Crashing due to low memory on Win. 8.1 64 bit

[Uhtred1084]

Crashing due to low memory on Win. 8.1 64 bit

My system specs are:
i5-2500K @ 4.5Ghz
GTX 980 (driver version 353.06)
8GB of RAM
Windows 8.1 64bit OS

The Witcher 3 Steam version. I verified my game cache and it was good.
I am running everything on ultra settings, except AA is disabled. Hairworks is enabled. This is how I have ran this game since launch.

I just did a fresh installation of Windows 8.1 yesterday. Before the fresh installation, I had experienced two random crashes on launch day. Now I am running version 1.04 and I keep crashing with an error exclaiming that my memory is too low. I should not be experiencing this issue, and for some reason I am. Not to mention that I have less startup programs, less programs running in the background than I did before. However, on one instance it also crashed ASUS GPU Tweak. Which is something that didn't happen before. I am only able to play for about ten to fifteen minutes before this happens. I am in Velen. I'm using DSR. Previously I could run this game just fine at 4K DSR on my 1920x1080 display. Now the games locks up before the world loads up. I lowered my DSR settings to 2560x1440, but the game just continues to crash. I've gotten rid of the only mod that I was using, which was E3FX.
I've tried a few basic troubleshooting methods, such as completely uninstalling my drivers and reinstalling them, I have tried a few methods in CMD. This is the only game that is giving me issues. I can run all Batman Arkham titles just fine at 4K DSR and Wolfenstein The New Order. These are the only titles that I have installed at the moment. I could test more intense games such Crysis 3, DA:I, and GTAV to name a few.

Any thoughts or reasons as why I am experiencing this particular issue all of a sudden? It'll probably end up being something that is staring me in the face, so to speak, but I'm drawing up blanks at the moment.

 

[pkp]

I do not have a solution for you, but I do experience the same problem.
The difference i sI have GTX 970 and 6GB of RAM. The common things are Win8.1 64 bit and the Asus brand of GPU.
Which makes me think that maybe ASUS GPU Tweak or Monitor are a problem.

 

[Uhtred1084]

I uninstalled ASUS GPU Tweak and reset my Nvidia settings, with the exception of DSR. I also left TW3 to use maximum performance of my GPU instead of adaptive. So, I was able to run 4K DSR for about five or six minutes, got in combat with a group of bandits on my way to Novigrad. This time the game just locked up and the screen went black, no audio or anything. I couldn't get to task manager or do anything at all. I waited a couple of minutes. I had to do a hard reboot. So I think that the ASUS software may be apart of the problem...however what is odd is that before I did a fresh installation of Windows, the game ran just fine at the settings I just ran it at with ASUS GPU Tweak running in the background..I'm not sure what to think. Is this a software issue or the like that is not TW3, or is it the game and simply needs more patching?!

Something else I have noticed since updating to 1.04. Roach has endless stamina. I can gallop everywhere non stop. I'm thinking of possibly installing my GOG copy and seeing what happens there just to test it out. At any rate I'll keep troubleshooting and hopefully a dev will comment on a possible solution or a possible fix being integrated in a patch, or a member of these forums might have encountered this issue and has a solution.

I was able to check my VRAM max. Which was 3GB. So..shouldn't have caused that to crash.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

try setting windows swap file size to 1.5- 2x your ram. see if that helps. it might be attempting to manage swap file size, and shit gets all mixed up.

dunno, i don't use windows 8, even tho i do have it somewhere, installed, i think... who knows... i forgot about it ;o

 

[Uhtred1084]

try setting windows swap file size to 2x - 2.5x your ram. see if that helps. it might be attempting to managed swap file size, and shit gets all mixed up.

dunno, i don't use windows 8, even tho i do have it somewhere, installed, i think... who knows... i forgot about it ;o

Well, I played for about half an hour without any issue at all. What is more is that I reinstalled ASUS GPU Tweak as well. I had my page file set to 1024MB, seeing as I have two SSDs and one HDD. I figure that even with page file set to 8143MB, that it won't really bother any of my SSDs in a significant way. By the time they go out/die on me, I probably would have upgraded them before that even happens. I'll do some more extensive testing once I am home from work this evening, but so far this seems to be the solution. Thank-you for the suggestion!

 

[PrincessMassacre]

ugh, that's not exactly what page file does. it stores 'pages' of code/addresses from memory on disk. as far as the system is concerned, they are in memory. what happens though, when you don't have enough ram is you'll get what's called a 'hard page fault', which simply means 'the page does not exist in ram, look for it on disk', so you then get a hit to your page file. you need a page file larger than ram, because whatever you throw in ram has a chance of getting paged back to disk, to free up some ram (so the more ram, the more bloated a page file can get). doesn't mean it will ever be used again, or used infrequently (hence the number of hard page faults should be low if you monitor them).

you can profile paging file performance by monitoring hard page faults, and checking what the disk queue length and throughput are at that time, to determine if paging operations are causing a bottleneck in hdd performance. but that's usually not necessary, just buy more ram if you run out of it ;o

one other point: swap file is like adding 'virtual' memory to your system, basically. what happens when you have 8gb ram, and 8gb pagefile, and an application wants 20gb, but you only have 16? ;\ weird shit happens...

btw, you have a crashdump? in your main witcher 3 folder.

 

[Uhtred1084]

ugh, that's not exactly what page file does. it stores 'pages' of code/addresses from memory on disk. as far as the system is concerned, they are in memory. what happens though, when you don't have enough ram is you'll get what's called a 'hard page fault', which simply means 'the page does not exist in ram, look for it on disk', so you then get a hit to your page file. you need a page file larger than ram, because whatever you throw in ram has a chance of getting paged back to disk, to free up some ram (so the more ram, the more bloated a page file can get). doesn't mean it will ever be used again, or used infrequently (hence the number of hard page faults should be low if you monitor them).

you can profile paging file performance by monitoring hard page faults, and checking what the disk queue length and throughput are at that time, to determine if paging operations are causing a bottleneck in hdd performance. but that's usually not necessary, just buy more ram if you run out of it ;o

one other point: swap file is like adding 'virtual' memory to your system, basically. what happens when you have 8gb ram, and 8gb pagefile, and an application wants 20gb, but you only have 16? ;\ weird shit happens...

btw, you have a crashdump? in your main witcher 3 folder.

I understand what page file does more or less, but I also know it adds extra writes to your SSD, which can potentially shorten the lifespan, not that I am terribly worried, mind you. Besides if I wanted to double the page file I would do that if I wanted a full memory dump on STOP. As I've stated that by the time those writes have any real effect on either one of my SSDs, I probably will have purchased a new SSD anyway by that point, most likely well before then. My SSD lifespan will probably last another ten years with the memory type. I just defaulted back to letting Windows manage it for me, which is 8134MB.

I played for about two hours and just wrapped up my session. I didn't experience a single crash. So this is the fix for me and probably for others out there running an SSD with a page file to 1024MB or less. Still, I appreciate that you took the time to explain what page file does exactly. What gets me though is before my fresh installation, I had shrunk page file to 1024MB as I've always done since I've owned SSDs. I think my Samsung 830 and my OCZ Vertex 4 (the drive I store games on) will be just fine. And really at the time I thought an SSD would be really beneficial for gaming applications, and while it is to an extent, it wasn't worth the near $300 I payed for it. The most memory intensive program that I run would be TW3 as of right now. I'm not sure how memory intensive Batman Arkham Knight will be, but surely not as intense. I don't use this rig for anything other gaming, films, and surfing the web.

Yes, I do have one crashdump in my Witcher folder, as many crashes as I have had I figured there would have been more than one crashdump. I looked at it but I wasn't able to decipher the problem that caused the crash. I presume that you could? I haven't gotten the hang of reading minidumps and crashdumps yet. I can upload it on here if you'd like to see the crashdump? And really, I really do appreciate your help. I never would have thought of paging file as the issue to my problem, like I said the issue was probably just staring me in the face and now I'm able to enjoy TW3! So, again, thanks for helping with this issue!

 

[PrincessMassacre]

was just curious if your crash dump faulted on address 0x00000000. usually invalid page fault.

in any case, this might not solve your issue, you may need to play for longer. if it's a memory leak, you basically just 'added' more memory to your system, so it will simply take longer to crash.

some games may work with 1gb page file. if they don't use more than about 6 gigs ram, since windows will eat 2-3 of your 8+1. anything else will cause problems due to insufficient memory.

if you're worried about SSD, you have several options: A. buy more ram, so it doesn't page as much during intensive gaming (since more free memory), B. put your page file on the IDE drive, C. put a page file on each SSD (it will use the disk with less activity, so some load balancing, but you cant really control it).

D. (requires longer explanation) put the SSDs in a raid0 configuration (although might be a bit cpu-intensive with that sorta throughput, and you need recurring backups, cuz raid0 arrays can fail, but they're approx. twice as fast, with double the capacity as a single disk and will load balance operations simply bcs the data is striped across both disks)... but, that's also expensive: i prefer to raid0 the ide drives in my gaming rig, and raid1 the drives in my file server for backups (plus external backup), almost same speed as SSD except random access times. good enough for loading assets or performing large file operations tho (and 4 terrabytes of space) ;o altho, ssds are getting cheaper/faster. so the performance gap may soon be closed, but yea...

np, hope it works and isn't some memory leak ;p

note: oh, to move your page file, set the new page file on the new disks first, reboot system, then remove the page file on the main disk (if desired, ie: if moving to your IDE drive), then reboot again.

 

[Sapath]

I have the same setup and problem as OP.

Had to set page file size to system managed to solve this.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

system-managed can be problematic in some games, and will fragment your page file, and incur a performance hit each time it is 'resized' by the OS. if you have 8gb ram, setting to 1.5x ram is usually sufficient, even 1x(+257mb) for most intents and purposes (ie: if you have a lot of ram, which isnt being used like 12+ gb), should even work for 8gb in most games, but there may be a rare game somewhere which exceeds that, so 1.5x for 8gb should be safe.

i suppose i might add: in order to disable paging file/set to less than ram amount, these days (assuming you disable crash dumps as well), you need at least 16-24gb+ ram i would assume (4gb+ of that is just windows+other apps running, depending), otherwise you might run into problems, even with 16gb.

edit: hmm, i don't seem to be hitting higher than 8gb commit charge (you can check that in task manager performance tab, or on a per-process basis if you add the column to the view list). witcher3.exe using 4gb+ on some occassions, but rarely. so you should be able to get away with 1-1.5x your ram size. some games use more i've noticed, up to almost double your ram (but then its time to buy more ram honestly, as you'll suffer performance loss). i just like to set it to 1.5x-2x for extra breathing room (no harm really).

edit2: yea, hitting 8-12gb pagefile usage in-game, so 1.5x minimum pagefile size for witcher 3 i presume (with 8gb ram), as with most games, safer to make it 2x, some may exceed that, but rarely up to 2.5x (windows default max is 3x).

 

[Uhtred1084]

was just curious if your crash dump faulted on address 0x00000000. usually invalid page fault.

in any case, this might not solve your issue, you may need to play for longer. if it's a memory leak, you basically just 'added' more memory to your system, so it will simply take longer to crash.

some games may work with 1gb page file. if they don't use more than about 6 gigs ram, since windows will eat 2-3 of your 8+1. anything else will cause problems due to insufficient memory.

if you're worried about SSD, you have several options: A. buy more ram, so it doesn't page as much during intensive gaming (since more free memory), B. put your page file on the IDE drive, C. put a page file on each SSD (it will use the disk with less activity, so some load balancing, but you cant really control it).

D. (requires longer explanation) put the SSDs in a raid0 configuration (although might be a bit cpu-intensive with that sorta throughput, and you need recurring backups, cuz raid0 arrays can fail, but they're approx. twice as fast, with double the capacity as a single disk and will load balance operations simply bcs the data is striped across both disks)... but, that's also expensive: i prefer to raid0 the ide drives in my gaming rig, and raid1 the drives in my file server for backups (plus external backup), almost same speed as SSD except random access times. good enough for loading assets or performing large file operations tho (and 4 terrabytes of space) ;o altho, ssds are getting cheaper/faster. so the performance gap may soon be closed, but yea...

np, hope it works and isn't some memory leak ;p

note: oh, to move your page file, set the new page file on the new disks first, reboot system, then remove the page file on the main disk (if desired, ie: if moving to your IDE drive), then reboot again.

Yes, the faulted adress is 0x00000000. Further testing is required, I just haven't enough time. The longest session I had was 6 hours before I did a fresh installation of Windows 8.1 and no issues. So far the longest with this current installation is 2 hours, but I think it'll be fine. If it is a memory leak...well..hopefully that is something CDPR can rectify.
I plan to buy more RAM soon. 16GB of DDR4 once I build my new system next year. Of course that depends on when Intel releases Skylake-E. Sometime 2016, I guess. I'm not really worried about my SSDs. I'll be buying one next year most likely, and the system I currently have will become my living area hub. For now my 8GB of RAM should really serve me well until that time.

I would never put SSDs in a RAID0 config personally. It's too risky, losing all of your data and having to reinstall your OS (not that it's a pain as I do a fresh install yearly) I just wouldn't want to worry if today is the day my raid0 fails on me. I see the benefits of raid0, but the cons outweigh the pros for me. Not to mention I have 1.5TB worth of backup space on external drives, and it's not really enough space to constantly backup information as about 90% of the space on my externals holds films and shows. I have page file set on all of my drives. Two SDDs and one HDD. I'll just leave it as is for now, unless TW3 crashes again due to low memory, then it would be a memory leak. How long would you think TW3 would run with my pagefile set at 8134MB if there is a memory leak? I would think I would be okay if I can make it through a 6-8 hour session without a crash, that would probably indicate that there is no memory leak, which would good! I remember when Skyrim had a memory leak...seems like forever ago and it was only four years ago.

 

[jamiehavok]

I keep hearing about games that crash with the page file manually set or turned off, Just set it to system managed and be done with it.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

Yes, the faulted adress is 0x00000000..

yea, that sounds like invalid page fault.

if you have any further errors, the address should be different. in which case, it's some nvidia driver bug, or game bug.

I keep hearing about games that crash with the page file manually set or turned off, Just set it to system managed and be done with it.

my systems don't crash, unless it's faulty hardware/software ;p (i have 2 servers, 3 workstations).