Memory Leaking, Excessive RAM usage?

[GGMrMoe]

PC: AMD 5900x, RTX 3080 OC, 64GB RAM 3600, B550 Motherboard, NVME 2TB x2 SSD, 2 TB SSD, 6TB HDD, BeQuiet case with Arctic Freezer 360 for CPU, very good and cool temperatures. Running 4K Resolution. Using MSI Afterburner to monitor. Totally new and clean game install (no mods), New NVIDIA 527.56 drivers done with a clean DDU install. V-Sync Off. GPU usage 90-100%, CPU usage never more than 20% with temps never going above 65C on either.

Running the game DX12, mix of RT Ultra and Ultra+ settings with DLSS Auto or Balanced. Depending where I am and how long I have been playing up to 10 or so minutes, I get 30-50fps on average. It is OK, but a little disappointing. VRAM is maxed out, and my system RAM starts out around 11-12 GB usage. The longer I play, the higher RAM usage goes up. Pre-Next Gen usage used to hover around 14GB (with heavy texture mod usage, 50+ mods). Next Game RAM usage starts going up until it is well over 20GB and climbing and all the while FPS drops. The drops are probably 10-20 FPS overall with lots of game stuttering..

Save game in that spot. Quit game, restart game and load up that last save in that spot. FPS seems normal again, and I am using maybe 11-12 GB of RAM. Play for awhile and RAM usage starts jumping again and FPS drops again, game stutters. New save, repeat process, etc.

Everything looks really good, but something is definitely different (and wrong?) with this version of the game. I am able to get Cyberpunk 2077 to run at 4K with RT at an almost consistent 55-65 fps and RAM usage is no-where near where this version of The Witcher game goes.

Am I wrong, or is this where the game is (wrongly) using so much VRAM it spills over into the much much slower system RAM which drastically slows down the GPU? Or perhaps something else or a mixture of things?

Looking forward to what comes next, hopefully positive.

 

[hyperninja]

PC: AMD 5900x, RTX 3080 OC, 64GB RAM 3600, B550 Motherboard, NVME 2TB x2 SSD, 2 TB SSD, 6TB HDD, BeQuiet case with Arctic Freezer 360 for CPU, very good and cool temperatures. Running 4K Resolution. Using MSI Afterburner to monitor. Totally new and clean game install (no mods), New NVIDIA 527.56 drivers done with a clean DDU install. V-Sync Off. GPU usage 90-100%, CPU usage never more than 20% with temps never going above 65C on either.

Running the game DX12, mix of RT Ultra and Ultra+ settings with DLSS Auto or Balanced. Depending where I am and how long I have been playing up to 10 or so minutes, I get 30-50fps on average. It is OK, but a little disappointing. VRAM is maxed out, and my system RAM starts out around 11-12 GB usage. The longer I play, the higher RAM usage goes up. Pre-Next Gen usage used to hover around 14GB (with heavy texture mod usage, 50+ mods). Next Game RAM usage starts going up until it is well over 20GB and climbing and all the while FPS drops. The drops are probably 10-20 FPS overall with lots of game stuttering..

Save game in that spot. Quit game, restart game and load up that last save in that spot. FPS seems normal again, and I am using maybe 11-12 GB of RAM. Play for awhile and RAM usage starts jumping again and FPS drops again, game stutters. New save, repeat process, etc.

Everything looks really good, but something is definitely different (and wrong?) with this version of the game. I am able to get Cyberpunk 2077 to run at 4K with RT at an almost consistent 55-65 fps and RAM usage is no-where near where this version of The Witcher game goes.

Am I wrong, or is this where the game is (wrongly) using so much VRAM it spills over into the much much slower system RAM which drastically slows down the GPU? Or perhaps something else or a mixture of things?

Looking forward to what comes next, hopefully positive.

Post automatically merged: Dec 20, 2022

I have exactly the same issue. 3080 with a 5900x and 32GB of RAM.

 

[GGMrMoe]

I should add, this was all after the hotfix of course. Not sure why the RAM usage creeps up so high , Started out around 11.5GB then it hit 25.9GB after I rode from Crow's Perch to Oxenfurt this morning.

 

[GGMrMoe]

Even after the small update recently Dec 27/Dec 28, I am still having the issue of my system RAM usage climbing over 20GB and game fps declining as that usage rises higher.

 

[tommalmm]

For me the ram usage stabilizes around 15-17GB (32GB ddr5 installed) and stays like that. I definitely do not see a leak. Maybe something AMD related (in the code, I mean, not an issue with an AMD CPU).

 

[化我残躯为烈火]

As long as it runs long enough，the game will use more system Vram and drop frames

 

[GGMrMoe]

Even with the small update on 12/29(?) I am still dropping frame rates. Actually seemed to start slightly better but after about 7-8 minutes I went from near 60 down to 20fps with RAM usage doubling.
So I am still guessing that the VRAM is spilling over into System RAM and the GPU accessing that RAM is slowing it all down. Again, just a guess.

 

[andrewdilley]

I don't see any evidence of a leak on my PC? Ryzen 5 3600 16GB, RTX 3070Ti 8GB, both RAM and VRAM seem to hover around 6 GB, according to Afterburner RAM/Process stats.

Um, this is with resizable BAR turned on, did that a while ago though not sure I've ever seen a benefit. On-line opinions seem a bit conflicted about it Will turn it off and have another look. [EDIT] looks the same, performance not obviously better/worse.

 

[John_Russell]

ReBAR only helps in games specifically programmed for it for the most part plus it is still not fully implemented in Windows and only works with transfers between system memory and GPU memory unlike with Consoles where it can transfer assets from a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive directly into GPU memory but even there it only works with games that are not backwards compatible with last gen consoles and there still isn't very many of them. It's only made a noticeable difference in a couple of games for me, it did help gain about 10% in FPS in AC Valhalla however ever since they implemented it the game has had nothing but problems with CTDs which I suspect are GPU memory related. It just dumps everything in VRAM, freezes for a second and then crashes without a warning or error message because I suspect the framebuffer is empty because VRAM was dumped. The game I got the most gains from was Skyrim SE with over 700 mods many of them high poly and 4k and 8k texture mods. I was always having a framerate dip problem in several cities such as Whiterun, Solitude and Riften but only in certain places yet I was only using 60-70% of my GPU and no CPU bottleneck. After I turned on ReBAR I was able to keep a locked 60 FPS in those areas so I suspect the slowdown was due to transferring textures from system memory to GPU memory and ReBar sped that up even though the game isn't actually programmed to use it.

 

[R4zen_Hose_Tony]

ReBAR could be helpful but it's not fix for this problem, it's PCI-E Bus / VRAM overload:

Witcher 3 NG Ray Tracing - GPU PCI-E Bus / VRAM Overload cause of FPS drop/stuttering issue - FIX'ed!

Witcher 3 Next Gen DX12 mode with RT On is very VRAM Heavy. It can adress maybe more then ~ 16GB VRAM to your GPU. Becaus of that RT On in some areas could be unplayable on GPU with lower then 16GB VRAM memory (or even them can sometimes happend this issue ). My laptop Asus TUF Gaming A15...

forums.cdprojektred.com

 

[John_Russell]

If you have a PCIe 4.0 x16 bus there is no way you are going to be able to overload it with any modern GPU even a 4090 .... The memory bandwidth of a 4090 can't overload a PCIe 3.0 x16 bus.

The problem is most likely due to the CPU bottleneck because it is the main thread in a game engine that controls memory transfers over the PCIe bus and if it is capped at 100% no more data can be transferred because it is busy doing something else. In the case of a laptop it's going to be even more pronounced because mobile CPUs and GPUs are gimped because of their much lower TDP. For instance a 3600X will be faster than a 5800M and a 3060M will likely get beaten by a desktop 2060

 

[R4zen_Hose_Tony]

If you have a PCIe 4.0 x16 bus there is no way you are going to be able to overload it with any modern GPU even a 4090 .... The memory bandwidth of a 4090 can't overload a PCIe 3.0 x16 bus.

The problem is most likely due to the CPU bottleneck because it is the main thread in a game engine that controls memory transfers over the PCIe bus and if it is capped at 100% no more data can be transferred because it is busy doing something else. In the case of a laptop it's going to be even more pronounced because mobile CPUs and GPUs are gimped because of their much lower TDP. For instance a 3600X will be faster than a 5800M and a 3060M will likely

If, but I don't have. In My laptop is only pci-e x8 3.0 thx to amd... And in this W3 NG case pcie bus is overload my rtx 3060.

 

[TheDogManiac]

Same here, RX 6900 XT, Ryzen 7 3800X

 

[supremacCVYY]

guys i have a problem when active new dlss 3.0 ( dlss generation ) on my rtx 4080 and rtx on or not on still in some parts of maps or when i move the camera fast the fps drops so bad from 100 to 0 or 10 and come back again to 100 when i turn off the new dlss 3.0 then everything is normal and not get that drop of fps, someone have any solve of this ?

 

[GGMrMoe]

With the small update on Jan 1/2 2023, I still appear to be having these issues. Game starts out decent enough, again not great. Then after about 10 minutes of play time FPS has dipped immensely and RAM usage has shot up to more than double when the game started. Save at that location, quit game, start game at that location and FPS is about 20 higher and system RAM usage is about half of what it was when I save and quit previously.

Said it before, but wow Cyberpunk 2077 runs so much better higher settings. Waiting mostly patiently for updates that will improve the game in this regard.

 

[tponte]

Same issue with a 3070 TI (i5-12600, 16GB DDR4-3600).
The most stable I got was to keep the "Textures" setting at "Low", with everything else maxed out (RT Ultra).
Anything other than "Low" on textures with RT, and it's just a waiting game until memory runs away and the game starts stuttering.

The official specs list the requirements for Ultra settings / RT GI+AO lower than my specs, so I'd say there's definitely something wrong with their implementation. Or they need to revisit the official requirements.

 

[John_Russell]

Just turn off RT and crank everything else to max and enjoy the game ...... I also have a 3070 TI @ 1440p and am using a Mod to crank up most of the settings to Ultra++++ and I'm only using 5.2 - 5.6 GB of VRAM and played for over 85 hours before I had my first (and only) crash

Ray Tracing is broken right now and there is simply nothing that can be done at our end to fix that and it's going to take a lot of work from CDPR to fix it because they are going to have to rewrite the CPU threading model for the game engine ..... Anything else is just putting a band aid on an amputated limb