Memory Leak with 1.3.3

Romo · August 2014

The silence is deafening. Same run up to 3.5+k mb mem and crash... reported with their little on-screen "request" for report about 7 times today. No feed back..silence only.

Elsonso · August 2014

Make sure you disable any addons that you might have.

I seem to recall in the past that some addons that collect data as you play could eat up tons of memory.

Also, are all of you high enough level to do weapon swapping, and if so, are you actively swapping weapon sets back and forth?

RinaldoGandolphi · August 2014

I'm not sure the game has a memleak, as I have only had 1 ctd since launch and that was caused by an addon.

I'm also running 2 7950 boost edition 3gb cards in crossfire, if anyone should be experiencing problems it should be us sli/crossfire users.

that being said, windows task manager and resource monitor shows the "working set" that means how much memory it can use, not how much its actually using due to how win7/8/8.1 memory management works.

to see the real memory usage you must use Microsoft Sysinternals process explorer which is part of Microsoft's sysinternals suite...this information is per Microsoft.

you can get it at the link below (the executable is digitally signed by Microsoft to verify its authenticity)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

check eso's handles and resource usage with process explorer to get an accurate reading...i have yet to see above 3 GB of ram usage on eso on my 16gb system via process explorer which accurately shows these numbers unlike windows task manager and resource monitor.

post your process explorer numbers and lets see what he got.

RinaldoGandolphi · August 2014

SirenofEntropy wrote: »

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.

I'm not sure this is ZOS fault here...im leaning more towards a gpu driver bug.

I have been using AMD catalyst 14.7 rc dated July 10th (latest beta driver) and can confirm it runs eso buttery smooth I can play for hours without crashes or issues...it seems AMD has eso running great right now with these drivers,

if you have an AMD card, try these drivers

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

uninstall your old AMD drivers via control panel, reboot, install 14.7, then reboot again then try playing eso see if it fixes the problem (AMD users only) 14.4 is bad for eso they came out before eso did.

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

woodsro wrote: »

that being said, windows task manager and resource monitor shows the "working set" that means how much memory it can use, not how much its actually using due to how win7/8/8.1 memory management works.

well whatever it is what we see in the task manager. as soon as this value reaches 3.5GB a lot of people experience crashes or huge perfomance problems.

it is - as said in my opening post - excactly the same behavior as it was directly after the craglorn patch.
zenimax themselves even called their hotfix "Memory Leak Hotfix".
... but well that doesnt have to say much though

DontBeAfraid · August 2014

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] We've seen reports that some of you may be experiencing a memory leak since Update 3.
STATUS: Actively investigating

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/124067/known-issues-for-update-3

that is probably all we'll get for now

williamburr2001b14_ESO · August 2014

Here's what I think is happening, because it's happened before in other MMOs, even (please don't jump up my butt for using the dreaded "W" word) Warcraft:

So the lag and stuttering gets worse as memory fills up. We know this. One place we definitely see it over and over again is in Cyrodiil. The other place I, personally, have seen it, is in Craglorn, when I get near farming groups.

Well the most obvious commonality between those 2 things is...players. Lots and lots of players. What was eventually found in Warcraft, once upon a time, and is probably happening here, is that the game memory is filling up with player data and forgetting to flush. Warcraft's Capitol cities made this really obvious. You went there, and boom, your game was borked. People who had the problem learned to park away from the big cities. TESO doesn't rely on Capitols, so it's not as obvious until you go somewhere where the player density is high.

I have no idea how WoW fixed their problem, but it did eventually get fixed. It was probably something as simple as making sure the memory cleaned itself of player data once in awhile.

Elsonso · August 2014

williamburr2001b14_ESO wrote: »

I have no idea how WoW fixed their problem, but it did eventually get fixed. It was probably something as simple as making sure the memory cleaned itself of player data once in awhile.

Memory leaks are caused by the program allocating memory and then not telling the operating system to release the memory when it is no longer needed.

This can be a lot more complicated than it sounds. Sometimes memory is allocated and then shared by different parts of the program. When all the parts are done with it, the program has to recognize this and release the memory. If the program loses count and does not release the memory after the last user has finished, and this is something that can be reloaded over and over, then there is a memory leak that expands to fill available memory.

It may interest you to know that if the program errs in the other direction by releasing the memory before everyone is done with it, often times the application simply crashes the next time it access that block of memory.

Most programs are tenuous things, put together just well enough to function and completely intolerant of the unexpected. "If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."

wolfguard101 · August 2014

SirenofEntropy wrote: »

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.

BUMP ON THIS THREAD Get a Grip Zenimax

SirenofEntropy · August 2014

lordrichter wrote: »

"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."

This made me laugh really hard. It's a perfect metaphor.

Seravi · August 2014

Well this game is acting just like it did before when they did the "hot fix" for the memory leaks. All I did was log in, check mail, deconstructed four items and my game went from 2GB being used to what you see below and it kept climbing after the screen shot. There IS a problem that started after the latest patch.

Elsonso · August 2014

wolfguard101 wrote: »

BUMP ON THIS THREAD Get a Grip Zenimax

You know, of course, that they posted that they were investigating this, right?

We've seen reports that some of you may be experiencing a memory leak since Update 3.
STATUS: Actively investigating

If they have a fix, or an idea for a fix, you will probably see it in their problems thread forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/124067/known-issues-for-update-3.

Otherwise, I am guessing they won't say much since there isn't much to say other than "we are still investigating".

Zenimax gets a bum rap about not fixing things, but they really do seem interested in fixing bugs.

(I just wish they were less interested in creating them

)

SirenofEntropy · August 2014

lordrichter wrote: »

Zenimax gets a bum rap about not fixing things, but they really do seem interested in fixing bugs.

(I just wish they were less interested in creating them )

Lol. This. I try not to give them a hard time because overall they do actually seem like they care about their community and about fixing problems in the game.

Unfortunately, they seem to be not very good at actually fixing stuff without creating more problems. Minor bugs I can live with since I know enough about programming and have been around the block with enough games to know that it's almost impossible to write bug-free code, but if people can't even play their game because of horrible performance issues (especially when their PC is above and beyond the recommended specs), that becomes a major problem.

Gillysan · August 2014

They are probably silent because they don't know what is going on just yet or have an inclination. It's only been a few days and this update seemed to have a fair number of issues to deal with.

SirenofEntropy · August 2014

Gillysan wrote: »

They are probably silent because they don't know what is going on just yet or have an inclination. It's only been a few days and this update seemed to have a fair number of issues to deal with.

Agreed, for the most part. And that's why I'm willing to give it some time before rushing to un-sub. If this issue isn't fixed with some relative promptness, however, I'll HAVE to cancel my sub because I won't pay for a game I can't play.

It would be in their best interest to get this problem resolved because if they do not they'll be losing players; and not because they didn't like the game, but because they simply cannot play it either due to frequent crashing, bad lag, or ridiculous fps drops.

It's not good for the company to be losing players who like the game and would have stayed loyal, only to be forced to cancel their sub because the performance issues are out of control.

I also play GW2 occasionally and that game runs amazingly on my PC. However I do not like the gameplay of GW2 as much as I like ESO's and I'd much rather be playing ESO than GW2. It sucks that the performance is so much better on the game I'm not all that interested in.

ferzalrwb17_ESO · August 2014

Gillysan wrote: »

They are probably silent because they don't know what is going on just yet or have an inclination. It's only been a few days and this update seemed to have a fair number of issues to deal with.

Again, and there's a reason we harp on about it, this is the reason that competent devs TEST their code before release.

SirAndy · August 2014

SirAndy wrote: »

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 ...

Actually, i take that back.

I've played about two hours tonight and the memory started at around 2GB and slowly but steadily went up until i manually closed the game (before it could crash) when i hit about 3.2GB of memory usage.

It's clearly leaking somewhere ...

Absynthe · August 2014

It seems like this was a large update, so I'm not surprised there is likely an issue with this. I am trying to avoid major in game hubs until they fix it, but I still crash quit a bit, always when I am in a major city hub.

Gillysan · August 2014

Additional notes regarding performance:
The growing system RAM I experienced occurred quite noticeably in northern Bankgorai. When I went to southern Bankgorai, the desert environment did not make my eso.exe continuously grow. Either I was lucky that day or there is something in the environments that triggers this apparent memory leak.

Gillysan · August 2014

There is a noticeable lag while mousing over items in the inventory. I noticed it at the blacksmithing work station. The animation pauses for a 1/4 second when I mouse over anything. Even items I moused over before.

I can see this in the bank with the NPC animation as well.

Vortimere · August 2014

SirenofEntropy wrote: »

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.

Check here for Known Issues for Update 3

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Miscellaneous
[*] We've seen reports that some of you may be experiencing a memory leak since Update 3.
[*] STATUS: Actively investigating

Mad_Dog_Reno · August 2014

woodsro wrote: »

SirenofEntropy wrote: »

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.

I'm not sure this is ZOS fault here...im leaning more towards a gpu driver bug.

I have been using AMD catalyst 14.7 rc dated July 10th (latest beta driver) and can confirm it runs eso buttery smooth I can play for hours without crashes or issues...it seems AMD has eso running great right now with these drivers,

if you have an AMD card, try these drivers

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

uninstall your old AMD drivers via control panel, reboot, install 14.7, then reboot again then try playing eso see if it fixes the problem (AMD users only) 14.4 is bad for eso they came out before eso did.

Tried this also but still have memory leak! :-(

bamajabub17_ESO2 · August 2014

I'm have this issue also since the 1.3.3 Update... Thought at first it was just happening in large PvP action yesterday, but having some leaking which is quickly leading to game Crash every 10-20 minutes now.

Syzmicke · August 2014

The memory leak has caused them to forget about this issue.

Stash · August 2014

maybe if we swear enough we will get a moderator to snip out the bad language, just so we know they have read the post...

Gillysan · August 2014

Something else I have noticed is that Task Manager will show that eso.exe is using 2.3Gb of RAM after 3-4 hours. However, the screen is noticeably getting jerky/stuttering anywhere I go, not just the main cities. I restart the game and the performance is OK again.

mdegarispreeb18_ESO · August 2014

Cyrodiil is totally unplayable for me at the moment. After spending 30 minutes in there, my ESO memory usage is 3 gig and climbing - my fps gets more and more laggy, along with 4-5 second rollbacks, then ultimately a crash or disconnect. Then relogging back into the game, I find I've been kicked of Cyrodiil and I have to re-queue.

Playing in other areas isn't great either, memory usage keeps creeping upwards over a period about 2-3 hours - meaning the game gets more sluggish.

Just to add, I have 16 gigs of RAM installed, and a geforce gtx780.

xFusionx · August 2014

I've got 24Gbs of RAM and I still crash frequently - only in PvP.
*** ZOS, they've exhausted my patience - should have known from the start in beta and all the *** issues that they cannot put out a "clean" product. QA anyone?

Columba · August 2014

SirenofEntropy wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Zenimax gets a bum rap about not fixing things, but they really do seem interested in fixing bugs.

(I just wish they were less interested in creating them )

Lol. This. I try not to give them a hard time because overall they do actually seem like they care about their community and about fixing problems in the game.

Unfortunately, they seem to be not very good at actually fixing stuff without creating more problems. Minor bugs I can live with since I know enough about programming and have been around the block with enough games to know that it's almost impossible to write bug-free code, but if people can't even play their game because of horrible performance issues (especially when their PC is above and beyond the recommended specs), that becomes a major problem.

i don't care about effort. I care about results. this is a car full of clowns who can't seem to fix anything.

Mitharus · August 2014

Gillysan wrote: »

Something else I have noticed is that Task Manager will show that eso.exe is using 2.3Gb of RAM after 3-4 hours.

Task Manager sucks for anything like this (1). It will show allocations by DLL's that are not part of ESO, but system libs. It also does not always show deallocations. Only if the malloc() was large enough does the free() show up; But on small values the free() is just ignored, so it shows the RAM as never being deallocated, even if it was.

On Windows the only real way to get memory usage is from within the Visual Studio debugger.

Task Manager/Perfmon is "okay" for charting trends... but it is no where a direct relationship to the actual RAM usage. Just the trend of the application and all DLL's it may be using.

So, truthfully, there could be a memory leak, but it could be outside of the ESO binary and in one of the DLL's that is being linked against. Without actually tracing the code path...

I agree there's an issue somewhere. The crashes point to that. I just wish it didn't just crash but threw some sort of error. With an error thrown, something could be done... with no error... Good luck. It's starting that I'm getting crashes, and it's a strait CTD, no error submission at all. Client's just gone.

-M

(1) - Okay, I'll admit, this was only through the release of Windows 7. It may have been "fixed" within that time. I highly doubt it since with the VS debugger you can get real memory usage info.