Memory Leak Causing Game Freeze

Onigar · December 2016

There are now several threads covering this topic but really what has been done?

This Memory Leak issue seems to have appeared since One Tamriel patch (update 12). It happens to me and others in my guild. Bug reports have been submitted.

I have previously commented with details in the General ESO Discussion thread but here in Bug Reports it seems more appropriate.

Such as in threads,

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3491242/#Comment_3491242

and in,

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3485438/#Comment_3485438

with comment,

Onigar wrote: »

My first indication of something wrong after update 12 was screen freezes and this continues to happen daily.

In most cases the game recovered after 2 or 3 minutes but over 5 minutes I would use task manager to end task and relog.

After reading about memory leaks I have been observing the behaviour of the memory usage creep.

ESO (64 bit) starts at about 580Mb and incrementally creeps up to the 4Gb already mentioned.

At about 3.2Gb the creep stops for a while but when it restarts it goes up to the 4Gb.

After the game self recovers from a screen freeze I noted the memory usage starts new from approx 60Mb and quickly builds up to 3Gb.

While this is happening I don't need to change zones or anything more than normal activity on a single map.

It is a slight relief that this is a problem with the game as I had thought something was going wrong in my PC.

PC Spec: i7 32Gb Mem, SSD, GTX 980 x2, Asus ROG Monitor

There is also ZOS responses in the first post above, the most relevant is,

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Thanks for the extra info! We're taking a look and will let you know if have any other questions to help.

This comment from ZOS was 31 October, so ZOS, after "having a look" have you now identified the cause of this problem and come up with a solution?

I dont know how relevant this extra info is but I use SSD and used to never hear my disk spin up. Since update 12 I hear the disk spin up a lot and only while playing. One place that is completely repeatable is on login.
Why this is happening I dont know. Only perhaps I can surmise that a "smart programming idea" was to ensure the disk was running to reduce load screen and other high transaction loads adding to game load screen times or in-game lag in general.

If my supposition is correct, I then support this approach just please think to check if the game is SSD based before issuing the command to spin up the disk.

LinearParadox · December 2016

Memory leaks, framerate drops and the like have been in the game since Thieves Guild, varying from patch to patch in cause, intensity and players affected. The general consensus is that they can't, or don't care to, fix them.
Of course, this may be overly pessimistic, but after months of issues with, as you experienced, little-to-no response... well, imaginations go wild in a vacuum of communication from the Devs.

I myself, am currently unable to run the 64bit client (despite running a 64bit OS) and am struggling to maintain 60FPS on a monstrously powerful PC that can run multiple games at max setting simultaneously. Believe me, I feel your pain.
In past patches, I've had to restart the game every 30 minutes or so due to cumulative performance degradation dragging me down to barely 10FPS. This issue has been 'fixed' and un-fixed' for me, several times, over the course of roughly a year. I doubt it's going away anytime soon.

Onigar · December 2016

LinearParadox wrote: »

...and am struggling to maintain 60FPS on a monstrously powerful PC ...

Well for a long time I had a max of 59 FPS but from the "Google college of everything" I learned this scaled off refresh rate and as my monitor was capable of running at 144Hz I set it to this and now my framerate peaks at 97.

LinearParadox · December 2016

I appreciate the tip, and will check into that, but to clarify, when I say I'm "struggling", I mean I'm dealing with FPS dips down to the high 30s and low 40s, the kind of thing I'd see in other games if I was stress testing or just backgrounding 1-2 other games at once just for giggles.
It's kind of absurd that a modern game, one that claims to be a AAA title, is this poorly optimized and riddled with memory leaks and other performance impacting bugs.