ARMA 3 Crashing out due to running out of ram with 16 GB system

[Valken 623]

Hey all,

 

Back to ARMA 3 after a year of RL work (didn't realize so much time had passed) and had Steam reinstall / patch up the game.

 

I've added a few mods and decided to run Yet Another Arma Benchmark from Steam Workshop to test my setup with:

 

CBA A3

ACE 3.5

Blastcore Eagle

Blastcore Tracers FoxFort Edit

Blastcore Skies

JSRS3 DragonFyre Eden 1.2

Vcom AI or Grouplink 5 Special FX AI

 

During the test on a second run (after benchmark has finished, click rerun instead of quiting and running mission again), the game actually declares it has ran out of RAM and Windows would popup to close the ARMA 3 client!!!

 

My system should handle this game with no issues so I suspect it is ram limit issue due to being a 32bit app.  My system should NOT be holding the game back:

 

Windows 7 64 bit, i7-4790K cpu, 16 GB RAM, AMD 6950 2GB unlocked (6970) Crossfire, SSD (Windows and arma 3 installed here). Pagefile on auto on the SSD.

 

I had this issue before with other games such as Grand Theft Auto series until I had enable LAA mode to address the full 4 GB or switch to a 64-bit executable. With 2x GPU cards with 2GB ram buffer, the video memory address is also mapped into the 32-bit memory space per application so that 4 GB becomes 2GB + 2GB, thus possibly cutting into the applications ram requests.

 

Any ideas to stabilize the game so I can run multiple benchmarks without crashing with the above mods? It can't be my video card yet... Planning to upgrade this at a later date but wanted to see if anyone can run the same setup as I can without crashing.

 

Appreciate any help here.

[ineptaphid 6413]

In the launcher go to "Parameters", then  "Advanced" and in the RAM section put in 8012 mb . 

 

You could also try using one of the memory allocators such as Dwardens malloc. 

[Bamse 223]

Does that actually do anything? Wiki says different as all values over 2047 falls back to 2047

source: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Startup_Parameters

[I give up 152]

Hey all,

 

Back to ARMA 3 after a year of RL work (didn't realize so much time had passed) and had Steam reinstall / patch up the game.

 

I've added a few mods and decided to run Yet Another Arma Benchmark from Steam Workshop to test my setup with:

 

CBA A3

ACE 3.5

Blastcore Eagle

Blastcore Tracers FoxFort Edit

Blastcore Skies

JSRS3 DragonFyre Eden 1.2

Vcom AI or Grouplink 5 Special FX AI

 

During the test on a second run (after benchmark has finished, click rerun instead of quiting and running mission again), the game actually declares it has ran out of RAM and Windows would popup to close the ARMA 3 client!!!

 

My system should handle this game with no issues so I suspect it is ram limit issue due to being a 32bit app.  My system should NOT be holding the game back:

 

Windows 7 64 bit, i7-4790K cpu, 16 GB RAM, AMD 6950 2GB unlocked (6970) Crossfire, SSD (Windows and arma 3 installed here). Pagefile on auto on the SSD.

 

I had this issue before with other games such as Grand Theft Auto series until I had enable LAA mode to address the full 4 GB or switch to a 64-bit executable. With 2x GPU cards with 2GB ram buffer, the video memory address is also mapped into the 32-bit memory space per application so that 4 GB becomes 2GB + 2GB, thus possibly cutting into the applications ram requests.

 

Any ideas to stabilize the game so I can run multiple benchmarks without crashing with the above mods? It can't be my video card yet... Planning to upgrade this at a later date but wanted to see if anyone can run the same setup as I can without crashing.

 

Appreciate any help here.

Yes, AMD CrossfireX with 2 or 3 GPUs the Video Memory Address mapped into System Memory (physical or/and virtual), has a considerable large size.

I know because I have Triple CrossfireX and basically the same happens with me, still I dont have "out memory" error because I have 32 GB of RAM.

 

According to mine experience with CrossfireX, running the game in Ultra, 16 GB of RAM are not enough.

What you can try (and probably will solve your issue) is, instead of having Pagefile managed by the Windows, manually set it or define it to a fixed size, let's say to 16GB.

16 GB of virtual memory plus 16 GB of physical memory (32 in total) should be enough to run the game in Ultra with CrossfireX.

[pedeathtrian 100]

Yes, AMD CrossfireX with 2 or 3 GPUs the Video Memory Address mapped into System Memory (physical or/and virtual), has a considerable large size.

I know because I have Triple CrossfireX and basically the same happens with me, still I dont have "out memory" error because I have 32 GB of RAM.

 

According to mine experience with CrossfireX, running the game in Ultra, 16 GB of RAM are not enough.

What you can try (and probably will solve your issue) is, instead of having Pagefile managed by the Windows, manually set it or define it to a fixed size, let's say to 16GB.

16 GB of virtual memory plus 16 GB of physical memory (32 in total) should be enough to run the game in Ultra with CrossfireX.

Virtual space of 32bit process is always 4GiB, no matter how much physical memory do you have. On windows, regular 32bit applications can address not more than 2GiB of that. Those linked with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE can use addresses greater than 2GiB but never greater than 4 GiB. In fact they usually have about 3 GiB of addressable space.

If video driver maps ArmA's virtual space for its own needs (and maps more for more GPUs), adding physical memory (or enlarging page file) will not help, since ArmA cannot address that space and use it anyway.

[I give up 152]

Virtual space of 32bit process is always 4GiB, no matter how much physical memory do you have. On windows, regular 32bit applications can address not more than 2GiB of that. Those linked with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE can use addresses greater than 2GiB but never greater than 4 GiB. In fact they usually have about 3 GiB of addressable space.

If video driver maps ArmA's virtual space for its own needs (and maps more for more GPUs), adding physical memory (or enlarging page file) will not help, since ArmA cannot address that space and use it anyway.

That applies only to executable (arma3.exe). The executable never load more than 2 GB, you are correct.  However this is not related with it.

This is a specific subject related with AMD CrossfireX and RAM load while using it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg2Y8T4-F1Q

[Valken 623]

Thanks for all the replies and bratwurste's video is sobering. I will try to reconfigure my system again to free up more ram / swap space and see if it improves. I would love to add another 8 or 16 GB of ram but can't without a complete cpu and motherboard swap. There goes the budget for the new GPU! 

 

Seems hardware upgrades is the only constant to improve us Armaholic's experience! :D

 

Edit...

 

So I rebooted the system and killed all background tasks, loaded up Radeon Pro and tweaked some settings:

 

Forced 2x AA and 16xAA (forces Crossfire usage)

Dynamic Vsync with a target of 59 FPS

16xAF, HQ settings

 

In ARMA 3 launcher, I enabled HT, and thread manager forcing separate threads to use my CPU more or less. Left core detection on AUTO.

 

Ran YAAB from Steam Workshop using the same mods in the first post unless noted. All on Ultra settings at 1920x1080p:

 

2xAA Second Run on top with VCOM AI

2xAA First run next VCOM AI

Driver Level AA Second with GL5 FX and VCOM AI

Driver Level AA First Run with GL5 FX and VCOM AI:

 

 

You can see the second run is better after everything caches. You also noticed I am using all 4 GB (total 2x 2GB framebuffer)!!!

 

16x CF AA Second Run on top, 16x CF AA First Run behind it, and the last 4 runs from above:

 

While FPS looks a little better, there are more dips with 16xAA enabled but not as much as I thought it would be. It is playable so long as I am not in the middle of many AI.

 

I think my FPS may be framebuffer restricted at this point and will enable a single GPU to see if FPS smoothness will improve. 

 

Thought I would share this academic data.

[I give up 152]

In my end using CrossfireX there is one thing that kills fps and basically makes the game unplayable. Shadows.

With CrossfireX enabled no matter the quality settings (low or ultra, doesn't matter) that we set for it, shadows just kill the game.

With CrossfireX disabled (single gpu) I have no issues with shadows.

 

CrossfireX enabled with shadows enabled using several quality settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8q0SEBoB14

Nasty performance impact with all.

 

CrossfireX enabled with shadows enabled and disabled (all graphics settings in Ultra/Maxed)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLn4htOnWGU

No performance impact with shadows disabled and nasty performance impact with shadows in Low.

 

CrossfireX disabled (single gpu) with shadows enabled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfPPlLwtIRw

No performance impact.

 

Dont know if the same happens to you, but this is what I get.

[J0K3R 5 93]

This might sound stupid, but I was having similar problems with Arma 3 crashing with memory problems.

I tracked it down to the drivers on my network card {killer drivers}.

It seemed the drivers would just hoover up all the ram for itself.

[Valken 623]

@kaysio - that is interesting since I have a Killer NIC on my MB but am using the OEM Qualcomm network drivers. In testing, it should not use up all the ram in single player mode.

 

@ bratwurste - Curious what your system consists of? What model of video card?