Element - Possible Memory Leak

from Stardock Forums

I believe there may be a memory leak with Element.  I was playing and everything was going fine.  Then the music and sound effects went out.  The only thing I had was ambient noise (like birds chirping).

I decided to keep on going for a bit longer.  After about 15 mins, the game froze.  I ALT + Tabbed to the desktop to discover a warning message that memory was low.  I checked and I only had 50 MB of free memory remaining.  I'm running 6 GB total so there is no way I should have been out. 

Anybody else experience this or similar?

Fun game so far though :)

6,894 views 16 replies
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Hi Merloin,

Yes I agree there is something astray with the memory loss, I have 8gig of DDR2 and it's frozen my Elemental episodes a few times now. I hope the Devs address this issue asap.

 

 

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Same. Have had this problem constantly and am running with 8 megs of ram

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TorontoStar, reply 3
Same. Have had this problem constantly and am running with 8 "megs" of ram
End of TorontoStar's quote

Well there's your problem! :-P

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Same here, 8GB of DDR3 and I got the same symptoms as Merloin. Music and battle sounds are stopping, just animals can be heard. And then a few minutes later "Out of Memory" crash of the game.

I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit if that helps.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Little update for us all. Its not the ram thats getting filled. its your system swap.  I got that a few times, had 4 gigs standard (twice my ram).  When it went all 'out of memory' I boosted it up to absurd levels.  8 gigs gentlemen, all filled.  Just got the out of memory from my latest game.  kinda depressing. I was having a good game...

 

Edit: win 7 pro 32bit here.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

The total ammount of RAM you have in a system isn't going to be all that relevant. A 32-bit process can only access 2Gb of ram. Its possible to make the program large address aware, which would allow it to use up to 3Gb of RAM, though this would also require an addition to the boot.ini files on systems running XP 32.

 

However, this all depends on if this is a memory leak, or if the textures are simply so large that they are using up all the RAM. If its a leak, then this would only postpone the crashes, which is hardly ideal.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah like iviv66 said.

Had same problem with early Empire total war. it was only 32 bit and they released a patch that made i large address aware(it takes a recompile of the binary they said).

But Frogboy said they are working on a x64 bit version.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Anyone who's getting out of memory crashes on ATI systems, please try the new catalyst released today.

 

8 gigs gentlemen, all filled.  Just got the out of memory from my latest game.
End of quote

As a 32-bit program, the game can only use up to 2GB regardless how much you have.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Anyone who's getting out of memory crashes on ATI systems, please try the new catalyst released today.

 

Just installed the new drivers and going to start a fresh game.

Reinstalled the whole game and updated it again just to be sure,fingers crossed wish me luck :thumbsup:

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting kryo, reply 10
As a 32-bit program, the game can only use up to 2GB regardless how much you have.
End of kryo's quote

That is correct. Always amusing how many people think that just because they have XX amount of memory in their system that the games can actually use it. 32-bit games are limited to 2GB under normal circumstances. That can be extended through workarounds but it is not recommended. Probably why they left Huge maps out of the game until the 64-bit edition comes out. Either way though, memory leaks are frustrating and hopefully will be fixed soon.

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

The game may only be able to use 2 GB at any given time, but correct me if I'm wrong here that a memory leak would in effect use all available memory.  The game might only be utilizing 2 GB worth at full capacity but because of the leak, the memory isn't reutilized and made available to the system again and thus you slowly run out with the appearance that the game is using it all.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

I have been getting out of memory messages and the game crashes with the message sent afterwords. I have 12 gigs of ram.

Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top

Greetings my fellow gamers. Yes, this is the reason why it is pointless to buy more than 4GB of RAM for gaming. Games simply cannot make use of all that RAM. Its even more pointless to buy over 4GB of RAM if you are using a 32bit OS as they just cant see or use that amount of RAM without some serious editing of registry entries. There is a solution on the horizon, but its a long way off yet, might not be released until the next version of windows after Windows 7.

In the meantime, the main ways to prevent this from happening is to have a video card with a large amount of onboard ram to use for textures, SLI is another possibility. Also, consider increasing your page-file to something that is about 30GB and if you can, make sure that that page file is on a separate physical hard drive to your operating system.

For your convenience, I have located a trustworthy Large Address Enabling program. You can find the link at the end of this post. It enables 32bit programs to use up to 4GB of RAM so it should help a little. As someone posted earlier however, if it is a Memory Leak, then this will only delay its onset. Other suggestions are lowering shadow detail and texture size an see how that works out for you.

Large Address Enabler

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, currently sucks to have an x64 system with an ATI card right now.  I've sorta been forced back to play SC2.  Meh.