You just burned through 7 gigs of RAM?!?

[maturin 12]

I have 4 GB of RAM. That's twice the amount BI has the nerve to call recommended settings. I'm halfway through Dogs of War and I get a CTD while loading a save file. Windows tells me that too many virtual memory packets (IIRC) were requested. My maximum virtual memory is at 3 GB, while Control Panel recommends 4.6 GB. I've tried to increase it, but Windows XP is being retarded and refuses.

Seriously though, 7 GB of memory isn't enough? I though the game couldn't even handle rigs with 8 GB because it was too much.

Could this be related to blue screen of death crashes involving memory dumps and infinite loops?

Now when I load the save file that crashed, performance is awful(er than usual) and not a single model or texture loads. I'm sitting in a field of blurry cutouts acting as placeholders for trees.

[no use for a name 0]

it's a 32bit application...the max it can use is 3GB (which also includes windows and background processes). sorry, but until software companies pull their head out of their asses and start making 64bit more standard then there's no point in buying 8+GB of RAM (unless of course you use 64bit apps)

[nyran125 10]

they dont do that, because the majority of games done require 8 gb ram. And MOST people dont even have close to 8GB RAM. I still only have 3GB ram, im not going out and wastin gmy money on 8gb ram and a nividia 295GTX when that card is practically Obsolete now this Arma 2 has arrived. The moral of the story DO NOT UPGRADE COMPUTER BEFORE A GAME COMES OUT. always upgrade computer a year later or 2 after a game tests you hardware to the limit.

[GLeek 10]

it's a 32bit application...the max it can use is 3GB

i think 32bit = 4GB (2'32=4294967296), with large adress aware flag. of course, you need a 64bit OS with a large bunch of ram, but it's doable.

anyway , it's always useless to argue on the internetzzz lolz

Edited August 11, 2009 by GLeek

[kozzy420 21]

32 XP can only read 3.25 GB of ram.

I have 4 GB installed on my XP computer and 6 on my vista. The XP one says 3.25GB of Ram under Control Panel and System.

64 bit windows you need if you want to use 8GB man. 8 GB in Windows XP doesnt make much sense. Even in Vista 6 is enough imo.

If you are having Blue Screen Of Death, that can be hardware dying. The last two computers I have fixed for people where casued by RAM issues (the ram dying). Also can be graphicscard, motherboard,etc.. BUt from my personal experience fixing computers for people, alot of the time Blue Screen Of Death = An issue with Memory (can also be a driver issue, not jsut hardware). Run a program called "MEMTEST" to see whats up with your ram. For the last PC I fixed, it was just one of the 2 rams sticks that was faulty. I replaced one of them and then no more Blue Screens Of Death or any issues. My advice is to try MEMTEST program and test each STICK of ram separately and then together to see if its the ram. If the ram turns out fine on each stick, then maybe take it into a repair shop to see if its anythign else?

Just my opinion having fixed some PCs with the Blue Screen Of Death.

PS: Can you show me what it says when you get the BSOD?

Edited August 11, 2009 by kozzy420

[dale0404 5]

I have had the same problem and its to do with the game, nothing wong with the computer.

[Alex72 1]

Video editing and graphics making require a lot of memory. If your making movies/3D work etc then its always good to have a lot for rendering. Would personally never buy 8gb for gaming. Dont see the point at this point in time.

[bangtail 0]

Video editing and graphics making require a lot of memory. If your making movies/3D work etc then its always good to have a lot for rendering. Would personally never buy 8gb for gaming. Dont see the point at this point in time.

QFT.

6 gigs is more than enough if all you do is game. You're better off spending the extra cash on an SSD for your OS etc. Much more visible gains there and the smaller SSDs are fairly cheap now (well, compared to what they were).

Eth

[maturin 12]

So no one read my post? I only have 4GB of RAM. The rest is virtual memory, and the game claims that 3GB of it is insufficient.

I don't think the blue screen is related to hardware dying because only Arma causes it, it mentions GPU driver files and google tells me that infinite loops are a known problem with Windows. Arma is just setting it off.

[cchance 10]

I love how everyone ignored his complaint, he has 4 gigs and 3 gigs virtual and arma when loading the same RAN OUT OF MEMORY, thats 7 gigs of aggregate memory used up, I mean wow what 7 responses and not 1 person actually responded to the issue but got on a tangent about the fact he said he couldnt up his virtual memory over 4gb? he doesnt want to up it he wants the game not to eat 4gigs of dedicated ram and 3 gigs of virtual!

[Bad Pilot 0]

XP 32-bit has a RAM limit of 4GB. The RAM available to you is either all your RAM or 4GB minus your VRAM, whichever is smaller.

The largest amount of RAM allocatable to a single 32-bit application is 2GB.

Use the -maxmem=x parameter to allocate Arma as much RAM as you can afford up to 2047MB which is the largest setting it can handle.

Your XP 32-bit Pagefile is limited to 8GB. Arma isn't really using this so don't worry about it. Windows should run faster without a Pagefile if you have enough RAM for your needs. When I used XP 32-bit with 2GB RAM, I turned off my Pagefile and ran with -maxmem=1536, leaving 0.5GB for 128MB AGP buffering and the lean XP system.

Arma and Arma2 do create their own memory caches on disc. It could be that you don't have space on the right hard-disc for this dynamic data.

Look at your capacities and your settings again. I'd change your drivers too!

[Halli~SPARTA~ 0]

Arma and Arma2 do create their own memory caches on disc. It could be that you don't have space on the right hard-disc for this dynamic data.

Look at your capacities and your settings again. I'd change your drivers too!

BINGO!!!!

Oh yeah add this to the ArmA2 desktop shortcut exe.

-maxmem=1024

or 1440

It will look something like this

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA2\ArmA2.exe" -maxmem=1024

This will limit the amount of ram the game uses but still it's good to reboot every couple hours playing ArmA.

[manzilla 1]

So no one read my post? I only have 4GB of RAM. The rest is virtual memory, and the game claims that 3GB of it is insufficient.

I don't think the blue screen is related to hardware dying because only Arma causes it, it mentions GPU driver files and google tells me that infinite loops are a known problem with Windows. Arma is just setting it off.

How much memory does your video card have? Next, what is your video memory setting at? It sounds like you are getting the same error I used to get when I'd play with video memory settings at Very High or Default with a 512MB graphics card. If have less then 1GB vid mem and are playing the game on Very High or Default you will get a CTD on larger missions. Depending on the card High may give you a crash as well.

[Path-x 10]

32 bit system can theoretically address 4,294,967,296 locations in RAM. So that is about 4GB.

[echo1 0]

I love how everyone ignored his complaint, he has 4 gigs and 3 gigs virtual and arma when loading the same RAN OUT OF MEMORY, thats 7 gigs of aggregate memory used up, I mean wow what 7 responses and not 1 person actually responded to the issue but got on a tangent about the fact he said he couldnt up his virtual memory over 4gb? he doesnt want to up it he wants the game not to eat 4gigs of dedicated ram and 3 gigs of virtual!

No, the point that was made was that a 32-bit compile app like ArmA wouldn't be able to use all that RAM at once by itself. It sounds to me like there's some background process eating all that RAM. There are plenty of people around here with 4GB of RAM who have no problems.

32 bit system can theoretically address 4,294,967,296 locations in RAM. So that is about 4GB.

But the top 1GB is reserved by the sytem, so you can only access about 3GB of it for your apps.

[maturin 12]

I have a 512mg ATI 3800 series card with new drivers, and I have 200 GB of free space in the C: drive Arma uses.

I'm running Steam and anti-virus in the background.

[Steakslim 1]

turn off your anti virus, and any other background programs. If you have the game through steam, of course leave steam running, if not, shuts team down as well if you want. Also be sure like one poster said, that you have enough actual disc space on your harddrive. If you have less than 10gb left, I'd suggest doing some cleaning.

[GLeek 10]

I love how everyone ignored his complaint, he has 4 gigs and 3 gigs virtual and arma when loading the same RAN OUT OF MEMORY, thats 7 gigs of aggregate memory used up, I mean wow what 7 responses and not 1 person actually responded to the issue but got on a tangent about the fact he said he couldnt up his virtual memory over 4gb? he doesnt want to up it he wants the game not to eat 4gigs of dedicated ram and 3 gigs of virtual!

memory leaks ? bad page handling ?

---------- Post added at 06:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:08 PM ----------

32 bit system can theoretically address 4,294,967,296 locations in RAM. So that is about 4GB.

no. it's EXACTLY 4GB .:D

[Bad Pilot 0]

XP doesn't reserve 1GB for itself.

Maturin, is your video card PCI-E or AGP?

Right-click on the Task Bar, choose Task Manager and tell us (from the Status Bar at the bottom of the window) how many processes you have running and how much RAM you've got used out of how much available.

[echo1 0]

XP doesn't reserve 1GB for itself.

No, it's on a lower level than the OS, which is why any OS (Linux, UNIX, Mac etc) wil suffer from the same issues. But nonetheless, if you put 4GB of RAM into a PC with a 32bit OS, a gig will be unusable.

[maturin 12]

XP doesn't reserve 1GB for itself.

Maturin, is your video card PCI-E or AGP?

What does that mean? (It's a HD 3875)

I should add that this is not a recurring problem. It has only happened once in Dogs of War (physical memory dumps occur at other times) and the mission is at fault. The specific error message has happened to other people. It's definately something the game is doing wrong, so I'm looking for something to change on my end and handle the problem.

[Bad Pilot 0]

No, it's on a lower level than the OS, which is why any OS (Linux, UNIX, Mac etc) wil suffer from the same issues. But nonetheless, if you put 4GB of RAM into a PC with a 32bit OS, a gig will be unusable.

And the low-level reason is your graphics card eats into your 4GB.

If you have an AGP system, you lose more RAM according to your BIOS AGP aperture setting.

XP 32-bit has a RAM limit of 4GB. The RAM available to you is either all your RAM or 4GB minus your VRAM, whichever is smaller.

Maturin, a "let me google that for you" moment indicates your card is PCI-E which means it demands none of your 4GB system RAM for itself - though it will still reduce your available RAM by the size of your VRAM (see my quote above).

Anyway.., you say it's only happened once... Uninstall the game and have a lie-down.

[wizbomb 10]

hmmmmmmmm i put 8 gigs in my vista and the game takes 20 seconds to load a face texture lol

[manzilla 1]

I have a 512mg ATI 3800 series card with new drivers, and I have 200 GB of free space in the C: drive Arma uses.

I'm running Steam and anti-virus in the background.

If you change the Video Memory settings to Normal that should do a way with the "out of memory error". 512mb may be able to play on High Video Memory but I had a 512mb 3870 and I always got that error on larger missions. Matter of fact, I had the same problem with A1 for years and it wasn't until A2 that I was told to lower my VM setting from Very High/Default to Normal. I haven't had the CTD since.

Try this. If it doesn't help then I'm all out of suggestions.

[volkov956 0]

I get out of memory issues with 1 gb video card in normal so I doubt its always the problem..