CTD at 3.1GB

[viking]

Some key posts on this and related threads (experts feel free to note any errors or insights):

• Post #11
• Post #27
• Post #40 (this is where the 500/430 ratio seems to have originated.)
• Post #66
• Post#278
• Post #313
• Post #1 (adjacent thread: Caution about memory optimisers)
• Post #64 (adjacent thread: Caution about memory optimisers)
• Post #68 (adjacent thread: Caution about memory optimisers)
• Post #70 (adjacent thread: Caution about memory optimisers)

Wiki article (draft)

 

Thanks,

STEP

 

OP follows

---

First of all I wanted to thank you all for the great work you have done with STEP. Skyrim is the first game I installed on this computer and you guys have made it an AMAZING game. That being said, I have an issue that I hope you can help me solve.

 

My setup:

Vanilla Skyrim

gtx670 w/ 4GB @1080p w/ latest driver

16GB Memory

3770K at about 4GHz

Windows 8 64bit

ENB 149

Ultra settings

Highest available texture/quality

Mod Organizer

Step 2.2.1 + Skyrim Revisited + others

 

I have noticed a post here and there saying that Skyrim can't really address more than about 3.1GB of memory without issues. This seems to jive with my experience, meaning I CTD every time my memory hits that mark, but I couldn't really find anything definitive on the topic. The issue with googling the topic is the pre 1.3 skyrim that couldn't address more than 2gb of memory.

 

My mod list is mostly based on STEP which is why I came here for help, with about ten mods added onto the end (Interesting NPCs, Detailed Cities, Economics, COT, and a couple others). The reason I haven't included my mod list is that it doesn't seem to matter. As long as I keep the memory usage below 3GB I can have pretty much any combination of mods.

 

What I have tried so far (in no particular order):

• resetting ini files
• removing enb
• not using attklt
• only using a new game
• removing all mods and adding one by one until issue crops up
• running as admin
• watching the papyrus log - it seems relatively clean, no obvious errors right before CTD

Yes, I can run STEP just fine without any issues, but I also never get near 3GB of memory. I have tracked VRAM usage as well and have seen a max of 2.7GB/4GB.

 

As an example of where I might run into issues: I start a new character with Alternate Start. I start with Breezehome. Run out of Whiterun, past the Brewry, up the hill to the bandits. Enter the cave (watching memory usage with Elys MemInfo), and it dies right after I see 3GB. I have this same issue not using AS, sitting through the intro, and then running over to whiterun.

 

I'm sorry if this post is all over the place. I have spent more than a week trying to solve this issue, and the only solution I have found is to reduce memory usage. I have got to the point where I can exchange two texture packs and get into the cave without a CTD, but with both I get a CTD. I didn't even think texture packs should even affect CTDs, but I'm relatively new to Skyrim on the PC, so I could be wrong. I also found I could get a bit further with ENB turned off, but would still crash once I got above 3GB of memory. Finally, if I reload a game after a CTD, I can play just fine...until I reach 3GB of memory.

 

I really hope you guys can help. I more than willing to try anything at this point, besides just disabling all of the mods.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Test it for yourself. Apparently I'm the only one spitting in the bucket.

What do you mean by spitting in the bucket :-P. Not familiar with that expression. 

[Neovalen]

I'm planning on trying the latest tonight but I'm still within my limits as is. That being said I can remove my optimizations :)

[EssArrBee]

I grabbed an ENB that was updated to v193 before Boris posted his ini to the nexus and it was working really good on the memory side of things. I was only getting up to around 1200MB RAM and had double that before. My VRAM was around 1800MB out of 2GB, so it seemed to that it did it's job. My concern is that the latest ENB destroys performance and I imagine that Boris is going to have to do some optimizing, which is sad because he just finished optimizing a great deal of features in ENB.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I grabbed an ENB that was updated to v193 before Boris posted his ini to the nexus and it was working really good on the memory side of things. I was only getting up to around 1200MB RAM and had double that before. My VRAM was around 1800MB out of 2GB so it seemed to that it did it's job. My concern is that the latest ENB destroys performance and I imagine that Boris is going to have to do some optimizing, which is sad because he just finished optimizing a great deal of features in ENB.

So it raises VRAM then? So if I am using 2.7 GB of VRAM out of 3 GB, my VRAM will be through the roof?

[exploiteddna]

i dont think thats the case. i havent actually checked my vram usage bc ive never been able to come close to maxing it out. however, i have always monitored my system memory using the Elys meminfo in-game and since vram and dram used to mirror each other, knowing the dram was sufficient for both. I know now that using this new 0193 binary, vram and dram no longer mirror each other. Sincle installing 0193, my dram usage has dropped ridiculously low.. like 500mb on solstheim, 1000 on the mainland. but like i said, i dont know if my vram had dropped any.

But even if it hasnt who cares? the whole point of this was not to drop our memory usage but to prevent the game from crashing when we used too much. It just so happens that someone awesome and very intelligent has given more than was asked. so lets not get greedy :)

[torminater]

If sb wants to here my opinion on this: VRAM usage will increase by a ton, but RAM usage won't decrease, at least not that VMMap would report this, and we all know that Skyrim PerfMon isn't the most reliable tool if it comes to memory measurement.

[exploiteddna]

ok so youre obviously anti-"ENBoost"

I dont really see what the drawback is. I mean, I use enb anyways so vram probably didnt increase at all for me. Further, im pretty sure that every time ive measured the amount of vram being used by enb with graphics effects and all that enabled, ive only come up with a figure in the 200-400mb range depending on location etc. So, that is with all graphics enabled. If you just use the enb for the "fix" i dont see how it would use even that much memory. But if it did, were still only talking about a few hundred mb, and im not sure im willing to call that a "ton"

As far as DRAM is concerned, im not sure why you think it has not decreased. I have had a huge decrease in system memory usage, per the windows task mgr and elys meminfo. so unless they are both incorrect by a VERY large margin, then youre not going to be able to convince me that my DRAM usage has stayed the same.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

ok so youre obviously anti-"ENBoost"

I dont really see what the drawback is. I mean, I use enb anyways so vram probably didnt increase at all for me. Further, im pretty sure that every time ive measured the amount of vram being used by enb with graphics effects and all that enabled, ive only come up with a figure in the 200-400mb range depending on location etc. So, that is with all graphics enabled. If you just use the enb for the "fix" i dont see how it would use even that much memory. But if it did, were still only talking about a few hundred mb, and im not sure im willing to call that a "ton"

As far as DRAM is concerned, im not sure why you think it has not decreased. I have had a huge decrease in system memory usage, per the windows task mgr and elys meminfo. so unless they are both incorrect by a VERY large margin, then youre not going to be able to convince me that my DRAM usage has stayed the same.

Just wanted to say that about 2 months ago, if you recall, there was a program called "cleanmem" that came around here and everyone thought it was working because it "appeared" to relieve CTD (which it didn't at all. It just delayed them like 1 minute really) and it said that DRAM was lower in both SPM and task manager. Just because it says it's lower doesn't mean it actually is. I don't remember what was actually going on with that but I remember it was ********. I'm not saying that this doesn't prevent CTD but it could do so without actually lowering DRAM. Someone please correct me if I have said anything that is incorrect.

 

 

ALSO I have a question. Can I use any ENBs that run on 0.63 with ENB 0.93?

[exploiteddna]

Someone please correct me if I have said anything that is incorrect.

 

No thats a fair assessment. Truth is, if you cant trust the software that is uspposed to measure these variables, then we'll never truly know 100%. Also, like i said earlier, boris was not obliged to make our memory decrease (or fix the ctd issue for that matter), but it appears that may have been done.. maybe inadvertently, who knows, who cares.

 

ALSO I have a question. Can I use any ENBs that run on 0.63 with ENB 0.93?

you mean 0.163 vs. 0.193? Yeah you can, but youll need to adjust any new parameters added by the new version.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

ALSO I have a question. Can I use any ENBs that run on 0.63 with ENB 0.93?

you mean 0.163 vs. 0.193? Yeah you can, but youll need to adjust any new parameters added by the new version.

Just to clarify what I am trying to do. I want to continue to use SkyRealism (which is currently built for 0.63 I think) with the new 0.93 ENB (plus Boris' CTD patch/tweak of course). So I'll make sure I adjust the parameters. Thanks. 

[exploiteddna]

yeah just load up your old enbseries.ini and the new 93 binary, along with the new enblocal.ini. then whatever new parameters were added between 63 and 93 should be added to your enbseries.ini to some default value (usually 1.00). Then open the ini and look for the new parameters and adjust.

I went a step further and added some of the enblocal.ini parameters into my enbseries.ini. I think im going to try to merge the two ini files so i only have the main enbseries.ini ... i dont think its absolutely necessary to have enblocal.ini so long as all the parameters are represented in the enbseries.ini

[Aiyen]

The difference between ENB and cleanmem is that ENB actually goes in and alters game engine parameters, where cleanmem went in and tried to do something with the general window memory API. Boris cannot really alter or add anything the game engine does not support in the first place, since he does not have access to the source code. At least that is my understanding of it so far. Also this "solution" comes at a heavy performance cost... since you force the game to make more traffic.

Also there are still the questions if it will corrupt the visual data over the long run, which I think is what is being tested out now. Also to rule out any memory leaks etc.

 

It is still a beta, but it looks promising, but I cant help but wonder if the price to pay is going to show up eventually... gotta be a reason why Bethesda or the developers of the engine did not enable such features to begin with.

[Neovalen]

Consolitis

[exploiteddna]

Well we're not even sure if Bethesda even made an attempt at addressing this. Since the game runs fine with vanilla assets, I don't see why they would have even spent the time and money troubleshooting something like this. What I mean is, they may not have even known about this until the modding community effectively overloaded the game with tons of mods and high res textures, elevating the memory use to all new highs--the likes of which was probably not experienced during development and testing

[JohnGeorge]

I followed the discussion above for a while and with testing while playing I found a workaround which worked with reasonable results.

 

1. Use reduced texture sizes if the quality gap is not too bad (I would prefer to have better quality)

2. Use the Skyrim Performace Monitor https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/6491

3. Use the console command "pcb" if the RAM usage is close to 3 GB

4. Use following settings in skyrim.ini

[General]

uExterior Cell Buffer=6

uInterior Cell Buffer=1

;clears the cell buffer every time you change the cell

bPreemptivelyUnloadCells=1

 

These settings reduce the usage of RAM and VRAM, but will result in increased disk IO, which might lead to stuttering in some game environments (I didn't get any stuttering).

 

The best effect I got with reduced texture sizes and the setting in skyrim.ini. The reduced texture sizes resulted in 2.5 to 3.0 GB, the ini-settings lead to 2.0 to 2.5 GB.