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Not using much RAM for a 64-bit app


doveman

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I have 16GB but playing a couple of instant missions, the max RAM hit 4950MB, which dropped to 3333MB when closing BS2 and returning to DCS World main menu, so BS2 was only using 1.6GB.

 

Before loading DCS World, it was around 2786MB.

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You're about right Doveman. i'm usually between 3 and 4 Gb ram used

BS takes 2700Mb in a medium config 1920*1200

The rest is processes from Windowz.

Try clean windows unused processes before buying another 4Gb.

Anyway, looking at the $/Gb price now... well...

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I take this as a statement but interesting. I only have 4 GB. Wonder if it's worth upgrading to 8.

 

that upgrade is worth as you never ever want to use most of your RAM or worse, run out of it. So if this sim uses around 3GB of it and you have 4, you are low on RAM as OS needs some also.

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that upgrade is worth as you never ever want to use most of your RAM or worse, run out of it. So if this sim uses around 3GB of it and you have 4, you are low on RAM as OS needs some also.

 

Except it doesn't seem to use more than about 1.6GB for me and Erforce finds he's hitting 3-4GB TOTAL.

 

He says 2.6GB for BS2 in a medium config 1920x1200 though and I'm running at that resolution so I'm not sure why my RAM use is lower.

 

Either way, there doesn't appear to be any real need for LeadDoctor to upgrade beyond 4GB for BS2.

 

Shame that the sim doesn't use more RAM to avoid streaming the world from disk though, being a 64-bit app and all. ArmA2 uses 2GB and that's only 32-bit.

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I have 16GB but playing a couple of instant missions, the max RAM hit 4950MB, which dropped to 3333MB when closing BS2 and returning to DCS World main menu, so BS2 was only using 1.6GB.

 

You realize the DCS menu is one process (launcher.exe) and the simulator is another (dcs.exe), and that launcher.exe is actually closed while dcs.exe runs? ;)

 

If you are measuring DCS.exe, then that is without the menu.

 

Also, if you are simply looking at your total RAM usage in Task Manager, don't. (For one thing, note that that one doesn't include vRAM. So, if during DCS.exe process running you see a utilization of 5GB, and you have 2GB vRAM, you just might be using no less than 7GB. ;) )

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You realize the DCS menu is one process (launcher.exe) and the simulator is another (dcs.exe), and that launcher.exe is actually closed while dcs.exe runs? ;)

 

If you are measuring DCS.exe, then that is without the menu.

 

Also, if you are simply looking at your total RAM usage in Task Manager, don't. (For one thing, note that that one doesn't include vRAM. So, if during DCS.exe process running you see a utilization of 5GB, and you have 2GB vRAM, you just might be using no less than 7GB. ;) )

 

Nope, was monitoring total RAM usage with HwInfo whilst playing. VRAM (i.e. the 2GB RAM on my graphics card) is completely separate and nothing to do with whether DCS is using my system RAM effectively.

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Nope, was monitoring total RAM usage with HwInfo whilst playing. VRAM (i.e. the 2GB RAM on my graphics card) is completely separate and nothing to do with whether DCS is using my system RAM effectively.

 

No, it's not separate. vRAM is adressed as well by the process, and thus limited to the adress space the process has.

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No, it's not separate. vRAM is adressed as well by the process, and thus limited to the adress space the process has.

 

It's very separate and I'm pretty sure VRAM can't be used to store world data (note, I don't mean the immediate textures, which obviously can be loaded into VRAM) to prevent it needing to be streamed from disk as much. ArmA2 uses all 2GB of my VRAM and 2GB RAM so there's no apparent advantage to DCS being 64-bit there anyway.

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(note, I don't mean the immediate textures, which obviously can be loaded into VRAM)

 

Is loaded into vRAM. Drivers will reserve a portion of system adress space towards this. If said system is 32-bit, this would cause system RAM of equal amount to be left unadressable, if it has 4GB of system RAM. If the application is 32-bit, it would cause an equivalent amount of it's adress space to be taken.

 

If the GPU driver decides it wants 2GB of vRAM for textures, it will reserve 2GB of adress space towards this. If the game then wants to have 2GB worth of textures, it will indeed use 2GB of the game's adress space. If the game is 32-bit and not LAA, that's all of it's adress space gone right there. If it is LAA (which DCS is), it's half of it's adress space gone. (Though using a full 2GB for textures is rare, and in DCS practically unheard of afaik, but easily achievable if you set your mind to it with texture packs etcetera.) How much ends up being actually used for textures is a secondary issue, since the card also needs vRAM for framebuffer/AA/etcetera, which the process is agnostic about.

 

Again, also, your "back to menu" example, where you took:

 

Total usage during BS2 flight: 4950MB

Total usage when back in menu: 3333MB

Total usage with DCS World off: 2786MB

 

This does not mean BS2 "only" used 1.6GB of your system RAM (4950-3333=1617).

It means that BS2 actually used 2.2GB of your system RAM (4950-2786=2164).

This is because the menu application, Launcher.exe, is unloaded during flight.

 

Also note that these numbers do not include adress space on vRAM used for textures, afaik, which is quite a bit. (Note that High texture option causes dropped textures and/or outright crashes on 32-bit systems or when using a 32-bit executable, and dropped textures when on a 512MB GPU.) Add anything approachinga gig of textures to that for the lols, and you'll have exchausted the available adress space of a 32-bit OS. (Since, remember, the OS needs some for itself too...)

 

Point being: there's more than system RAM that comes into play as far as 32-bit vs 64-bit is concerned. 32-bit and 64-bit isn't about system RAM. It's about adress space.

 

In another matter, why do you assume that using more RAM constitutes using it "effectively"? Would loading things you don't need into RAM make you happier? :P

Being 64-bit ensures that the application should not run out of adress space no matter what you do in-game, invites use of larger pre-load radii etcetera.

And what would be the reason to be 32-bit except when you absolutely have to (ie. when installed on a 32-bit system)?


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E, I have a few questions n I'm sorry if I'm off topic a bit.

 

I scaled the res from 1920*1080 to 1600*900 (I think that's what it was) and the sim was quite playable now. I was just wondering if I replaced my HD4600 with a GTX650 would that card give me fps boost at 1920*1080 res with most options set to high? I'd love to fly with the ground clutter/bush (set to 0 at the moment) and tree set those to high. Also, I read that you're supposed to use your monitor native res, mine is 1920*1080, but can't remember why, so is it bad for the monitor to be used at lower res than its native res?

 

Btw, my cpu is i3 530 with 4GB of ram.

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Would be good to know which exact HD4600 series card you have, and quite important also is how much vRAM you have on it and which type it is. I do spontaneously think that it'll definitely improve noticeably though.

 

Not really bad for the monitor to run at non-native, just reduces image quality and potentially also introduces a greater amount of image lag (since the monitor has to reprocess the image coming in).

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Is loaded into vRAM. Drivers will reserve a portion of system adress space towards this. If said system is 32-bit, this would cause system RAM of equal amount to be left unadressable, if it has 4GB of system RAM. If the application is 32-bit, it would cause an equivalent amount of it's adress space to be taken.

 

[snipped]

 

Point being: there's more than system RAM that comes into play as far as 32-bit vs 64-bit is concerned. 32-bit and 64-bit isn't about system RAM. It's about adress space.

 

In another matter, why do you assume that using more RAM constitutes using it "effectively"? Would loading things you don't need into RAM make you happier? :P

Being 64-bit ensures that the application should not run out of adress space no matter what you do in-game, invites use of larger pre-load radii etcetera.

And what would be the reason to be 32-bit except when you absolutely have to (ie. when installed on a 32-bit system)?

 

Can, is. Same difference, at least in the context I was using it. I wasn't discussing any limitations of a 32-bit system either, so that's irrelevant to the question of whether DCS benefits from being a 64-bit app.

 

So DCS uses 2164MB RAM, which despite all the waffle is still no better than 32-bit Arma2, which uses 2GB RAM and all my 2GB VRAM. You suggest there'd be no benefit to DCS using more RAM but the fact that it's necessary to run it from SSD or RAMdisk to fix some problems, like stutter, shows that the bottleneck is the HDD, so if it loaded more into RAM it wouldn't be necessary for users to spend money on a SSD or mess around with RAMdisks to play DCS properly. I already have the pre-load on maximum.

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Is loaded into vRAM. Drivers will reserve a portion of system adress space towards this. If said system is 32-bit, this would cause system RAM of equal amount to be left unadressable, if it has 4GB of system RAM. If the application is 32-bit, it would cause an equivalent amount of it's adress space to be taken.

 

If the GPU driver decides it wants 2GB of vRAM for textures, it will reserve 2GB of adress space towards this. If the game then wants to have 2GB worth of textures, it will indeed use 2GB of the game's adress space. If the game is 32-bit and not LAA, that's all of it's adress space gone right there. If it is LAA (which DCS is), it's half of it's adress space gone. (Though using a full 2GB for textures is rare, and in DCS practically unheard of afaik, but easily achievable if you set your mind to it with texture packs etcetera.) How much ends up being actually used for textures is a secondary issue, since the card also needs vRAM for framebuffer/AA/etcetera, which the process is agnostic about.

This is not true, Vram does affect the virtual space available, but not to that severe degree. Engineers aren't stupid, and recognized that eating 1GB/2GB out of process limited address space would leave little/no memory space left for the actual application. So only a small window (afaik it's 256MB) is mapped into CPU address space (that is mapped via Direct3D to process adress space).

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Isn't the real question why DCS dosen't use as much ram as it can? , no matter what amount ?.

 

I mean if DCS uses 80% of what available, then that would be good for the higher amount of ram you got.

If I had 16gb of ram and only used 4 gb then I would be sad :)

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If I had 16gb of ram and only used 4 gb then I would be sad :)

 

 

Sadder would be the Sales Margin of a software package that used more than the typical system builders put in a pc.

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Sadder would be the Sales Margin of a software package that used more than the typical system builders put in a pc.

 

I don't imagine most DCS users come under the category of "typical system builders" ;)

 

Anyway, it shouldn't be impossible to make DCS work with 4GB but use more if available to work properly (i.e. not stutter) if it's available. Anyway, it seems pretty pointless forcing DCS into 4GB when it doesn't work properly, unless the user goes and buys an SSD, which is more expensive than RAM.

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