Textures Discarded due to insufficient memory, yet my video card has 1GB dedicated?

[Epiphany Carnell]

Ever since getting this new computer (which isn't amazing, but should be able to handle SL on the lowest of settings without crashing constantly!) I've been crashing pretty much non stop as soon as I tp to somewhere with more than a couple of other avatars, sometimes there are no avatars, but it's a furniture shop so there are a number of textures to load, it'll be laggy as hell and then a message will pop up in the bottom right of the screen which reads "textures discarded due to insufficient memory" from then on I know, no new textures will now load, and shortly after that it will just crash me to desktop. 

Funny thing is before buying this PC I used an older PC for SL, (much older) and although it was laggy, it didn't crash every two minutes with the textures discarded error. 

The graphics card I had in the older PC is a Nvidia 7300LE, which is a poor card, the one I have in the new PC is a AMD Radeon 5450 HD with dedicated 1GB of memory. 

I've tried turning off OpenGl vertex buffer effects, tried turning off HTTP texture fetching, tried tweaking many sliders, tried turning on texture compression, tried just about everything it seems and nothing works. Here's my PC spec:

 

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
System Model: hp workstation xw6200
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3328MB RAM
Page File: 2981MB used, 3669MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11

Card name: AMD Radeon HD 5450
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x68F9)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68F9&SUBSYS_304A1682&REV_00
Display Memory: 2426 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1018 MB
Shared Memory: 1407 MB
Current Mode: 1360 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

 

Hoping someone can shed some light on this really annoying frustrating problem :(

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

are you wearing any super heavy HUD attachments? for example the Wowmeh/ToddleeDoo HUD is infamous for carrying giant textures and causing this causing this problem. there is an easy fix, don't wear them when you aren't using them.

 

[Epiphany Carnell]

Nope not wearing any HUDs, just my AO and that's it

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

HD 5450 is not a great card, but it is definitely capable of running SL reasonably. I use one frequently.

to eliminate more possibilities, see if Develop>Rendering>Full Res Textures is checked. no one should use this except for debugging, but a few content creators have recommended it to counteract flaws in their content.

a similar problem can come from using a very high RenderVolumeLODFactor. reasonable content should not need a value higher than 1 or 2, but again makers of flawed content recommend elevated values for this, and it eats oodles of memory.

how are you other settings, like draw distance? also, have to ask, is your AMD graphics driver up to date? Also also have to ask, is your viewer up to date?

it appears that you already tweaked many things, and there could be conflicts. it may be time to try a clean install of your viewer or just get rid of settings.xml, to rule out any other debug settings that could have picked up "dangerous" values, and see how things go on vanilla settings.

 

 

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Epiphany Carnell wrote:

Ever since getting this new computer (which isn't amazing, but should be able to handle SL on the lowest of settings without crashing constantly!) I've been crashing pretty much non stop as soon as I tp to somewhere with more than a couple of other avatars, sometimes there are no avatars, but it's a furniture shop so there are a number of textures to load, it'll be laggy as hell and then a message will pop up in the bottom right of the screen which reads "textures discarded due to insufficient memory" from then on I know, no new textures will now load, and shortly after that it will just crash me to desktop. 

Funny thing is before buying this PC I used an older PC for SL, (much older) and although it was laggy, it didn't crash every two minutes with the textures discarded error. 

The graphics card I had in the older PC is a Nvidia 7300LE, which is a poor card, the one I have in the new PC is a AMD Radeon 5450 HD with dedicated 1GB of memory. 

I've tried turning off OpenGl vertex buffer effects, tried turning off HTTP texture fetching, tried tweaking many sliders, tried turning on texture compression, tried just about everything it seems and nothing works. Here's my PC spec:

 

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard

System Model: hp workstation xw6200

BIOS: Default System BIOS

Processor: Intel® Xeon CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz

Memory: 4096MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 3328MB RAM

Page File: 2981MB used, 3669MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

Card name: AMD Radeon HD 5450

Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x68F9)

DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)

Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68F9&SUBSYS_304A1682&REV_00

Display Memory: 2426 MB

Dedicated Memory: 1018 MB

Shared Memory: 1407 MB

Current Mode: 1360 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

 

Hoping someone can shed some light on this really annoying frustrating problem

---

The problem isn't with your video memory, it's with your system memory and it's coming from your having a 32 bit operating system. Second Life can easily use more memory than a 32-bit operating system can allocate to it if you're running at high graphics settings, especially in a crowded area if you use the camera controls a lot. If you go to the "Develop" menu and select "Show Info - Memory" it will show you how much system memory SL is using and you'll soon find the number that means a crash is coming on your particular computer.

You need to reduce your graphics settings - RenderVolumeLODFactor is a good place to start. There aren't too many objects that really require settings over 2.5 any more and even that may be too high for your system if you're in an area with a lot of avatars. Also try reducing your draw distance.

[Epiphany Carnell]

Thankyou both for the advice, my graphics settings are pretty much on the bare minimum as it is, lowest possible draw distance, no shadows etc, the only things I have elevated are post process quality and that's it, oh and I have atmospheric shaders turned on, only so mesh attachments will show correctly. I do have my LOD factor on 4 which I will be reducing now definitely. 

Is there anything I can do about the 32bit operating system? I didn't think it was that uncommon & that the majority of people were using 32bit Even if I was to change to 64bit, would my PC be able to handle it? Would I be able to change to 64bit?

[Perrie Juran]

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Epiphany Carnell wrote:

Ever since getting this new computer (which isn't amazing, but should be able to handle SL on the lowest of settings without crashing constantly!) I've been crashing pretty much non stop as soon as I tp to somewhere with more than a couple of other avatars, sometimes there are no avatars, but it's a furniture shop so there are a number of textures to load, it'll be laggy as hell and then a message will pop up in the bottom right of the screen which reads "textures discarded due to insufficient memory" from then on I know, no new textures will now load, and shortly after that it will just crash me to desktop. 

Funny thing is before buying this PC I used an older PC for SL, (much older) and although it was laggy, it didn't crash every two minutes with the textures discarded error. 

The graphics card I had in the older PC is a Nvidia 7300LE, which is a poor card, the one I have in the new PC is a AMD Radeon 5450 HD with dedicated 1GB of memory. 

I've tried turning off OpenGl vertex buffer effects, tried turning off HTTP texture fetching, tried tweaking many sliders, tried turning on texture compression, tried just about everything it seems and nothing works. Here's my PC spec:

 

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard

System Model: hp workstation xw6200

BIOS: Default System BIOS

Processor: Intel® Xeon CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz

Memory: 4096MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 3328MB RAM

Page File: 2981MB used, 3669MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

Card name: AMD Radeon HD 5450

Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x68F9)

DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)

Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68F9&SUBSYS_304A1682&REV_00

Display Memory: 2426 MB

Dedicated Memory: 1018 MB

Shared Memory: 1407 MB

Current Mode: 1360 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

 

Hoping someone can shed some light on this really annoying frustrating problem

---

This is not an uncommon problem in SL.

Lengthy Thread here (pops) discussing the issue with different  solutions people have tried and links to JIRA's, etc on the topic.

For the short version and basic solutions see here:

http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_textures_discarded

[Nalates Urriah]

You can figure out if your computer will run 64-bit by testing it on the Microsoft site. 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20

http://superuser.com/questions/251014/how-to-check-whether-my-hardware-is-64-bit-capable-in-windows

Generally if your computer came with Win7 it will run either 32 or 64 bit. The latest information I can find saus 54% run Win7 32 and 46% Win7 64. The only good reason to run 32 bit is old drivers for legacy hardware and old software.

SL Viewers do not use DirectX. You omitted the versions of OpenGL that your system is using. So, we can't tell if your AMD driver needs updating. Use the viewer's Help->About to capture the version info needed for discussions here.

You have 4gb of ram, while 32 Win 7 systems can address 4gb of memory, that is all they can address. That means your 1GB of video RAM is seriously biting into that space. You probably have something like 2.5gb of usuable system RAM.

Edit: With 4gb of system ram and 1 gb of video ram, the 32-bit just can't use the 5gb of memory. It doesn't have the address space. Thus it gives up system ram address space to the video ram and your memory chips are basically unused.

By switching to 64-bit Win7 you would be able to use 4gb of RAM + your 1 gb of video RAM without changing hardware.

You can get good nvidia GTX560 cards on eBay for US$40 to $120. That may be a cheaper solution than upgrading to Win7 64. You would be way ahead if you could do both.

[Epiphany Carnell]

I just want to thank everyone for the help & advice. I ended up installing the 64 bit version of windows 7, it was a seriously long drawn out process in sofar as reinstalling all programs again from fresh and remembering to put all the important files on my external hard drive, but my PC is almost back to the way I like it, and after a quick test in SL.. I think (touch wood) there seems to be an improvement. I went to a furniture shop which usually crashes me with the textures discarded error before the textures finish loading, but I was walking around (albeit laggy) but I didn't crash, it remained steady. I'll see how it goes with more testing, but I'm hoping that the issue has gone for me. Thanks so much for the advice!

[Lillystar Parx]

Can anyone explain how this happens when you are running SL on SLgo?