How much RAM use can you get to before a CTD normally?

[Valamyr]

With Skyrim being LAA since like December last year, IIRC, I'd expect the application to be able to draw 3.2 Go of RAM without issues before a crash happens. However I've noticed a re-occuring issue at around the 2.1Go of RAM mark, generally resulting in a CTD. Even with me being relatively careful and picking baseline texture mods instead of going for the phat 2048 textures, any full STEP install will run in the 1.5Go+ range of memory use the moment you're outdoors, so that leaves very little room for error. What I perceived as ugrids-related instability may in fact be due to a memory issue since I assume higher ugrids means more stuff in RAM.

 

I've googlesearched on the issue and have found a few people complaining about 2.1go crashes with post-LAA Skyrim too but no obvious resolutions. I assume for most of you, it does go all the way to 3.25, right? And also, I'd like to know, does using a launcher or the Simple Borderless Windows mod likely to cause a problem with Skyrim's LAA flag? SBW is technically a separate exe so I assumed it might be the cause of my problem, but I've crashed once at 2.1 in fullscreen too. While I'm planning on starting a new game to get rid of the ugrids issue, I think I need to find the cause of this before doing so.

 

Cpu: Intel Core i5 2500K Quad Core slight overclock

Ram: G.SKILL Ripjaws X F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1600

Video: Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Slight overclocks on all parts, good cooling, low temps. Current values battle-tested for a year with no issues.

Game installed on a Crucial M4 SSD.

[JudgmentJay]

Yeah 3-3.2gb seems to be the point where my game will crash. Using uGrids=7.

 

I have no way to back this up, but from my personal experience it seems like Skyrim will crash regardless of RAM usage if it has to handle too much information at once. Increasing uGrids is obviously the easiest way to reach this threshold. Increased Terrain Manager .ini settings and the distant land mods (Skyrim Distant Detail and Skyrim Distance Overhaul) are also heavy hitters.

 

Again I could be totally wrong, but that's my experience with the game.

 

You should also obviously check your logs in case your crashes are mod-related.

[Valamyr]

Makes sense. I tried to be conservative with the ini tweaks given they can be fragile and fickle, but I'm still getting crashes with a clean ini + ugrids 7 on my current save, so either ugrids alone are my issue, or the save is my issue. On a new game, its substantially harder to push my RAM use high enough to test properly, but its next on my test list.

[Valamyr]

I restarted last night, and though its harder to reach high memory counts with 'young' save games, I've been able to see a spike to 2.25 in use without crashing. No 'Apphangs' either. Only major changes are that I'm using 1.81 beta now and ugrids 5. Maybe something was wrong with my old save. The alternative would be too shocking to contemplate: That someone wrote "General stability and memory management improvements" in patch notes and actually meant it...

[Kelmych]

For me Skyrim seems to crash regularly if it tries to use more than 3.2 Gb (using the default uGrids=5), even through it is running on Windows 7 64bit. Of course, it can also crashe for other reasons such as when there is a lot of action from multiple NPC/monsters.