4GB is Not Enough - Gaming SC2

[UaVaj]

window 7 x64 w/ 16MB swapfile size, fraps, hwinfo, replaying a sc2 4v4c replay (game graphic setting = extreme) and nothing else running.

as the unit count in sc2 got to about ~150 per player. got a low ram warning.

quick check with task manager and it showed ~200MB left. closed the message. warning show up again in a minute or so.

turn off machine. swap in 8GB. repeat. no more low ram warning.



so much for 4GB is more than enough memory.

 

[KingFatty]

This is impressive! Are you sure there wasn't a memory bug or problematic driver that was hogging the memory? Can you point me to the copy of the replay file so I can try to duplicate the situation?

 

[zir_blazer]

Real time or turn based strategy games aren't anything like your typical FPS with tons of eye candy. They do get much heavier the longer the game rages, specially if you want to max out the player amounts or max number of units.

 

[_Rick_]

Even on my productivity machine I headbutt the 4GB limit, just from starting the browser and loading some office applications, bibliograhpy manager and a lyx file.

And that's on Windows XP (L.O.L.)

4GB hasn't been enough memory for the last 5 years or so, if you even slightly used your computer.
4GB per core, and we're getting closer.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Does SC2 even have a 64 bit executable?

 

[VirtualLarry]

4GB hasn't been enough memory for the last 5 years or so, if you even slightly used your computer.
4GB per core, and we're getting closer.

2GB per core, minimum. 4GB per core, much better. 8GB per core - we're really flying now!

 

[nenforcer]

Does SC2 even have a 64 bit executable?

Wings of Liberty does not, due to Blizzard's ever conservative nature and XP DirectX 9 mass compatability.

I'm not sure about Heart of the Swarm but I'm guessing it's the same.

 

[JimmiG]

If it's large address aware, it can still use up to 4GB of VAS on 64-bit Windows. If you only have 4GB of RAM and you have deliberately screwed up your OS by setting the swap file to 16MB, you might get an out of memory error before the VAS is actually exhausted, since the OS and background processes also use some RAM.

With a correctly configured paging file, you will not get OOM's until the VAS is exhausted, even if you only have 4GB or even 2GB of physical RAM. However the system would be extremely sluggish from the constant paging to disk.

 

[stockwiz]

The only people who say "dual core is enough" or "4GB is enough" are people running 10 year old computers.

 

[DDRGamer]

Even on my productivity machine I headbutt the 4GB limit, just from starting the browser and loading some office applications, bibliograhpy manager and a lyx file.

And that's on Windows XP (L.O.L.)

4GB hasn't been enough memory for the last 5 years or so, if you even slightly used your computer.
4GB per core, and we're getting closer.

Unless you're running x64, you're only getting to access 3GB of RAM.

 

[lehtv]

The only people who say "dual core is enough" or "4GB is enough" are people running 10 year old computers.

You would like to think that, but it's not true. I'd say the only people who say "4GB is enough" are people who also say "dual core is enough".

 

[mindbomb]

i dont really see how you could benefit from more than 4gb of ram in a 32 bit game.

 

[Schmide]

i dont really see how you could benefit from more than 4gb of ram in a 32 bit game.

In windows you use Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) and Physical Address Extension (PAE) to map physical memory into a virtual address space.

 

[Makaveli]

Real time or turn based strategy games aren't anything like your typical FPS with tons of eye candy. They do get much heavier the longer the game rages, specially if you want to max out the player amounts or max number of units.

No doubt I play 4vs4 games in SC2 and once everyone on the map has upgraded united and the major battles start I get slow downs on my rig.

To the point where I have to drop my settings to high from extreme.

Its all the unit counts it has to keep track off very cpu heavy and it doesn't help the stupid games doesn't use more than two cores.

I need to see from SC2 numbers from large battles with a haswell rig cause IPC may help in that case.

 

[2is]

This is impressive! Are you sure there wasn't a memory bug or problematic driver that was hogging the memory? Can you point me to the copy of the replay file so I can try to duplicate the situation?

You sound surprised. It's not hard at all to exceed 4GB of total ram usage. For me, it's quite hard to stay under it.

 

[Kippa]

Hehehe you think 4gb usage is bad, you should try playing the current 64bit Alpha of Planetary Annihilation. That came has no unit caps at all. On a scale 4 planet (large one) the game gobbled up 8.4gb of ram (I checked the task manager). Even though it is an Alpha, it is very stable, more stable than a final EA game. It is insanely fun to play and there is nothing out that comes close to it. There will be optimisations and chances are the final won't gobble up as much ram. Still it is nice to see a proper 64bit game used very well.

 

[bbhaag]

Not sure how relevant this is but my son gets the same warnings when playing Minecraft but he has several mods installed. His system runs an i3-2120 with 4gig of ram and a GTX460 2gb version.

 

[adnank77]

I think 4GB is outdated ..

I mean if new consoles are 8 GB .. How can the boss (PC) be less !

I'm still using 4GB for my HTPC but this is only to play DVD backup images .. but for anything more serious than watching video and browsing, I would definately recommend higher RAM ..

 

[Wall Street]

Are you really using a 16 MB swapfile or is it 16 GB? If it is 16 MB, you could just make it 8 GB or so and it will stop the crashing by swapping lesser used files to clear up more RAM for the game.

 

[UaVaj]

16MB as in minimum swap file. the point here is to have enough physical ram.

 

[hackerballs]

On the other hand, I have an old E7200 dual core (oc'ed to 2.66ghz) with only 2 gigs 5300 RAM with Vista Premium, and I can play Fallout3 on high settings smoothly. This is with a HD5770 GPU card. This PC will also play BF3 and all the rest of the modern games also.

But wish it had 8 gigs minimum Ram

 

[BFG10K]

We already have a thread like this - Super Moderator BFG10K.