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danes
Join Date 04/2006
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GalCiv2 Memory Usage

Game allocates around 400-500MB or RAM and keeps growing

April 16, 2006 8:03:44 PM from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I've noticed that when playing on my new laptop with 512MB of RAM.. that after playing the game for about 2 to 3 hours the game starts to bog down really hard. It runs smoothly for the first 2 hours though..

using ProcessExplorer from SysInternals, i noticed that galciv2 allocates around 400-500MB of virtual mem when loading my huge map saved game.. then the mem allocation gradually just keeps going up and up until my laptop's hardrive light keeps lighting up every second since my physical memory has run out. I upgraded to 2GB ram(overkill i know) last weekend and now the game works fine now.. but i'm just wondering why the recommended memory of 512 wasnt enough (at least in my case) for 3 hours of gaming? any1 else experienced the same problem? Maybe i need to tune something?

EDIT: 2-30 hours was corrected to 2-3 hours. that's more human. hehehe.
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danes
Butcherski
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #1 April 17, 2006 5:56:06 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I wish i could play on a huge galaxy i got a shitty pc ( celeron 2.8 512 good ram and FX 5200) and the game works sooo slow its unplayable... even on smaller galaxies when i see 5 ships my fps drops to 1... after about an hour of playing all my virtual memory is used even tho i set it to 2 gigs ... sure i can play on the tactical zoom but its fugly
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Moosetek13
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #2 April 17, 2006 6:24:21 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I normally will be using around 1.6GB of ram in a game on a huge map. I have 3 GB now, by the way. I upped it from 2GB just to see what would happen, but the mem usage has remained around 1.6GB.

So, no, your 2GB is the sweet spot, not overkill.

Butcherski, your ram and video card are way under par. Make sure you turn off some video options, like anti-aliasing and maybe some of the textures in the Options-Video screen. It may help a lot.
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ChaosD
Join Date 03/2004
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Reply #3 April 17, 2006 7:12:24 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Play on gigantic galaxy with abundant planets and/or stars and 2 gigs ram won't be enough. I am going to upgrade to 4 gigs soon.
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danes
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #4 April 17, 2006 9:22:41 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
hey guys thanks for the info.. but i was wondering why the recommended sys requirements are set to 512MB if the game would need around 1 or 1.6GB to reach normal performance during the game (Huge map, abundant everything.. it's still part of t he game)? Is it just marketing? Advertising that 512 is all you need to play optimally would sell more than saying 1.5GB is needed?

So maybe we're missing something to tune or some driver that if we install would be enough to achieve normal performance with the recommended memory?

my laptop is the new sony vaio sz (japan model) with a code duo, nvidia 7400, BUT ORIGINALLY 512 of ram so the RAM is the only bottleneck i can think of.
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Moosetek13
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #5 April 17, 2006 10:00:41 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums


Unless you are using 64-bit Windows more than 3GB won't do you much good. That is why I only went to 3 instead of loading up to 4.
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BigHairyGoat
Join Date 02/2006
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Reply #6 April 17, 2006 10:12:01 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
that after playing the game for about 2 to 30 hours


My hero! I can rarely manage more than 4 hours ... yes, dear, I know it's 4.11am. I'll be up to bed very shortly - just one more turn
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Ibnarabi
Join Date 02/2006
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Reply #7 April 18, 2006 12:11:21 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Using the latest beta and playing with a Gigantic galaxy, and abundant planets with 9 other civs and the minors, after 7 hours of play my ram usage for the game is about 1.3 gigs (I have 2 gigs). I dont run the game with anything other then a minimum of windows functions in the background (16 processes) and nothing else. If it has memory leaks they would seem to be rather minor at this point...

Then again I've never tried playing for 30 straight hours






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danes
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Reply #8 April 18, 2006 12:37:13 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
yeah.. 30 hours was my bad. its more of like 2 to THREE hours. sorry.

Moosetek13 & Ibnarabi, yeah i probably understand the need for more memory = better performance. My orig question was just that the BOX says the recommended memory is 512 right? that's what stardock recommends to play the game right? 512 of RAM is not "way under par" according to the box right?

anyway i'm just thinking that my laptop may have some weird setting somewhere that's affecting my gameplay on the recommended memory. thats all.
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Ibnarabi
Join Date 02/2006
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Reply #9 April 18, 2006 2:58:44 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
512megs is probably okay for someone not running anything in the background on their box, and playing in smaller galaxies, assuming they have their virtual memory set to 2048 megs that is....

However, considering how absurdly cheap ram is right now, they should just buy more. I remember buying 16 kilobytes for $150 a couple decades ago, and now you can grab 2 gigabytes for less then that over at newegg.



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Moosetek13
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #10 April 18, 2006 3:07:03 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
They should probably say 'recommended minimum', and it would be nice if they would also list an 'optimal' setup as well, just so you really know what you are getting into.
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darklord
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #11 April 18, 2006 3:16:54 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
i was wondering if my computer was good enough to run the game because i am about t go and buy it form the store.
the specs are 2.53 gigs proc, 768mb mem, 256mb ati 9200 and i have like 1.7gig of hard drive space allocated for memory or virtual or somtin don't remeber and i can not check i am at school but can some one tell me if that is ok to run the game.
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phbbt107
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #12 April 18, 2006 6:17:16 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
i was wondering if my computer was good enough to run the game because i am about t go and buy it form the store. the specs are 2.53 gigs proc, 768mb mem, 256mb ati 9200 and i have like 1.7gig of hard drive space allocated for memory or virtual or somtin don't remeber and i can not check i am at school but can some one tell me if that is ok to run the game.


Dude, use some periods. You'll run it. Just make sure you zoom ALL the way out till you get symbol's instead of ships. Your video card is a POS and you'll probably drop down to 5 fps or so with a coupld of ships on the screen. Otherwise, your rig is fine. Just make sure you defragment you hard drive every week or so. Using a lot of virtual memory is horrible for hard drive fragmentation and your computer will slow down.
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ChaosD
Join Date 03/2004
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Reply #13 April 18, 2006 6:31:05 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Unless you are using 64-bit Windows more than 3GB won't do you much good. That is why I only went to 3 instead of loading up to 4.



I am using 64 bit Windows XP
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CommanderGizmo
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #14 April 18, 2006 11:54:13 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Trouble with x64 is that the x86 apps (this game for instance) tend to use a bit more ram than they would in x86 windows. That's the price of progress I guess.

I have found that my rig sometimes has some trouble, especially when running at end of turn or music loop. Specs: 3700+ SD, 3GB DDR400 CAS2.5, ATI R1600XT 256

I've caught it peaking at 3.8GB on a massive map! Of course, my ships tend to get a little larger than I intend;)
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Tommymac
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #15 April 19, 2006 12:21:44 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
If you play in Windowed mode you can alleviate the memory issues somewhat if you have low RAM machines - everytime you minimixe the Window the Physical memory will be released. Windows OS ( 2000 & XP) uses different Memory management models for apps that run in Full screen mode vs apps that run in a Window.

To solve page file defrag issues set your page file size manually - make the minimum and maximum size the same. And if possible put in it's own partition that is just a tad bigger than the page file size (about 250 meg should do) on a 2cd hard drive that is on a different Controller than the primary Hard drive running Windows.
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Moosetek13
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #16 April 19, 2006 1:07:45 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I haven't played the largest map yet. I tend to like the huge size.
And tonights game sucked up 2.3GB. I had a dozen or so of the DarkAngel ships in this game. They must be a high poly ship.

I guess if I go up to the largest map i will need more than my current 60MB of page file.


ChaosD - How does the game run on the 64-bit?
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DeathDealer
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #17 April 19, 2006 9:41:32 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I could be a memory leak in the game as it progresses. Yes it makes sense as the game goes on it requires more memory, but those numbers seems wrong to me.

Sounds to me like a progressive memory leak.

I have 768mg and am about to upgrade to 2gig. More ram is usually always better.

Peace...
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