100% RAM usage with 32 GM RAM, a RTX 4080 Super and 7800x3D

[ArrogantThot]

Before buying my new ultra high end PC, i had 16 GB with a GTX 1070, Second Life (Firestorm) used like 90-100% RAM.
Now it's still using 90-100% of my RAM, shouldn't be around 50%? 
How much RAM do i need so it doesn't hit 90%? 
I'm so confused by this, i've cleared my cache, reinstalled the viewer etc. Is this issue fixable at all?

[Jackson Redstar]

i have 32 gig system ram and often on FS 7.1.11 i use between 8-14 gigs of system ram, just FS open and nothing else

[filz Camino]

I'm having the same problem in busy locations, i raised a ticket about it for Firestorm (assuming that is the viewer you are using): https://jira.firestormviewer.org/browse/FIRE-34865

 

 

[Kathrine Jansma]

RAM is a commodity to be used if available. Its not like it gets "used up" and you need to buy new RAM like fuel.

So the question is, does it need fixing at all?

Unless you need to run other memory intensive programs in parallel, it does not matter if your RAM is 50% full or 90% full. It only matters if you reach nearly 100% and the OS starts to swap to disk like mad. 

A 1070 has 8GB VRAM, your new card probably has twice that. So if the viewer loads and prepares textures, it might also use twice as much system RAM for preparation.  You also probably have more threads at work than before, which also increases the memory use a bit.

 

But, you are right that Firestorm should not use excessive memory. Like if you are in a quiet sim, the memory use should not hit 10 GB or more. But if you go to a busy sim with lots of detailed avatars, the memory usage may climb. How high, no idea, depends on your draw distance and the amount of avatars and textures around.

 

I tend to buy around 4x as much RAM as i have VRAM. With DDR5 there are 48GB modules available these days, so even with only two memory slots you can easily have 96GB RAM. 

 

[filz Camino]

1 hour ago, Kathrine Jansma said:

So the question is, does it need fixing at all?

 

I've seen Firestorm allocate 38GB of RAM on my 32GB system, and yes it does (as you would imagine) start swapping like mad.

and yes, i do think that needs fixing. it isn't fit for purpose in the situation that the majority of SL users are likely to have 16GB or less.

[Randy Pole]

Ram is there to be used. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.  Except where there is a memory leak.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

You want the system to use the RAM, but you don't want it page swapping constantly.  If not for page swapping, you wouldn't care much about having more RAM, you would just be happy with virtual memory.  So I think OP's question may be worded better this way:

How do I prevent SL from page swapping constantly?

If they're using 90-100% of their physical RAM, it stands to reason that the system is paging a lot.  Is there a way to cut down on that?

My first guess would be firestorm preferences > network & files > directories, then make the cache sizes smaller?  There are other possible tweaks, to save RAM, like limiting the viewer to 512px textures, but they involve sacrificing performance.

[AmeliaJ08]

So is the consensus that these newer viewers are far more keen to use RAM?

I'm fine with it if they are although perhaps some users would like some controls if this is the case. On a 16GB system which is the reasonable assumption it's an issue if SL wants to consume 10+ GB on its own.

I have noticed personally that 18GB isn't abnormal usage now in my case which is a lot higher than I remember with older viewers. I have it to use so I'm fine and have not noticed any performance degradation in the other apps I typically use at the same time as SL but that is a lot of RAM to consume, I can only assume newer viewers are far more keen to keep texture cache in RAM than they previously were.

 

Edited yesterday at 01:52 PM by AmeliaJ08

[Henri Beauchamp]

10 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

So is the consensus that these newer viewers are far more keen to use RAM?

Cool VL Viewer taken apart, PBR viewers manage VRAM differently when compared to their non-PBR versions. They use more VRAM to fit more GL textures, vertex buffers and render targets, but these are also mapped in RAM, so they also use more RAM.

The Cool VL Viewer was already using more VRAM than most viewers (1), even before PBR, but the RAM usage is properly managed (2). So, while it does eat up some more RAM when switched to its PBR rendering mode (more textures, more render targets), the difference is not huge and everything is kept in line and you would likely be limited by the VRAM usage before you would run out of 32GB of RAM. It also lets you adjust (indirectly) the RAM consumption (3), and if you only got 16GB of RAM (which is the strict minimum for SLing, nowadays), you might want to use this feature to avoid swapping.

---------

(1) It already used as much VRAM as possible while avoiding texture trashing and freezes due to VRAM usage overshoot.

(2) This dates back from the 32 bits viewers era: back then, I spent a considerable amount of time optimizing RAM usage to make everything fit in a 3GB virtual 32 bits address space, avoiding crashes due to ”out of memory” issues.

(3) Via the ”GL texture memory” slider in the graphics preferences.

Edited 21 hours ago by Henri Beauchamp