23 réponses à ce sujet

[Ksandor]

If not the very high resolution pack can cause RAM overflow issues even if you have more 2 GB RAM.

For instance DAO is a 32bit native game. I had downloaded JBtextures, an unofficial very high res pack. The textures were getting corrupted under WinXP 32 bit from time to time. I had only 2GB RAM then.

Then I got my new system. Windows 7 64 bit with 8GB of RAM. JBtextures began to crash more frequently and the files began to get corrupted more often. I was kinda WTF? My old system had less RAM. Then I checked the DA Nexus forums.

It seems the damned DAO exe cannot use more than 2GB of RAM! And even the game's RAM and OS's RAM are allocated from 2 different RAM sources the game exe could only see the total RAM usage and since Win 7 requires more RAM, the total RAM usage was nearly always exceeding 2GB. This is why my game was more buggy when running on a 64bit system instead of WinXP 32bit (anyway a 64bit system probabily uses more RAM than the 32 bit version of the same system).

So I edited the game exe, made it see more than 2GB RAM if available. That solved my JBtextures DAO problems.

Maybe DA II exe cannot handle more than 2GB RAM too. I find that possiblity odd however since this is a new game but if DA II is also a native 32bit OS game it is possible (it certainly installs under the Program Files x86 folder on my Win 7 64bit. So maybe DA II exe is really 32bit). Maybe that is the cause of crashes some people are getting. I get some crashes from time to time. I use NVIDIA's beta drivers 270.51. I Installed the 1.01 patch. My fps avarages at 45-50. Always above 30 fps. Rarely drops under 45 fps. I can see 60 fps at some areas. Very high settings, DirectX 11, very high textures, all other visual effects except AA enabled. I have Zotac GTX 580.

This is because an 32bit operating system can see a total of 4GB RAM and only half of that is normally allocated to programs like games. The rest is reserved to Kernel. If DA II is a 32 bit game it is highly possible that DA II cannot use more than 2GB RAM.

I am not a technical person. Bioware please give us an answer. Can DA II exe use more than 2GB RAM?

Modifié par Ksandor, 13 avril 2011 - 08:31 .

[Nukenin]

You might be interested in perusing Memory Limits for Windows Releases.  Most Windows games still tend to be 32-bit applications.

[Miriel Amarinth]

I would hazard a guess that yes the developers have put in an LAA flag in DA2. If nothing else they released a high resolution texture pack themselves and recommend 1gb+ VRAM for running it. If the game didn't have an LAA flag I think a lot of people running that texture pack would have run into serious issues, including me.

I can't check the game exe for an LAA flag atm, but I'd be surprised if it isn't there. A lot of games these days come with that flag preset and more games are slowly starting to favour a 64-bit OS (played a game called APB last year which ran significantly crappy on 32-bit due to RAM limitations).

As you already summised in your post, there are two benefits to running a 64-bit OS. Firstly you're not limited to 4gb of 'recognized' physical memory (which includes ALL phys. memory, so stuff like VRAM cuts into your available system memory - a 1gb GFX card can leave you with as little as 2.5gb useable system memory) and secondly you can run 64-bit native applications which aren't bound by the 2gb memory per application limit. A 32-bit application run on a 64-bit OS will still be subject to the 2gb memory limit, unless it has an LAA flag, in that case it can use upto (iirc) 4gb.

At some point memory useage will reach a point that games will have to switch to 64-bit entirely, unless they think of something new.

Modifié par Miriel Amarinth, 14 avril 2011 - 12:52 .

[Nukenin]

Miriel Amarinth wrote...

I would hazard a guess that yes the developers have put in an LAA flag in DA2. If nothing else they released a high resolution texture pack themselves and recommend 1gb+ VRAM for running it. If the game didn't have an LAA flag I think a lot of people running that texture pack would have run into serious issues, including me.

I can't check the game exe for an LAA flag atm, but I'd be surprised if it isn't there. A lot of games these days come with that flag preset and more games are slowly starting to favour a 64-bit OS (played a game called APB last year which ran significantly crappy on 32-bit due to RAM limitations).
[…]

I just used DUMPBIN /HEADERS to check the DragonAge2.exe executable—it does not seem to have been linked with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE option.  (I compared the output to that of a known /LAA executable—Civ V—for which the output of DUMPBIN /HEADERS clearly indicates "Application can handle large (>2GB) addresses".)

Modifié par Nukenin, 14 avril 2011 - 02:35 .

[Lacan82]

RAM in vista/7 isn't software controlled like previous version of windows. Windows now take that burden away from developers.

[Ksandor]

Lacan82 wrote...

RAM in vista/7 isn't software controlled like previous version of windows. Windows now take that burden away from developers.

What do you mean? I am not a technical person and I did not understand you.

I am not sure what is this burden but I had to modify Dragon Age Origins exe to make the game see and use up to 4GB RAM under my Win 7 64bit system to run the game with the unofficial JBtextures very high res texture pack. 

What I don't understand is that if a 32bit game cannot use more than 2GB why a 32bit game recommends 2GB RAM under XP but 4GB RAM under Win 7? A 32bit game won't see 4GB RAM anyway. I am really confused about that. Because Win 7 reserves more pysical memory to Kernel than WinXP? So less actual memory remains for the game?

Also how much Kernel RAM Win 7 64bit Home Premium requires to run properly? I mean I have 8GB RAM of physical memory. How much of it is reserved to Kernel by default? Is that more than the 32bit version of the same OS?

Btw my graphics card has some 1.5 GB GRAM so it is already using some 1,5 GB of my physical memory.

[Dubya75]

Ksandor wrote...

Lacan82 wrote...

RAM in vista/7 isn't software controlled like previous version of windows. Windows now take that burden away from developers.

What do you mean? I am not a technical person and I did not understand you.

I am not sure what is this burden but I had to modify Dragon Age Origins exe to make the game see and use up to 4GB RAM under my Win 7 64bit system to run the game with the unofficial JBtextures very high res texture pack. 

What I don't understand is that if a 32bit game cannot use more than 2GB why a 32bit game recommends 2GB RAM under XP but 4GB RAM under Win 7? A 32bit game won't see 4GB RAM anyway. I am really confused about that. Because Win 7 reserves more pysical memory to Kernel than WinXP? So less actual memory remains for the game?

Also how much Kernel RAM Win 7 64bit Home Premium requires to run properly? I mean I have 8GB RAM of physical memory. How much of it is reserved to Kernel by default? Is that more than the 32bit version of the same OS?

Btw my graphics card has some 1.5 GB GRAM so it is already using some 1,5 GB of my physical memory.

Your question:
"Question about DA II executable. Does it recognize more than 2GB RAM?"

Answer:
Yes it does if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Savvy?

Modifié par Dubya75, 14 avril 2011 - 09:14 .

[Notick]

What he means is:

The software developers (BioWare in this instance) no longer has to denote or control memory usage within their code. Windows 7 (Vista does so as well) now regulates how much Memory is needed automatically. Before, programmers had to test and hard-code memory requirements into their software.

Understand what RAM is... RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY - or, whatever is actively running at the time. A 32-bit version of windows, for instance, could never utilize more than 3GB of ram. The writing limitations of a 32-bit architecture is such. However, a 64-bit version of windows is capable of supporting all the way up to 128GB of memory.

So, ignoring WINDOWS specifically now, all applications have to follow the same rules when they're writing to RAM. Dragon Age Origins was a 32 bit application - so there are 'limiters' placed so they can't overburden a 32-bit operating system. (Sense a 32-bit architecture system can only use 3GB of ram - leave a gig open for base-operations.)

Kernel RAM used by windows 7 is normally between 800mb-1.5gb from most iterations I have seen. However, understand, how much memory a game or piece of software uses is based upon the architecture it uses. This is why you're starting to see some software with 64-bit variants - they can utilize more memory.

Sense the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista can seemlessly run a 32-bit piece of software virtually, windows sets the RAM requirements for the software itself... Just as Dubya75 said.

Modifié par Notick, 14 avril 2011 - 09:18 .

[Dubya75]

Notick wrote...

What he means is:

The software developers (BioWare in this instance) no longer has to denote or control memory usage within their code. Windows 7 (Vista does so as well) now regulates how much Memory is needed automatically. Before, programmers had to test and hard-code memory requirements into their software.

Understand what RAM is... RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY - or, whatever is actively running at the time. A 32-bit version of windows, for instance, could never utilize more than 3GB of ram. The writing limitations of a 32-bit architecture is such. However, a 64-bit version of windows is capable of supporting all the way up to 128GB of memory.

So, ignoring WINDOWS specifically now, all applications have to follow the same rules when they're writing to RAM. Dragon Age Origins was a 32 bit application - so there are 'limiters' placed so they can't overburden a 32-bit operating system. (Sense a 32-bit architecture system can only use 3GB of ram - leave a gig open for base-operations.)

Kernel RAM used by windows 7 is normally between 800mb-1.5gb from most iterations I have seen. However, understand, how much memory a game or piece of software uses is based upon the architecture it uses. This is why you're starting to see some software with 64-bit variants - they can utilize more memory.

Sense the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista can seemlessly run a 32-bit piece of software virtually, windows sets the RAM requirements for the software itself... Just as Dubya75 said.

And that should conclude our business here for today! 
Very well explained. 

[Ksandor]

Thank you! From what I understand you mean that if the game is not hard coded like DAO which requries "application can use more than 2GB RAM" option enabled in the executable, DAII let's Win 7 use more than 2GB to run the game if phiysical memory allows and if the game requires more than 2GB RAM even if the game is a 32bit application.

Modifié par Ksandor, 14 avril 2011 - 10:20 .

[naughty99]

I have 16GB ram and I have played while running task manager and so far I have never seen the DA2 executable use more than 1GB RAM. Usually it uses less than 500MB RAM.

I have the high res texture pack installed.

[Notick]

Ksandor wrote...

Thank you! From what I understand you
mean that if the game is not hard coded like DAO which requries
"application can use more than 2GB RAM" option enabled in the
executable, DAII let's Win 7 use more than 2GB to run the game if
phiysical memory allows and if the game requires more than 2GB RAM even
if the game is a 32bit application.

Correct. You have to think retroactively - right now, software is still 32-bit
oriented because there are still users whom do not have a 64-bit based
operating system. In time, much like the shift from 16 to 32-bit in the
release of Windows 98, all software will be released in 64-bit formats.
You are already seeing this in large softwares, such as CS5, Autocad,
Video editing softwares, etc...

naughty99 wrote...

I
have 16GB ram and I have played while running task manager and so far I
have never seen the DA2 executable use more than 1GB RAM. Usually it
uses less than 500MB RAM.

I have the high res texture pack installed.

That is correct... Windows Vista (Which is the BASE of Windows 7...) has one
of the best memory managment utilities I have ever seen. I challenge a
normal user to exceed 2gb of usage on a PC... Ever... if you're running
windows vista or windows 7. It's remarkably hard to do, mainly because
most software is still written for the 32-bit format.

Modifié par Notick, 14 avril 2011 - 04:47 .

[naughty99]

Yes, 32-bit apps are simply not able to make use of RAM beyond 2GB without special workarounds and even then I believe they are still limited to 4GB.

However, I would have thought that DA2 would be able to make use of more than 500MB. For example, using this 4GB Patch for Oblivion and 150+ mods I have seen Oblivion use more than 2GB RAM. 

In any case, the frame rate performance for DA2 is great, the high res textures look great and I have no complaints.

I do have a few apps that are optimized for 64-bit, such as Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, etc., and when working with very large files I regularly exceed 8GB usage.

Modifié par naughty99, 14 avril 2011 - 04:52 .

[Ksandor]

Honestly I am one of the few lucky people who can run DAII with 8xAA, very high settings (DirectX 11), very hi-res texture pack, x16 AF and all the other effects enabled at Full HD with the help of the NVIDIA beta drivers (pinches his ear and knocks on the wood). I have a stock Zotac GTX 580. I am not sure if I enabled the adaptive mode for my card's power settings but probably I did that and I have seen no instabilities in so far. The game rarely crashes. Once in 2 days perhaps. I set my card for single display mode, very high quality settings, AA and AF controlled by the game, no AF optimizations, gamma corrected AA enabled, 3 frame buffer enabled, triple buffer disabled and transparency sampling disabled for someone from Bioware said in these forums that transparency setting may cause issues. I am almost always above 45 fps even when I am in graphic intensive areas like Gallows, Sundermount ect. I also see 60 fps quite often. If I disable AA my fps probabily tops at 60fps for I use Vsync and my Toshiba 3035c Regza LCD TV has a refresh rate of 60hz. I also enable the game mode color preset on my TV and it seems the TV makes its own anisotrophic filtering effect (?) because with the game mode enabled (and dynamic contrast disabled and FS gamma is set to 0.90 in game) the colors, shadows, textures and saturation look great. I did not know that game mode and a new card could make such a difference. Even my older games that I play again to see the visual improvement look very different with my current setup. When I enable the game mode on TV I don't feel the need of increasing the FS gamma in games from the default value. And although games become a bit darker with default gamma they also become moody very nicely. The shadows, the HDR and bloom effects... You should see it. I wonder what would happen If was using an even better LED TV? BTW I connect Zotac's HDMI 1.4a output to the HDMI 1.3 input of my TV using a gold coated high quality Philips HDMI 1.3 cable.

Modifié par Ksandor, 15 avril 2011 - 08:00 .

[Ksandor]

naughty99 wrote...

Yes, 32-bit apps are simply not able to make use of RAM beyond 2GB without special workarounds and even then I believe they are still limited to 4GB.

However, I would have thought that DA2 would be able to make use of more than 500MB. For example, using this 4GB Patch for Oblivion and 150+ mods I have seen Oblivion use more than 2GB RAM. 

In any case, the frame rate performance for DA2 is great, the high res textures look great and I have no complaints.

I do have a few apps that are optimized for 64-bit, such as Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, etc., and when working with very large files I regularly exceed 8GB usage.

Unless you edit boot.ini of 32bit XP to make it use more physical RAM than 4GB a > 2GB enabled game will only use 3 GB RAM maximum under XP.

If you install the same 32bit game on Win7 6 bit and if the game hard coded with an inherent RAM limit and if you enable > 2GB mode the game will only use 4GB maximum. If the game is 32bit but not hard coded it seems it can use as much RAM as Win 7 64bit allocates to it (depending on the Kernel RAM and physical RAM). 

[Seifz]

Ksandor wrote...

If you install the same 32bit game on Win7 6 bit and if the game hard coded with an inherent RAM limit and if you enable > 2GB mode the game will only use 4GB maximum. If the game is 32bit but not hard coded it seems it can use as much RAM as Win 7 64bit allocates to it (depending on the Kernel RAM and physical RAM).

No, that's not right.  Regardless of what you do, a 32-bit application cannot address more than 4GB of memory.  The memory pointers are 32 bits and 2^32  = 4GB.

If you want support for more than 2GB of memory in Win7 64-bit, all you need to do is run /editbin from the Visual Studio command prompt (or find a version of editbin elsewhere) and turn on the LAA flag.  It's very simple.

That said, there's probably no reason to do it.  DA2 almost certainly doesn't need that much memory.

[naughty99]

Seifz wrote...


That said, there's probably no reason to do it.  DA2 almost certainly doesn't need that much memory.

this is true - it rarely exceeds 500MB system memory usage in my case.
(maybe something to do with the recycled area maps?)

Modifié par naughty99, 15 avril 2011 - 07:29 .

[TallBearNC]

DA2 is a 32bit and thus can only use 2GB of RAM. It was NOT compiled as a 32bit large address aware app (meaning it could use 3GB on a 32bit system and 4GB on a 64bit system).

However you CAN use CFF explorer to edit the exe file and switch this flag on. The game becomes FAR less crash prone on a 64bit OS, and after 6 hrs of playing, I've had the game using about 3.2GB of memory

[TallBearNC]

naughty99 wrote...

Seifz wrote...


That said, there's probably no reason to do it.  DA2 almost certainly doesn't need that much memory.

this is true - it rarely exceeds 500MB system memory usage in my case.
(maybe something to do with the recycled area maps?)

If your game never shows more than 500MB, you probably don't have the proper column set up in task manager. To see a programs total memory use, turn on "commit charge"

[naughty99]

TallBearNC wrote...

 turn on "commit charge"

Can you explain how to do this?

I don't see any sort of option like that in Task Manager

[Nukenin]

naughty99 wrote...

TallBearNC wrote...

 turn on "commit charge"

Can you explain how to do this?

I don't see any sort of option like that in Task Manager

Under the View menu, "Select Columns…"

Commit Size just shows the amount of virtual memory reserved for a process.  The default "Private Working Set" shows the amount of memory that cannot be used by other processes.

[naughty99]

great, thanks very much I checked again with "Commit Size" and it seemed to max out at around 850MB

[SeverusSewer]

Would it be possible since I have 4 GB of ram on windows xp 32 bit to force for example dragon age to use more then 2 GB of ram for example to 3 GB since the limitation is 3,25.
Thanks in advance.

[Thandal N'Lyman]

Short answer is: "Yes, it is possible to have daorigins.exe use more than 2GB of RAM."
See the 8th post here: social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/3174657