced Graphic Settings, enable Bloom.

3. Under Graphics and Audio, under Advanced Graphic Settings, enable Depth of Field Effects.

Please be sure to contact our Tech Support staff if you have any questions or concerns.


The temporary fixes seem a bit bizarre, to say the least.

EDIT: Tonight I ran with Depth of Field enabled and the game did not freeze or crash.