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512MB memory limit


Mike Denneny
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Mike Denneny wrote:

I asked in the JIRA if there has been any more progress on fixing this long time issue with the memory cap, but haven't heard anything.  Does anyone know if there has been progress.

This is the last thing I've seen:


The most recent comment I know of was last July by Oz Linden.

"And the other thing we’re going to be fixing is, many of you will have noticed that we don’t use all of the video memory on your video cards. It turns out that’s because of a very old bug that plagued us a long time ago and we sort-of arbitrarily, in order to avoid tickling the bug, we capped how much memory we would ever use. We are now in the process of fixing that so it now measures how much memory is there, and we use what we think is a reasonable share of that memory."

If any more has been said since then I am not aware of it. 

 

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Mike Denneny wrote:

Hmm,

it sure would be nice to see what the progress is on that. 

Perhaps when the Benchmark Viewer gets released we'll get to see what direction they are heading.

"The Benchmark RC viewer, which eliminates the need for a manually maintained GPU table in order for the viewer to initially set graphic options, looks set to be the next viewer that will be promoted to release status."

Living In A Modem World

 

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Mike Denneny wrote:

Very interesting,

I hope they do consider this as part of the benchmark viewer.

I think (though I could be wrong) that this is part of the necesary steps.  At least if I understand correctly everything I've been reading.  The idea here is to measure what your system is capable of handling.  That's needed if you are going to do Memory Mgt. 

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Mike Denneny wrote:

That makes sense,

I also have heard that 512 is just an ammount they set to try to save memory.  The actual cap is 4gb, but idk I would need the confirmed.

OK, I'm really in over my head here.  I was puzzled by this because I suffer from what is called the "Texture Discard Crash,"  The error reads, "Textures discarded due to insufficient memory."  And I was thinking to myself, I have 4 gigs of System RAM and 1 gig of Video RAM.  So how can I be running out of memory?

So my question was if 32 bit Windows can only address 4 gigs of Ram what benefit do I get from the added Video RAM.  The basic answer I got was that Windows addresses the System Ram and the RAM on my Graphics Card separetly.  But then I was told from there it gets complicated.

First, Windows maps part of your System RAM to handle I/O devices and one of the I/O devices is your graphics card and it was possible for as much as 1/2 gig of Sys RAM to be mapped for this.  And then there was the fact the RAM on my card does a lot more than handle texture memory. 

At this point I start to get completely lost but the sum as it was explained to me is just because I have all this RAM, on a 32 Bit system it may not all be useable and then other things begin to factor in like Buss speeds, etc, etc.

Back when Oz said they were going to tackle the memory issues he stated that one thing they did know was that it was not a good idea to try and use all the available memory and that does make sense given the above.  One of the questions becomes how much can they safely use with out crashing half of the computers that are connecting to SL.  So on the one hand I feel like it's about time that they finally dig into this but on the other hand I don't envy them the job. It looks like something that there is not a one size fits all solution.

It would be nice if one of the Devs explained this all better but then I'm not sure how that would benefit me.  All I really know is that I want to stop fricking crashing.

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One last comment here and maybe there is a clue to all this (why I run out of texture memory). 

I can go to a clothing optional location with a lot of Ava's present with basically no problem.  But if I go somewhere like a club with a lot of Ava's wearing Mesh and the crashes can happen very fast.  It's handling all this extra geometry that's overloading my computer.  While I'm not on a high end system I'm certainly not using a WalMart special either.  I'm 3gig processor with a GTX650ti graphics card.

 

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Perrie Juran wrote:

One last comment here and maybe there is a clue to all this (why I run out of texture memory). 

I can go to a clothing optional location with a lot of Ava's present with basically no problem.  But if I go somewhere like a club with a lot of Ava's wearing Mesh and the crashes can happen very fast.  It's handling all this extra geometry that's overloading my computer.  While I'm not on a high end system I'm certainly not using a WalMart special either.  I'm 3gig processor with a GTX650ti graphics card.

 

I'm willing to bet that one of the things causing your crashes is keeping your RenderVolumeLOD at 4. You're making the viewer hold more data in memory than it was designed to do. Turn on "Show Info-Memory" in the "Develop" menu and compare your memory use between a LOD of 4 and a lower one. Increasing LOD was a kludge to accommodate bad sculpties and was never expected behavior.

Mesh should be designed to use appropriate LOD scaling so keeping LOD set that high shouldn't be necessary anymore - I keep mine at 2.5 only to accommodate a few old sculpted items. Unfortunately, some mesh makers make really rough models for lower LOD's because it decreases their land impact and people who've pushed up their LOD because of the old advice for sculpts won't see the problems.

Incidentally, it's system memory you're running out of, not video memory. I used to get the same crashes - they stopped when viewers started using "Large-Address Aware" memory mapping which takes advantage of a 64-bit system's ability to recognize more installed memory.

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:


Perrie Juran wrote:

One last comment here and maybe there is a clue to all this (why I run out of texture memory). 

I can go to a clothing optional location with a lot of Ava's present with basically no problem.  But if I go somewhere like a club with a lot of Ava's wearing Mesh and the crashes can happen very fast.  It's handling all this extra geometry that's overloading my computer.  While I'm not on a high end system I'm certainly not using a WalMart special either.  I'm 3gig processor with a GTX650ti graphics card.

 

I'm willing to bet that one of the things causing your crashes is keeping your RenderVolumeLOD at 4. You're making the viewer hold more data in memory than it was designed to do. Turn on "Show Info-Memory" in the "Develop" menu and compare your memory use between a LOD of 4 and a lower one. Increasing LOD was a kludge to accommodate bad sculpties and was never expected behavior.

Mesh
should
be designed to use appropriate LOD scaling so keeping LOD set that high
shouldn't
be necessary anymore - I keep mine at 2.5 only to accommodate a few old sculpted items. Unfortunately, some mesh makers make really rough models for lower LOD's because it decreases their land impact and people who've pushed up their LOD because of the old advice for sculpts won't see the problems.

Incidentally, it's system memory you're running out of, not video memory. I used to get the same crashes - they stopped when viewers started using "Large-Address Aware" memory mapping which takes advantage of a 64-bit system's ability to recognize more installed memory.

I turn down my graphics (when I remember too) before going somewhere crowded.  It doesn't stop the crashes but it does slow them down.

As far as 64 bit and adding more RAM, I will do that eventually, but I'm not going to just so I can run SL.  That's an entertainment expense for me and a budgeted amount.

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I'm running 64bit version of Windows 7 and I'm using 64bit version of Firestorm.

GPU memory is 1 GB
System memory is 8 GB

The viewer has never run out of memory and I use pretty high graphics settings, even shadows on most of the time.
(When I was using 32bit viewer version ealier in the same system, I had some "out of memory" things happening.)

It's clear that 64bit system with 64bit viewer runs better as it can use more memory than what 32bit versions can use.

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Coby Foden wrote:

I'm running 64bit version of Windows 7 and I'm using 64bit version of Firestorm.

GPU memory is 1 GB

System memory is 8 GB

The viewer has never run out of memory and I use pretty high graphics settings, even shadows on most of the time.

(When I was using 32bit viewer version ealier in the same system, I had some "out of memory" things happening.)

It's clear that 64bit system with 64bit viewer runs better as it can use more memory than what 32bit versions can use.

I did get InWorld for a little bit.  In a scene with about 15 to 20 Ava's  Firstorm does appear to use more Memory then The Official Viewer, about 1.1MB verses about .9MB at medium high setting (ALM off in both).   Raising LOD from 2 to 4 only increased the numbers I was seeing about 10 to 15%.  But it was not too mesh heavy there when I checked.

It's when I start crawling above these numbers that the problems really start.

My GPU is 1GB, Sys 4GB. Win 7 Pro 32 Bit.

I've gotten into the habit if I know I'm going somewhere busy to check Task Mgr to make sure nothing is running in the background.  My AV and Firewall are set to ignore SL as well.

 

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