How much vram does the game use ?

Yuuki

I experience some "out of memory" type bugs although I shouldn't (got a asus gtx 560 ti 1Go and 2Go of ram). They often appear as a new model (weapon, alien, building) appears :

<img src="http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/9343/ns2bug.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />

I looked at vram usage using GPU-Z and I got around 500 on awful setting, around 650 on medium and I did a plot for the high setting :

<img src="http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/1103/ns2mem.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />

The first part is the loading, and around time 300 I joined another game.

So my questions are :

- Is something wrong with my config or the game is supposed to use that much vram ?
- Could it be the cause of the graphic bugs I got ?

Thanks !

Techercizer

Wow, that's really trippy...

Are you sure your GPU is functioning correctly? <strike>Also, 2GB of RAM isn't very much, depending on your OS, you can use as much as 1 GB for housekeeping.</strike> I obviously can't read the letter v in vram

Yuuki

>Are you sure your GPU is functioning correctly?

Seems to be fine in other games and benchmarks. I got 4GB of ram but I removed 2 just to be sure I didn't suffer from the 4GB limit of winxp.

Anyway I just had the bug with awful settings (vram < 500mo), so it's probably not a memory problem after all. I'll reinstall the game again or the drivers.

Kouji_San

Is your Windows XP 32 or 64 bits?

32 bits = 3.somthingGb of 4Gb and probably no dual channel
64 bits = all of your RAM

MOOtant

You can't be telling us that you're using 32 bit Windows, 4GB RAM and 1GB VRAM card. If that's true then fix it by installing 64 bit edition.

Yuuki

32 bit, that's why I removed 2Go of ram ; it didn't change anything. I got Physical Address Extension activated as well.

Soylent_green

There are two things I know of that can cause a visual error like that; there may be more, but these are the ones I can think of.

1) Your graphics card driver is buggy, try another version(if you have the latest version, try an older version).

2) Your graphics card is overheating. Get your anti-static wristwrap out(it's a few bucks, you don't want to use a makeshift substitute because a proper grounding bracelet will have a nice big resistor in it so you can't electrocute yourself by some unlikely sequence of events. E.g. if the power outlet is not grounded and the PSU is faulty, the casing could be floating at full mains voltage), flip the power off on the PSU, get the card out, dissassemble as much of the fan-shroud as you need in order to get at the dust that is caking up your heatsink on the side where air flows into the sink(usually, but not always, near the fan).

Zuriki

I'm gonna go with "it's one of those beta things". Does it happen every time? Is your GPU overclocked? Perhaps try underclocking it (if it fixes it, might be a voltage issue, I had this on my old computer).

Yuuki

According to SgtBarlow this kind of problems are due to video memory :

<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=111496&view=findpost&p=1824007" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...t&p=1824007</a>

My GPU is not overclocked and do not seem to overheat.

It doesn't append all the time, and is clearly linked to some objects of the game, like sometimes if I buy a shotgun the game glitch, but if I drop it, it goes back to normal.

I should probably try to disable Physical Address Extension.

IronHorse

do a fresh install of drivers, Direct X, and PhysX software.

Yuuki

I already tried. Tried again, don't change anything. I'll try with different version when I have time.

I also did ram and vram check and some stress tests. This one is really nice btw :

<a href="http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=54603" target="_blank">http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=54603</a>

Yuuki

I disabled Physical Address Extension, didn't solved the problem. I will try to play TF2 now that it's free, it will solve my problem for a while.

TheLord

Interesting, I haven't seen this error on high settings with less vram: I got a gtx 260 with 896mb vram and 4gb system ram, using win 7 64 bit.


Is the temperature of your gfx card below 85°C at all times? You can check that with gpu-z as well.


Otherwise get Win 7 64bit, it's worth the money.

revbass

I saw this kind of crap when I overclocked my VRAM too far.

Do you have one of those factory OCed 560's? How are your temps during play?

Yuuki

Temps seems ok, < 60°C. I should add that I also have this bug sometimes :

<a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/unknownworlds/topics/walls_are_slightly_transparent_and_everything_is_extremely_dark_in_fullscreen_mode" target="_blank">http://getsatisfaction.com/unknownworlds/t...fullscreen_mode</a>

But only when I've been using my computer for a while, after a reboot it's always fine. It seems like some software I use mess with the game or something (doesn't make a lot of sense...). I might upgrade to another os in the future, but that's a lot of work and there's not guarantee that my problem will be fixed.

aeroripper

I have this exact same problem, but i'm not getting any artifacting or anything like that. The game so far just uses a LOT of video ram. I'm assuming this issue will probably get fixed with optimizations later in development.

<u>NS2 Fullscreen, max settings</u>
Win7 64bit
Dualcore AMD X2 5600+
Nvidia GTX 460 (1gb ram)
Corsair 6gb RAM
Max GPU temp while playing NS2: 53 degrees
Max CPU temps: 54-57 max load

Nothing is overclocked and other modern games (mass effect 2, portal 2, starcraft 2) never use all of it. I usually keep the game on ridiciously awful settings for the fps boost, and to avoid the "out of video memory" errors that seem to horribly bog the game down after play on high settings for maybe 15-20 minutes. When I'm on high settings my video memory gadget I'm using shows my video ram maxed out as high as it can go immediately after starting a game and while playing.

1stToast

I had the same problem in January and posted on get satisfaction. I never found out the cause, but later builds and maybe installing win7 64 cured it.

Harimau

I've brought this issue up a couple of times on these forums (and on getsatisfaction), and even posted about it on the nvidia forums: <a href="http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=189039" target="_blank">http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=189039</a>

I'll see if it fixes anything by upgrading to 64-bit windows.

But still no concrete, let alone official, word on how or why.

Yuuki

In my case it seems to be specific to NS2, haven't seen it in other games or benchmarks, although I didn't tried a lot (portal 2, mass effect 1&2, DiRT 2 demo, ...).

Did you tested your vram with such tools ?

<a href="http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/index.php" target="_blank">http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/index.php</a>

The big question is : what is broken, my GPU/config or the game ? Nobody seems to know for sure.

Floodinator

I had this issue on other games like Stalker:SoC, when I ran Vista32.
The work around was, closing all Program that are running (look in the Task Manager wich one are using lots of Ram). Did it so that Win uses the 1GB ram I had too much using as Swapfile. And deleted 75% of my Ram (did it with a .bat) before starting the Game.

If it still doesn't work, try to emulate a other GPU to the game (I do it with RadeonPro dont know if nHacer also can do it), or If that also did not work try the Omega Drivers (http://www.omegadrivers.net/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=section&id=2&Itemid=55).

Good luck!

Harimau

I realised that I could simply power down my PC, and restart it (as someone in that thread said he did), and the problem disappeared for HoN - not so for NS2, it persistently exists. (So yes, the problem does effectively exist NS2 alone.)

Racer1

I also used to have this problem in the alpha releases of NS2. It eventually got fixed by an NS2 release, so it was NOT my video card overheating.

I have a GF9600GT on Windows XP 32 bit.

Yuuki

Build 180 : no differences, it's still buggy.