Game easily uses 2gb of VRAM, might be why....you are crashing
I see a lot of people reporting crashes, etc. and they are like "I'm running a GTX 770 SLI" or similar and it should be stronger than a GTX 9xx series, I don't understand!
Well, a GTX 770 only has 2gb of VRAM, whether you have 1 or 4 of them, you only have 2gb available. And I think a small chunk of that is dedicated to the card.
I have shadows medium, blur off, DOF turned off (can't tell a difference with it), AA off, with everything else ON like sharpening, vignette, HBAO+, etc. and EVERYTHING ultra (with shadows being only exception) and running 1920 x 1080.
Using GPU-Z, I set the sensor section to record max VRAM usage and played a bit with the settings mentioned above. Max mem usage recorded for card was 2054. So 2gb of VRAM was used with barely any of the intensive settings on like AA or higher shadows. I'm running a GTX 970 so I still have nearly 1.5gb of free. I can obviously run AA (and have since turned it on since testing; been forgetting to measure how much difference there is) and shadows ultra if I want. But those of you running 2gb cards (or worse, 1gb) can NOT run everything ultra regardless if you are SLI with last years higher-end card. Why it's taken so long for VRAM's importance to seep into the conscious of gamers is beyond me. It doesn't matter if you have the hp to run the game if you don't have the track to run it down.
I suggest googling "GPU-Z" and downloading it's most recent version. Once downloaded, open it. First box looks very similar to CPU-Z's layout where it lists the card's static figures. Select the "Sensor" tab. You'll now see a cascading list of all the different sensors like temp, core, mem, etc. Select the Memory drop down box arrow. Then select "max". Can do the same for temp too if you are curious how hot the card gets while gaming. Then minimize the program so it'll run in the background (To reopen, go to the hidden icons box on windows or open task manager and select GPU-Z, then maximize; do NOT click the run option from the short cut or you'll have 2 instances running and 2nd instance won't list your max values). Now open the game and play for 30 minutes then quit and go check. How much VRAM did it record? If it list 2gb and your card only has 2gb, you need to lower settings. AA, shadows, and resolution are the biggest VRAM usage offenders.
Keep in mind if you are running a nvidia card and have your Global Settings set to max everything with options like override program settings or enhance selected, and you are running 4, 8, or 16 AA, or other settings known to eat VRAM, go to the game's tab, and manually default everything so you aren't taking a big hit in performance right off the bat. 16 AF doesn't eat VRAM and greatly improves the image. Do NOT run DSR with down sampled 4k!! I tried it once with my test settings and the game bogged down heavily. I didn't record the VRAM usage there but with AA off and shadows medium, and resolution set to 4k, it's definitely using more than 4gb.
Also, RAM usage in this game is HIGH. I'm running 16gb of RAM, and game just idling uses around 40% of RAM (parts of system obviously included there).That means if I had 8gb of RAM, it'd be using 80%. If I only had 4gb of RAM (or worse 32 bit Windows) I'd be overdrawn. Though maybe it detects RAM and limits it silently, I dunno.
Point is, before you blame CD or the game for constant crashes, maybe investigate if your card and system are actually up to snuff to run the game properly at the settings you've selected.
I see a lot of people reporting crashes, etc. and they are like "I'm running a GTX 770 SLI" or similar and it should be stronger than a GTX 9xx series, I don't understand!
Well, a GTX 770 only has 2gb of VRAM, whether you have 1 or 4 of them, you only have 2gb available. And I think a small chunk of that is dedicated to the card.
I have shadows medium, blur off, DOF turned off (can't tell a difference with it), AA off, with everything else ON like sharpening, vignette, HBAO+, etc. and EVERYTHING ultra (with shadows being only exception) and running 1920 x 1080.
Using GPU-Z, I set the sensor section to record max VRAM usage and played a bit with the settings mentioned above. Max mem usage recorded for card was 2054. So 2gb of VRAM was used with barely any of the intensive settings on like AA or higher shadows. I'm running a GTX 970 so I still have nearly 1.5gb of free. I can obviously run AA (and have since turned it on since testing; been forgetting to measure how much difference there is) and shadows ultra if I want. But those of you running 2gb cards (or worse, 1gb) can NOT run everything ultra regardless if you are SLI with last years higher-end card. Why it's taken so long for VRAM's importance to seep into the conscious of gamers is beyond me. It doesn't matter if you have the hp to run the game if you don't have the track to run it down.
I suggest googling "GPU-Z" and downloading it's most recent version. Once downloaded, open it. First box looks very similar to CPU-Z's layout where it lists the card's static figures. Select the "Sensor" tab. You'll now see a cascading list of all the different sensors like temp, core, mem, etc. Select the Memory drop down box arrow. Then select "max". Can do the same for temp too if you are curious how hot the card gets while gaming. Then minimize the program so it'll run in the background (To reopen, go to the hidden icons box on windows or open task manager and select GPU-Z, then maximize; do NOT click the run option from the short cut or you'll have 2 instances running and 2nd instance won't list your max values). Now open the game and play for 30 minutes then quit and go check. How much VRAM did it record? If it list 2gb and your card only has 2gb, you need to lower settings. AA, shadows, and resolution are the biggest VRAM usage offenders.
Keep in mind if you are running a nvidia card and have your Global Settings set to max everything with options like override program settings or enhance selected, and you are running 4, 8, or 16 AA, or other settings known to eat VRAM, go to the game's tab, and manually default everything so you aren't taking a big hit in performance right off the bat. 16 AF doesn't eat VRAM and greatly improves the image. Do NOT run DSR with down sampled 4k!! I tried it once with my test settings and the game bogged down heavily. I didn't record the VRAM usage there but with AA off and shadows medium, and resolution set to 4k, it's definitely using more than 4gb.
Also, RAM usage in this game is HIGH. I'm running 16gb of RAM, and game just idling uses around 40% of RAM (parts of system obviously included there).That means if I had 8gb of RAM, it'd be using 80%. If I only had 4gb of RAM (or worse 32 bit Windows) I'd be overdrawn. Though maybe it detects RAM and limits it silently, I dunno.
Point is, before you blame CD or the game for constant crashes, maybe investigate if your card and system are actually up to snuff to run the game properly at the settings you've selected.
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