High Memory Usage in Games?

[Icaraeus]

I was playing Battlefield 4 multiplayer for a little while and then it crashed, my PC saying it was low on memory and it stopped responding. I'm not sure what the problem is, I don't run that many things when I play games. Maybe a few google chrome tabs, music app and a word document or two but that's about it.

Its never happened before, I've been playing it for months and I have dual-channel 8GB RAM so there shouldn't be a problem and the game has only ever used up 6-7GB of RAM.

 

[ahnilated]

Check to make sure your swap is enabled and you might need to turn it on or bump up the amount of space it is using.

 

[ferwindjacks]

Almost positive when a game crashes due to low memory it's because the game is using to much VRAM, the ram on your GPU. You can manually set limits on how much VRAM you use or turn down your 3d settings.

 

[Icaraeus]

That doesn't make sense though because Battlefield 4 uses a max of 1.7GB VRAM at 1080p with 4xMSAA and I have AA disabled when I play with everything else maxed so that would reduce the VRAM used. My GPU has 2GB VRAM. What do you mean by checking if swap is enabled or not?

 

[NightAntilli]

You can try alt-tabbing out of the game into task manager and look which process is supposedly using a lot of memory. Might be a memory leak of some sort. Is your system overclocked in any way?

 

[ferwindjacks]

Battlefield 4 isn't the only graphical app happening on your computer man! Anything opened uses VRAM, though may be minute.

 

[Icaraeus]

My CPU is overclocked to 4.3Ghz stable (thought it was stable at 4.4Ghz but it wasn't) and GPU is overclocked as well. Ferwindjacks, I know anything you do on a PC uses up VRAM, but things like opening browsers normally takes away from system memory, very little of it would be VRAM. I've had the same kind of stuff open for months so I'm not sure what it is and I have AA disabled so that frees up a few mb of VRAM. Battlefield 4 uses up the most system RAM as it should, but it shouldn't eat through my entire 8GB.

 

[oxiide]

Battlefield 4 isn't the only graphical app happening on your computer man! Anything opened uses VRAM, though may be minute.

Plenty of people—I'd venture to say a majority—who play Battlefield 4 have 8 GB of system RAM and 2 GB of VRAM. That's very mainstream hardware. I don't think that accounts for crashing due to allegedly running out of memory. Something else is going on.

If there's no page file active, BF4 is running, AND a ton of browser tabs open, I could see that consuming 8 GB of RAM. Also, as was suggested earlier, check Task Manager and see if there isn't something else running that you may not be aware of.

 

[NightAntilli]

I'd start with checking task manager regularly to see what is using the most memory aside from BF4, and try monitoring if something is only increasing in memory use that indicates a memory leak.

If it is indeed only BF4, I'd suggest re-checking your overclocks, or simply putting everything on stock and see if the same thing happens.