#1
JackWall
Posted 06 November 2013 - 08:44 am
JackWall
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Hi all,
I presume the memory usage Skyrim is making on my rig is normal, due to the high amount of graphical mods. But it has come to a point that Skyrim freezes sometimes for more than 30 seconds and I can see my PC's hard drive led glowing while it happens. I've checked why is this happening and it's because Skyrim is using close to 2Gb of memory! I only have 4Gb of ram and I love how Skyrim looks with all these mods installed. I don't want to remove any of them and I'm not going to.
I wanted to know, if there's someway to free the used ram while playing, instead of accumulating it all! Normally, the solution is just to restart my PC and free the ram, but after a while, Skyrim absorbs all of it again!
Thanks
Edited by JackWall, 06 November 2013 - 08:45 am.
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#2
spookycandy
Posted 06 November 2013 - 09:55 am
It's not the normal RAM that Skyrim uses--it's VRAM (video random access memory). VRAM is located in your graphics card. To find out how much you have, you can either look up your card name (if you know what it is) or download a program like CPUID or GPUZ. Skyrim is a wormhole that eats VRAM day in and day out (particularly with mods), and requires a hefty 2GB minimum to run the "best" ENBs and graphic mods. Having more system memory helps, but if you've got less than 1GB of VRAM there's only so much your computer can do.
Unfortunately, there is no way to really stop Skyrim from doing this. Optimization mods might help, but they will never come close to fully alleviating the problem. In layman's terms, some programs will have memory leaks that cause them to use more memory than they actually need the longer they are open (but in this case, Skyrim already needs quite a bit).
In the meantime, I would recmomend closing everything except Skyrim while playing, and possibly playing it at a lower resolution in Windowed mode.
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#3
JackWall
Posted 06 November 2013 - 01:55 pm
JackWall
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It's not the normal RAM that Skyrim uses--it's VRAM (video random access memory). VRAM is located in your graphics card. To find out how much you have, you can either look up your card name (if you know what it is) or download a program like CPUID or GPUZ. Skyrim is a wormhole that eats VRAM day in and day out (particularly with mods), and requires a hefty 2GB minimum to run the "best" ENBs and graphic mods. Having more system memory helps, but if you've got less than 1GB of VRAM there's only so much your computer can do.
Unfortunately, there is no way to really stop Skyrim from doing this. Optimization mods might help, but they will never come close to fully alleviating the problem. In layman's terms, some programs will have memory leaks that cause them to use more memory than they actually need the longer they are open (but in this case, Skyrim already needs quite a bit).
In the meantime, I would recmomend closing everything except Skyrim while playing, and possibly playing it at a lower resolution in Windowed mode.
Thanks for your answer.
I already know what vram is, and the difference between the both of them (I knew it before starting to study computers).
The memory I'm talking about skyrim is using is the RAM, not the VRAM. I can share an screenshot if you need to see it. Yesterday, Skyrim got to 1,7Gb of RAM usage. I can play smoothly enough when there's only 1Gb of RAM being used by the O.S., but if I try to play Skyrim when the memory usage is around 35%, It's just better to restart the PC and free that 10% of RAM before playing.
I can garantee Skyrim consumes a lot of VRAM as well, there's no doubt about it. But I only wanted to know if there was some way to reduce the main memory usage that doesn't require to reduce the grafical quality. Btw, I don't use ENB mods at all, only texture mods. I know the ram usage is 100% related to the amount of texture mods I have, but it's just extrange that this only starts to be a problem when the memory usage gets too high as time passes... There's have to be a way to free that used ram.
P.S.: the problem I'm talking about is similar to when you have a lot of programs running, consuming all of your ram (memory leak, as you said): applications start to respond slowly and you need to free that ram by closing programs or restarting. Maybe I just need more RAM... Thing that crossed my mind.
Edited by JackWall, 06 November 2013 - 02:02 pm.
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#4
Georgiegril
Posted 06 November 2013 - 04:25 pm
Georgiegril
- Premium Member
- 4,469 posts
I'm always like this
My Skyrim uses around 2 GB RAM, as well. I think that is normal, depending on the mods you use.
IMO the best way to "free up RAM" in the game is to turn off any unessential services/processes before you play. Programs like Gamebooster claim to do this, but in my experience the RAM used by Gamebooster is nearly what it claims to save.
So I manually disable or stop unecessary processes and services. This takes a little more time up front to learn what those are, but once you know, then it is quite fast. You can make a .bat file to do this automatically. However, if that seems daunting, then Gamebooster may be a better solution.
Also, turning off apps like browswers, IM, cloud sync, disabling auto updates for things like flash, java, windows, auto scans/i[dates for your firewall/AV should help. (of couse updating these is crucial for your computer's security, so don't leave them disabled permanently.)
Finally, you can try increasing your page files. If you are using anything past Windows XP, make sure you have superfetch running-- it take care of optimizing memory usage.
One place to start learning about the processes is Black Viper's website.
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#5
spookycandy
Posted 06 November 2013 - 05:38 pm
spookycandy
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Enthusiast
It's not the normal RAM that Skyrim uses--it's VRAM (video random access memory). VRAM is located in your graphics card. To find out how much you have, you can either look up your card name (if you know what it is) or download a program like CPUID or GPUZ. Skyrim is a wormhole that eats VRAM day in and day out (particularly with mods), and requires a hefty 2GB minimum to run the "best" ENBs and graphic mods. Having more system memory helps, but if you've got less than 1GB of VRAM there's only so much your computer can do.
Unfortunately, there is no way to really stop Skyrim from doing this. Optimization mods might help, but they will never come close to fully alleviating the problem. In layman's terms, some programs will have memory leaks that cause them to use more memory than they actually need the longer they are open (but in this case, Skyrim already needs quite a bit).
In the meantime, I would recmomend closing everything except Skyrim while playing, and possibly playing it at a lower resolution in Windowed mode.
Thanks for your answer.
I already know what vram is, and the difference between the both of them (I knew it before starting to study computers).
The memory I'm talking about skyrim is using is the RAM, not the VRAM. I can share an screenshot if you need to see it. Yesterday, Skyrim got to 1,7Gb of RAM usage. I can play smoothly enough when there's only 1Gb of RAM being used by the O.S., but if I try to play Skyrim when the memory usage is around 35%, It's just better to restart the PC and free that 10% of RAM before playing.
I can garantee Skyrim consumes a lot of VRAM as well, there's no doubt about it. But I only wanted to know if there was some way to reduce the main memory usage that doesn't require to reduce the grafical quality. Btw, I don't use ENB mods at all, only texture mods. I know the ram usage is 100% related to the amount of texture mods I have, but it's just extrange that this only starts to be a problem when the memory usage gets too high as time passes... There's have to be a way to free that used ram.
P.S.: the problem I'm talking about is similar to when you have a lot of programs running, consuming all of your ram (memory leak, as you said): applications start to respond slowly and you need to free that ram by closing programs or restarting. Maybe I just need more RAM... Thing that crossed my mind.
In this day and age if a game is using less than 2GB of system RAM I am actually surprised. Knowing that, I would say there isn't really a way to reduce such a thing. 4GB is the minimum for some games and running programs/browsing the internet. On top of this, using 2GB out of 4GB shouldn't actually be causing any slowdowns. Things can safely use a much higher percentage of your system RAM before causing slow downs.
As for memory leak, a memory leak isn't when you are running too many programs and running out of RAM. A memory leak comes from one program incorrectly allocating memory (hoarding it). Way back when, Firefox would easily consume 3.5-4GB of RAM if I left it open too long. It's a problem from one program, not many, and closing other programs isn't the answer.
I would recommend more RAM (it's cheap these days!), but I do still think that VRAM is the issue for you. Someone can have only 4GB of system memory, but their graphics card will make up all the difference in VRAM. System memory isn't the main ingredient in making Skyrim perform well. You can have 16GB of it and your (modded) game will still lag if the graphics card isn't up to par. More memory will definitely help if you want to run many other programs while running Skyrim, but if your issue is that Skyrim does this with nothing else you know of running, more probably will only give you unnoticeable or negligable gains. If you do want to try upgrading, I really like 8GB as a balance.
FYI I hope I didn't seem too preachy here. I worked as a repair technician for many years and tend to babble on about this sort of stuff.
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#6
JackWall
Posted 06 November 2013 - 10:24 pm
JackWall
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Don't worry, Spooky. I apreciate all points of view and sorry for the misunderstanding with the term "memory leak", it's what you said.
Well, I concur more with Georgiegril. I've been playing skyrim now for a long hour and it didn't really freeze. This was because I had a lot of those 4Gb free. The problem really comes when Skyrim starts to alocate ram incorrectly, using more and more over time. This really becomes a problem when I start to play with only 2,5Gb (more or less) of free ram. I need at least 3Gb of free ram before I start playing or it will start freezing after a while. This is why I think is not a problem of VRAM, because VRAM would get instally consumed just after start playing if my character was in some heavy loaded area.
Georgiegril, I know you may kill me after saying this, but I'm used to disable superfetch since a couple of years, because that little service (in my opinion), the only thing it does is consume ram and write on disc all the time, analyzing the programs being used. At the end, the solution for a problem, becomes the problem itself, so I ended up disabling that service. Do you think is better to enable it? Oh, and my pagefile is huge, I make sure it's twice the size of the main memory always, or even more.
I tried in the past programs like gamebooster, they are crap indeed. I prefer to do the "manual" way too: disable unnecesary services and turn off other programs while playing.
So, I guess I'll need more ram and a new gpu soon, since we are entering a true generational change in terms of graphic quality, etc. But it'll have to wait for now 
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