is 128GB of RAM enough?

It is not only the limit of the OS's ram, but of the program.

GalCiv2 is a 32-bit program, after all. So you may hit a limit even with 128GB of ram and a 64-bit system and OS.

The best bet with this game is to save often, and don't stay in it too long.
Exit and reload the game often to free up memory.

Drat to that, you raise a good point... though i'll wait to see what else people say...



excellent advice, though a tad bit displeasing to have to follow (who wants to quit galciv every 30-60 minutes and start it up again? bleh), buuuut this is some advice I'll definitely be using until my new computer is built (as I'm building it anyway, I just felt like tricking it out all crazy-like for GC2 useage).

As Moosetek13 pointed out is true. While a 64bit OS will access and control more than 2GB memory, that does not mean a program will. GC2 is not directly native to 64bit systems so it will only use the first 2GB. The OS will use the rest for Virtual Memory (though with 128GB you wouldn't need it). So the only thing is to save often, and probably take regular breaks from play entirely. I've already got a high-end system (not 128GB though) and it's the only way to get through a game.

Thanks for the input, and that is rather unfortunate.

While I was not planning on having 128GB of RAM (talk about overkill), I was (and still am) hoping that going to a 64-bit system I may have found a way around the 32-bit Windows XP limiting GalCiv to a max of 2GB of RAM.

So far from all the feedback that does not sound like it works... drat

Concur on the saving often, have shifted my save game to every 6 turns. Today though, I am going to test out the two brand new, just out of the box smell, 512 MB ram sticks I got. Hopefully, next bonus go around I can get an even better video card!

Perhaps the ram will take care of some of the battle problems, although, I am thinking the video card will have to take care of that.

Tally Ho!
W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

Instead of trying to mess with huge amounts of system ram, just get a solid state SATA drive and assign it to host your Windows page file. That won't break you through the max size wall, but will help performance on gargantuan maps, right up to the point where you crash to desktop....

If he'll get 128 GB of RAM he won't even need a pagefile. The RAM can hold everything he needs and the computer will be much faster instead of swapping back and forth even from an SSD. Of course not recommended with less RAM...

There's a memory leak. When a big game loads, I've noticed it occupies the major part of a gigabyte. That amount only creeps up during invasions (destroying ships and taking planets). So, if you're just building and not invading, you can keep the game running without concern. During invasions, exit and reload every so often to avoid hitting the memory limit.

A 32 bit program can address 4GB of memory. Since 32 bit Windows imposes a 2GB limit on any one application, it stands to reason that 64 bit Windows should allow the game to utilize 4GB of memory. I would imagine it taking longer to leak up to 4GB than a person is willing to play in one sitting.

my OS is on 1 hard drive, and all my games are on a second. Does that count?



hehehehehehe... my evil plan is revealed... and you have to admit that would be totally awesome, of course as i've stated before I have no intention of going to the full 128GB of RAM... that'd just be sick... Interesting side note: they now make hard drives derived from flash drive technology. imagine how fast you could be playing games on that...



64-bit windows is intended for video editing and things that require WAY more than a 2GB RAM limit. I'm pretty sure that it allows much more than 2GB per process for that very reason, as that is how it was explained to me. Besides, 32 Bit windows never expected to have more than 2GB of RAM installed on a computer anyhow, but will recognize up to 4GB. That being the case, even if 64-bit did follow that same pattern it would have a 64GB RAM limit instead of a 2GB limit (i'm guessing).

what I am still curious about is:

A. does something this ridiculous work

and

B. if it does, what's the most RAM GalCiv could conceivably desire? cause I'll make sure it has it... i want play insanely huge games with max major and minor races, abundant stars and planets, and an all around LOADED universe full of all the good stuff. And I'm willing to do ridiculous things to my computer-in-the-making to ensure that I can.

And when this psycho-super-galciv computer build is finished, I'm going to install GalCiv2 and both expansions (cause TotA will definitely be out by then) and I'm going to fire up one massive game of awesome...

Heh, with 128GB of RAM, you might as well just pre-load your entire HDD into RAM.

I believe the point has already been made that GCII is a 32-bit program. As such, even if the 64-bit OS will allow it to use up to 128GB (in fact IIRC this becomes an operating system limitation rather than an x-bit limitation, but I don't really remember too well), the program itself simply isn't capable of it.

If I'm wrong on that, I welcome anyone who can explain why I'm wrong to correct me, and perhaps we'll have a solution for you. But that is my understanding of it.

That said, is 32 petabytes "enough"?

It may be possible (this is just an idea off of the top of my head) to run GCII in separate child programs so that each one will never hit the 2GB limit. But I'm not sure how much work coding this would be, nor what the effect of splitting it up would be, as I'm fairly certain there are always going to be things that are going to need to be in both of them, giving us a total limit that is most certainly less than the two combined.

As for a 64-bit OS, personally I think Microsoft should have released Vista as purely 64-bit, to finally force people to migrate to it (though I think Vista is a POS myself), but that's another subject entirely. In any case, it's as simple (or rather, as difficult) as having a 64-bit program version. Which, in all probability, the child process solution is simpler as it, in theory, only needs to be done once.

But what do you do when people start OOMing when the game is using 4GB? How about 8GB? Personally, I'd prefer coding work go into finding a solution to the memory leak itself, although I understand it's not a simple job or it would have been fixed long ago.

1. No motherboard commonly available is going to give you anywhere near 128 gig. Eight maybe.

2. I'm not so sure there are all that many 64-bit XP drivers out there for video and sound and whatnot. You would probably be better off getting Vista 64.

3. Windows XP (or Vista 32) can actually go up to 4 gig. HOWEVER, your video memory (and some other stuff) are mapped to the high memory addresses and work down. When you have only 2 gig, that doesn't matter. When you've got 4 gig, that memory covers your main system memory. This is really bad if you've got a 2 video card system set up. With 64-bit, you've got no problems.

4. Yep, this game is 32-bit. Crysis is the only game I know with a 64-bit version. I expect more as time goes on, though, because...

5. Some games are already recommending 2 gig of memory. (I think Tabula Rassa does, for instance.) You know they are going to want more but they can only get it if they go 64 bit. I doubt any will actually require 64-bit for at least another two years but I bet more and more will start making 64-bit versions for increased performance.

Oh, also bear in mind that 64 bit OSes take a little more (not sure how much) memory as they have to address 64 bits now. What I mean is that Notepad in WinXP 64 bits takes more memory than in 32 bits XP. So if you'll stay around 4gigs it might not help too much as the operating system will take more memory.

Also Vista takes more memory for itself as more memory is available so that it runs faster.

Well, good luck with your endeavour and please update us on the results!

Actually, a 64 bit program can address 2 to the 64th power which translates to 16 million terabytes. Don't think addressable memory will be a limitation for 64 bit processing any time soon.

For 64 bit Windows, I imagine access to physical memory would mainly be limited by the number and capacity of memory modules supported by the motherboard. Access to virtual memory may have some limitation, but I would expect it be much greater than what most programs ever need.

Oh, in response to the OP, I'd run Vista 64 with 8GB of memory if I were building such a system. As stated previously, drivers and such could be a problem with 64 bit XP. As it is, there may be problems getting good drivers for 64 bit Vista. Currently, I'm running XP with 2GB of memory which seems to be fine for now, but I'd probably move to 64 bit Windows to make good use of much more than that.

Yes, Vista is your primary choice on 64bit OS. XP (even pro) is an early attempt at 64bit but does not fully address it. Vista 64bit is their first true 64bit OS.

Most likely Microsoft has been unable to test Win64 on systems with more than 128GB RAM, so to be on the safe side they've disabled support for more.

soooo.... install Vista 64-bit on this rig that I'm building and use somewhere between 4 and 8GB of RAM sounds kinda like what people are saying here...

bleh *hates vista*

*shrug* if that's the best way to go about it, sounds fine by me.



The price is agonizing...

but here is a motherboard that would support 128GB of RAM.



probably true, I don't know much about programming so its likely that GalCiv2 can't use all 128GB of RAM that a 64-bit OS could provide it. However I do know that GalCiv2 could use more than the 2GB allotted to it by Windows XP because when it asks for more than 2GB of RAM, XP ends the process. bleh. I just want to set up an OS that will allow GalCiv to take as much memory as it needs and have a rig that can supply all that RAM memory. If i can do that with 8GB of RAM, sweet I'll do that

and again to everyone, I wasn't actually planning on sticking 128GB of RAM in a computer. The title of the post was just referring to the fact that I found a way around the XP 2GB limit and could have as much RAM memory as possibly needed for GalCiv... Speaking of which, what IS the upper-limit of the most RAM GalCiv 2 would ever need?

I think a dev would have to respond to this.

That is 32 GB per Processor on that 4 way, and you would need Windows Server, Linux, BSD, Or UNIX. Not to mention the cost of 4 matched 8000 series Opterons, and the ECC Registered RAM. and the high end EPS PSU or even redundant PSU.

By contrast, my ECS NFORCE4M-A workstation board supports a maximum of 32 GB DDR2 800 RAM (4 x 8 GB). I have only seen 2GB modules available for a total of 8GB.

Most boards that support the Q6600 have a max of 8GB RAM.

32 bit programs can address up to 3GB, if they are compiled with the LargeAddressAware option, and XP Pro x86 has the /3GB switch in the boot file.

Interestingly, my XP Pro Retail SP2 (x86) sees all 8 GB DDR2. However, most of the extra is allocated by the OS as a pagefile, with 2.25 GB available to the user.