MechWarrior: Living Legends Debugging Results - Memory Allocation Issues

[Halcyon]

I get crashes almost daily, and here's what I run:

Win 7 64 bit on an Asus P6X58D-E X58 chipset mobo
Intel i7 950 quad @ 3.07GHz running stock speed
8 GB dual channel pc3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz 9-9-9-24
EVGA GTX 465 GDDR5 1GB
Running native display at 1680 x 1050 @ 60 hertz

The only background programs I run are Avast! anti-virus and the software for my Razer Mamba wireless mouse (although for some reason I CANNOT get Punkbuster A service to stop running on it's own. I need it for Punkbuster when I play Battlefield Bad Company 2)

I used the "optimal settings" option in autodetect for the Crysis Wars graphics options which set my system to "high" on everything in the advanced tab...except for Objects Quality, that's on "custom" and I don't know what their version of custom means.

Should I turn down a few things with the system I've got? I figured using auto detect was going to be the safest way to avoid crashes, but maybe I'm completely wrong.
I seem to crash randomly, but I get bad slowdowns during some missile hits/screen shaking moments, and I always lag a bit when either I'm flaming someone or getting flamed and the screen has nothing but...flames.

Any thoughts?

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

Yeah i'd turn some stuff down. The autodetect is designed for the base game and not the MOD which is much heavier. 

[KingLeerUK]

The only background programs I run are Avast! anti-virus

Kill this process, entirely, when playing MWLL.  If you are behind a router you will have sufficient protection.
 

for some reason I CANNOT get Punkbuster A service to stop running on it's own. I need it for Punkbuster when I play Battlefield Bad Company 2)

Kill the punkbuster process using Task Manager.  If it is set to auto-restart and keeps showing up you can change this behaviour by using the Win7 equivalent of Administator Tools > Services and set the startup behaviour to MANUAL.  Honestly, I doubt if punkbuster is causing issues because most servers running MWLL have it disabled anyway.

[Taemien]

If you're running Vista. Do NOT try to run this mod with less then 6GB of physical memory. If you do any sort of multitasking you'll need at least 8GB.

I can confirm that running Vista, MWLL, and a MMO of some sort at 8GB of ram will run into issues. Which is why I'm considering upgrading in the future to at least 16GB. 16GB would be overkill for most of you however. (I do a bit artwork here and there with very large resolutions, so I need lots of memory).

[Spanish Inquisition]

E8400 @ 4GHz
4GB DDR2-900 CL4
HD4850 512MB
Win7Pro x64
DX10 mode
64-bit executable

No crashes whatsoever. Task manager reports Crysis Wars takes at most 1GB of RAM and stays there. I usually have to do start up Team Fortress or something to get Windows to release the RAM being used up by Opera (680MB? Damn Opera, you used to be <100MB), but after that I never run out of memory. Typical usage before gaming is around 50%. For those you using Firefox 4 Beta, you might want to close your browser if you find it starting to memory leak.

The only problems I've had playing MWLL is on Death Valley and Kagoshima due to the ridiculous amount of textures those maps bring. All other maps play fine.

[Spooky]

Btw. I just checked the File Header of the 32-bit Crysis.exe (Crysis Wars). It is in fact LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE!

This means, that under Windows 32, it would be able to allocate 3GB of memory in its virtual address space, given that the OS is configured accordingly.
And it means, that under Windows 64, it will be able to allocate up to 4GB of memory in its virtual address space.

[GB-72AT Talon]

If you're running Vista. Do NOT try to run this mod with less then 6GB of physical memory. If you do any sort of multitasking you'll need at least 8GB.

I can confirm that running Vista, MWLL, and a MMO of some sort at 8GB of ram will run into issues. Which is why I'm considering upgrading in the future to at least 16GB. 16GB would be overkill for most of you however. (I do a bit artwork here and there with very large resolutions, so I need lots of memory).

or.....you could move to Windows 7, its vastly superior in how it handles memory allocation, you could upgrade to Windows 7 x64 for cheaper than buying all that memory.....a system only really needs 2-4Gb of Ram to run MWLL wide open on Windows 7 x64......

[sleepysheep]

Well I have 12gb of ram, and I've never seen Crysis or wars use more than 2gb of ram in Win 7 x64. In total memory usage I never go over 4gb. I have been crashing way too frequently just recently, but I do not think it's Ram causing me to crash. Since I lowered AA to 0xAA, I am using less VRam, so it isn't getting maxed so often, I don't crash.

So I have a feeling crashing (At least for me) has something to do with my VRam maxing out on my Graphic card. Now since I have 5970 with 2gb (1gb of ram per GPU) I'm a bit gutted >.<

Since I'm running this game on max settings, 1900x1200, with or without AA, DX10, x64 and I can't get my total memory usage to hit over 4gb, I don't think most people are going to struggle to run this game with just 4gb of ram. That said, having a bit more, never hurts.

*Edit* After joining the snowy map, can't remember the name of it, my memory did spike to 5gb, and then drop to 4.1gb. But I blame all that snow constantly on the screen....

[Gremlich]

I already close all process play at low and at 720p can't really do more.

What could I upgrade for less than 200$?

e8500
gtx 275
4gb of rams
vista 32bit

WIN OS7 64-bit from newegg.

I have had one crash on 0.4.9 (Death Valley), the first time I ran the game with the update, wasn'r graphics related that I could tell, could as easily have been due to the joystick. Nothing since. I run the game on High settings on system with a GT 220 1GB DDR3, OS7 64-bit, Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz quad, 8 GB memory.

I also run avast and have had no indication that this was the cause of the crash. In fact, since I've started playing MWLL, I have had only three crashes.

[Frostiken]

If you are running Firefox while playing STOP. KILL FIREFOX COMPLETELY.

If you've not become aware, Firefox will consume every god damn bit of RAM it can. I typically leave the same Firefox process running for days at a time, and its memory usage can top 700mb sometimes. That's a LOT.

[(TLL)Siilk]

 Frosty's right, flaming vixen could be a real memory hog. Same goes for Skype, BTW. That little bastard could eat up to a couple of hundred megabytes, if left running for a day or two.

[RickHunter]

Guys, pretty much all versions of Windows (XP/Vista/7) either 32 bit or 64 bit will be smart enough to swap your unused/background running apps to disk in case of a memory shortage. Yes, this will greatly increase the time for game/level loading and is generally frowned upon for smooth gaming performance but it also won't cause Crysis to crash. That being said, it's a really good idea to close all unnecessary apps (including ones in your tray bar) to speed up game/level loading.

To monitor swap activity, start Windows performance monitor, load up the Pages Output/Sec memory counter and set the refresh rate for every 3 seconds. This counter should stay at 0 at all times while gaming. If it isn't, Windows is swapping out parts of unused apps to make more room for memory starved active processes.

I run Windows 7 32 bit on a 4 GB machine without /3GB and /USERVA parms at 3840x1024 2xAA on a 2 GB card (6950 @ 1 GHz & e8400 @ 4.2 GHz). The *most* I've ever seen Crysis consume was 1.4 GB via Task Manager or Process Explorer. That's it. I've seen the game crash in DX9 mode, DX10 mode, sometimes within 10 minutes of game play, sometimes not at all for 5+ hours of gaming. All other apps (stress testing included )/games are rock stable 24/7 - it just seems that Crysis/LL is a bit unstable/buggy. I've experienced the same random crashes on a WinXP 4 GB workstation at 1680x1050 0xAA on a 512 MB card.

I'd upgrade memory to 4 GB way before upgrading OSes. Furthermore, changing from an old bloated installation of XP or Vista to a fresh installation of Win7 will always give the appearance of the new OS being so much faster than the old one. Unfortunately, it's hardly faster at the core OS (within 5%). It's just not loaded down with a whole bunch of apps yet.

Frosty - I'd upgrade the vid card 1st to a 6870 or oc'ed 460 for $200 - if you can stretch your budget to 250, go for the 560ti or 6950. The 2xx series had notoriously poor memory management on texture memory-heavy games (like Crysis with LL). The problem with only upgrading your video card is that Crysis is quite heavy on CPU perf as well. If I drop my e8400 back to 3 GHz, I run a good 30% slower regardless of res. LL requires a well balanced system. So either OC your e8500 to 4+ GHz (stable) with a new video card or get a new system (which will include MB, CPU, mem and possibly power supply - way more than $200 though).

[GB-72AT Talon]

Guys, pretty much all versions of Windows (XP/Vista/7) either 32 bit or 64 bit will be smart enough to swap your unused/background running apps to disk in case of a memory shortage. Yes, this will greatly increase the time for game/level loading and is generally frowned upon for smooth gaming performance but it also won't cause Crysis to crash. That being said, it's a really good idea to close all unnecessary apps (including ones in your tray bar) to speed up game/level loading.

To monitor swap activity, start Windows performance monitor, load up the Pages Output/Sec memory counter and set the refresh rate for every 3 seconds. This counter should stay at 0 at all times while gaming. If it isn't, Windows is swapping out parts of unused apps to make more room for memory starved active processes.

I run Windows 7 32 bit on a 4 GB machine without /3GB and /USERVA parms at 3840x1024 2xAA on a 2 GB card (6950 @ 1 GHz & e8400 @ 4.2 GHz). The *most* I've ever seen Crysis consume was 1.4 GB via Task Manager or Process Explorer. That's it. I've seen the game crash in DX9 mode, DX10 mode, sometimes within 10 minutes of game play, sometimes not at all for 5+ hours of gaming. All other apps (stress testing included )/games are rock stable 24/7 - it just seems that Crysis/LL is a bit unstable/buggy. I've experienced the same random crashes on a WinXP 4 GB workstation at 1680x1050 0xAA on a 512 MB card.

I'd upgrade memory to 4 GB way before upgrading OSes. Furthermore, changing from an old bloated installation of XP or Vista to a fresh installation of Win7 will always give the appearance of the new OS being so much faster than the old one. Unfortunately, it's hardly faster at the core OS (within 5%). It's just not loaded down with a whole bunch of apps yet.


Frosty - I'd upgrade the vid card 1st to a 6870 or oc'ed 460 for $200 - if you can stretch your budget to 250, go for the 560ti or 6950. The 2xx series had notoriously poor memory management on texture memory-heavy games (like Crysis with LL). The problem with only upgrading your video card is that Crysis is quite heavy on CPU perf as well. If I drop my e8400 back to 3 GHz, I run a good 30% slower regardless of res. LL requires a well balanced system. So either OC your e8500 to 4+ GHz (stable) with a new video card or get a new system (which will include MB, CPU, mem and possibly power supply - way more than $200 though).

+1 karma for informative post

[Spooky]

I run Windows 7 32 bit on a 4 GB machine without /3GB and /USERVA parms at 3840x1024 2xAA on a 2 GB card (6950 @ 1 GHz & e8400 @ 4.2 GHz). The *most* I've ever seen Crysis consume was 1.4 GB via Task Manager or Process Explorer. That's it.

I  have monitored the game's maximum virtual memory consumption via Process Explorer yesterday. It went up to around 1.8 GiB on certain maps. ~200 MiB more and it would have crashed.


I used to crash a lot on my Windows XP 32 System, each game at least once or twice. But since either the recent patches or the Crysis Warhead CCC 3.0 Low config, it only happened twice so far (and each times the debug dll was unable to catch that crash, for some reason). Currently I am assuming the CCC Low config reduced the overall memory consumption. Maybe I'll make some tests with a regular Medium or High config again.

[AlfalphaCat]

I get crashes almost daily, and here's what I run:

Win 7 64 bit on an Asus P6X58D-E X58 chipset mobo
Intel i7 950 quad @ 3.07GHz running stock speed
8 GB dual channel pc3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz 9-9-9-24
EVGA GTX 465 GDDR5 1GB
Running native display at 1680 x 1050 @ 60 hertz

The only background programs I run are Avast! anti-virus and the software for my Razer Mamba wireless mouse (although for some reason I CANNOT get Punkbuster A service to stop running on it's own. I need it for Punkbuster when I play Battlefield Bad Company 2)

I used the "optimal settings" option in autodetect for the Crysis Wars graphics options which set my system to "high" on everything in the advanced tab...except for Objects Quality, that's on "custom" and I don't know what their version of custom means.

Should I turn down a few things with the system I've got? I figured using auto detect was going to be the safest way to avoid crashes, but maybe I'm completely wrong.
I seem to crash randomly, but I get bad slowdowns during some missile hits/screen shaking moments, and I always lag a bit when either I'm flaming someone or getting flamed and the screen has nothing but...flames.

Any thoughts?

This may sound silly, but if I were you, I would bump my resolution up to 1920.  Worth a shot i'd say.
Avast doesn't seem to affect things, and you can put it into silent/gaming mode.