Memory Leak with 1.3.3

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

Hi Folks, Hi Zenimax,

i and many other people experienced the Memory Leak Problem to be back.
After 20-30minutes playing the Game starts increasing the RAM using without resetting it anymore.
TESO usually uses 1,4GB up to 1,7GB of my RAM and keeps this value more or less constant. Now after those mentioned 20-30minutes playing the amount increases every minute up to 3GB. (maybe even more - cant test it since i only have 4GB).
Once my RAM is full all new datas are gonna be "saved" on my harddrive because the RAM has no more space and doesnt get resetted or overridden.
This results in the game being very slow and unresponsive. (stuttering - micro and macrofreezes or even crashes)

its excactly the same behavoir we had 2 days with and after the craglorn implentment.
zenimax provided a hotfix for it and it was fine again.
well until now..

for people with a large amount of RAM this issue probably isnt a great deal - but for lower and medium strenghed computers it is close to gamebreaking.

i have a medicore specced pc and have to restart my game once every 30min which is - i guess... - playable but most annoying.

so i kindly ask you guys from zenimax to redo what you did after the craglorn patch to fix this again please.

thank you!

edit: any offical comments about this are very welcome! :-)
@ZOS_GinaBruno‌ @ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ @ZOS_KaiSchober‌ @ZOS_PaulSage‌

KBKB · August 2014

DontBeAfraid wrote: »

Hi Folks, Hi Zenimax,

i and many other people experienced the Memory Leak Problem to be back.

To say that sounds like it actually wasn't around at one point in time, I thought it has had a launcher/game leak since day dot?

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

Black-Bird wrote: »

DontBeAfraid wrote: »

Hi Folks, Hi Zenimax,

i and many other people experienced the Memory Leak Problem to be back.

To say that sounds like it actually wasn't around at one point in time, I thought it has had a launcher/game leak since day dot?

well there are many and various performance problems in ESO sadly.
but the not resetting RAM issue actually got fixed for a while.

the FPS drops - server performance problems - server connection problems - delay - "lag" and stuff is/are another topic/s ..

Taresgos · August 2014

i have the same issue when playing in cyrodiil, and game crashing when reach 3k+ gb memory usage

KBKB · August 2014

Yeah the list goes on =P

Hmm thanks I wasn't aware it was fixed at one point in time, not that it really matters now =\

Stash · August 2014

yep, the PvP memory leak has definitely not been fixed.

dcyoumans9257 · August 2014

I suggest using a free program called Memory Booster - set it to flush Ram about every two minutes. I have 8 gigs RAM and it improved texture loading for me. Give it a shot.

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

dcyoumans9257 wrote: »

I suggest using a free program called Memory Booster - set it to flush Ram about every two minutes. I have 8 gigs RAM and it improved texture loading for me. Give it a shot.

hmm i guess i'll give that a try later.
but doesnt that cause the game to crash if a external programm tries to delete data from the temporary buffer? how does the tool know which data are still in use and not to be resetted?

i tried this in some other games and always ended up having a lot of crashes.

Lunerdog · August 2014

Confirmed, for myself anyway, crashed due to memory leak, a mate I was grouped with and Skyping experienced the same.

@ZOS, it could be that some one on the team is working with a version of the game that is not up to date and this is re introducing these bugs when the patches go live.

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

Lunerdog wrote: »

@ZOS, it could be that some one on the team is working with a version of the game that is not up to date and this is re introducing these bugs when the patches go live.

i actually have the feeling that the team which developed and coded the game's engine doesnt work for @ZOS anymore.

Lunerdog · August 2014

DontBeAfraid wrote: »

Lunerdog wrote: »

@ZOS, it could be that some one on the team is working with a version of the game that is not up to date and this is re introducing these bugs when the patches go live.

i actually have the feeling that the team which developed and coded the game's engine doesnt work for @ZOS anymore.

I concur, but these bugs keep getting back into the game, so something that they're doing is re introducing them and that's the most likely explanation I can think of.

Gillysan · August 2014

Seeing 2.7Gb system RAM, Windows 7 x64. Filing a bug report. I hope the bug report attaches system info to it automagically or do I have write all that info in?

UPDATE
Haven't been timing how long I've been playing but it went up to 2.7Gb RAM, stayed there for maybe 30 minutes. Now I'm at 3.2Gb RAM. I think something is wrong here. Currently working on provisioning supplies so I'm mainly in the cities for the next few days while ransacking. I'm sure that doesn't help, but still I have gotten 1 sec or several secs where combat freezes while in the wilds.

UPDATE2
That's as high as it got for me since I logged off to eat dinner. Logged out in Evermore city. Logged back in and zero lag ATM, absolutely none. Will report back any changes. Really wish it would stay this way.

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

well ofc relogging resets your RAM and the performance problems should be gone - until ram is filled up again..

pmn100b16_ESO · August 2014

Yeah I crash to desktop when eso gets to about 4GB usage

SirenofEntropy · August 2014

The memory leak is definitely back, at least on my end. Prior to this patch my game would crash once in a blue moon; now it's been crashing at least a couple times a day. I always check the crash report that comes up and every time it happens it always shows that the game hit its "cap" of 3,6 GB of RAM. There's no way the client should be using this much RAM, especially not a 32-bit client that they expect to work for people with 32-bit OS (I'm on 64 bit but that's not the point). I have 12 GB of RAM on this computer so it'll take 3-5 hours of playing for the game to crash, but it's still annoying because it never happened before this patch.

Would LOVE to hear a response on this, ZOS. It's incredibly frustrating and makes me lose my desire to play when all I can think about is when the next crash is going to happen. I've done just about everything that people have suggested to try and fix it on my own to no avail. I don't want to have to turn my graphics down seeing as the beautiful graphics are one of the reasons I enjoy this game.

Delorion · August 2014

for me it also crashes on 3,6 gbyte i have 8 gbyte memory and it crashes usually after 60-90 minutes of playtime depends on activity in cyrodiil

SirenofEntropy · August 2014

I basically can't do any pvp right now because of this issue, because being in Cryodiil makes that RAM usage surge up very rapidly. That means the pvp related achievements and dyes are not accessible to me until this is fixed. For the first time since I started playing this game I'm actually feeling disappointed with it. I can get past bugged quests and other random issues with a shrug and a laugh, but crashing and memory leaks are the one thing that can really wreck my enjoyment of a game.

Gillysan · August 2014

I was playing PvE, haven't been to Cyrodiil lately.

Stayed in city for 1 hour looting containers, after 10 minutes I could see the lag(for want of a better term) start, however it was negligible. I didn't dare alt-tab out, so I don't know if this makes it worse.

Went outside the city for almost an hour, then back to city. The lag, stuttering, the animation stuttering of other players running past and a funky pause every minute or so was evident.

2.5 hours I finally checked RAM and it was at 2.5Gb. Noticeable lagginess even outside city.

At 3.5 - 4 hours have to relog, it's too annoying.

I don't have the newest hardware but it hasn't had this much trouble before.
Windows 7 i7(first generation), 1Gb ATI video card, 6Gb system RAM, playing full screen.

Liquid_Time · August 2014

Yup memory leak confirmed here as well. Nothing more to say other then that..

KaizerXul · August 2014

Have you tried closing the Launcher once the game is up and running? That always fixed any (randomly occurring) memory issues for me.

BCBasher · August 2014

No launcher, just game starts at 2.14g which is normal. If i sit idle just loaded in it holds but builds into the 3+ range after less than an hour of playing. I'm on a dualcore 4g machine so I'm back to quit and restarts regularly again.

SirenofEntropy · August 2014

KaizerXul wrote: »

Have you tried closing the Launcher once the game is up and running? That always fixed any (randomly occurring) memory issues for me.

I always close the launcher when I play. Tried running the client directly from Program Files as well. Hasn't made a difference at all for this insane RAM usage.

Columba · August 2014

confirmed. memory leak causing crashes.

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

SirenofEntropy wrote: »

Would LOVE to hear a response on this, ZOS. It's incredibly frustrating and makes me lose my desire to play when all I can think about is when the next crash is going to happen. I've done just about everything that people have suggested to try and fix it on my own to no avail. I don't want to have to turn my graphics down seeing as the beautiful graphics are one of the reasons I enjoy this game.

turning your graphics down doesnt even really solve the issue. just gives you some more minutes before the crash

robert.jernbergnrb19_ESO · August 2014

On a 64bit system the most memory an large address aware 32bit application can access is 3.5GB. As it happens 3.5GB is 3,758,096,384 bytes since one KB is 1024bytes.
So there is no wonder the game app will crash when it reaches that limit.

robert.jernbergnrb19_ESO · August 2014

dcyoumans9257 wrote: »

I suggest using a free program called Memory Booster - set it to flush Ram about every two minutes. I have 8 gigs RAM and it improved texture loading for me. Give it a shot.

The problem is not how much physical RAM is used, it's the size of the 32bit applications address space that is the problem. When it reaches 3.5GB it will not be able to allocate any new memory space no matter how much physical memory there is free.

Gillysan · August 2014

I only use the launcher on patch days. Also, I ran the repair tool yesterday, no difference. Otherwise I have shortcut to the exe.

Every time a game comes out that is 64bit instead of 32bit I celebrate with a case of beer. Unfortunately this is rather rare. Why in 2014 it's a mystery to me.

SirAndy · August 2014

Same here, doesn't happen all the time but when it does memory goes quick and if i don't pay attention to it, the game will crash ...

KaizerXul · August 2014

SirenofEntropy wrote: »

KaizerXul wrote: »

Have you tried closing the Launcher once the game is up and running? That always fixed any (randomly occurring) memory issues for me.

I always close the launcher when I play. Tried running the client directly from Program Files as well. Hasn't made a difference at all for this insane RAM usage.

I usually do too -- it seems they should just make an option to check off if you want the Launcher to close automatically when you start the game. I guess it doesn't help this specific issue, but it has fixed problems for me in the past.

mdegarispreeb18_ESO · August 2014

Definitely a memory leak.
I watched the ESO (32 bit) process memory usage slowly go up over a period of about 2 hours. It went from about 1 gig to 3.5 gig - at which the game got more and more laggy, and eventually disconnected me with a 'Too many messages' error. Which was very annoying as I lost my place in Cyrodiil after logging back in.

I have 16 gigs of RAM installed, but obviously with it being a 32 bit client, you reach 3+ gig usage and things start slow down.
I also have a few guild mates who are crashing 2-3 times every hour - and for them, this must be 100x more frustrating. So I gather the rate of leak may vary for different people.

SirenofEntropy · August 2014

It frustrated me that we don't have a dev commenting on this when they're going around commenting on half of the other threads in this forum. There's several threads going now about crashing and possibly memory leaks, but they've been silent in every one of them.

Throw us a bone ZOS, please.. I might feel less bitter right now if they could at least acknowledge it and tell us it's being looked into.