Turning off Virtual Page File (virtual memory) seemed to help BF3

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by linyanti, Mar 22, 2012.

  1. linyanti

    linyanti Master Guru

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    It is written repeatedly how BF3 is a memory hog. I was wondering if the game was slowing down by going to the hard drive for virtual memory.

    I have 12 GB on this machine and 16 GB on another machine. Both 1600.

    I turned off the page file so that there is no virtual memory and the game seems to play better. But could be placebo.

    Anyone else have an opinion on this?

    Here is a Microsoft webpage about how much virtual memory if any to use. It did not help me very much.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654
     
  2. ipredator

    ipredator Guest

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    Hey thanks, tried turning it off and BF3 really seems to be smoother! :)
     
  3. adrock311

    adrock311 Guest

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    interesting finding, could it be because the game may be programmed to go to virtual memory before using all your RAM properly ...? if other ppl have the same findings please post and maybe we can ask for a fix (the BF3 patch is taking tooo long imo)
     
  4. thatguy91

    thatguy91 Guest

    This seems likely. Regardless of their claims BF3 is still a console port, any game properly designed for PC's these days would have a proper 64-bit version. Last game to do so that I can think of is Crysis, and before that Far Cry. A 64-bit version doesn't necessary mean it is properly designed for PC, but the lack of a 64-bit version shows that it isn't. If the game is trying to use the pagefile in a 16GB system, even though it doesn't come close to anywhere near 16GB due to being 32-bit, is pretty poor! The only time the pagefile should be looked at with BF3 is if there were a x64 version (a properly programmed one, not just one roughly compiled for x64), and the use of extremely large textures push the games memory use beyond 13GB on the 16GB system :)
     

  5. bboy-mass

    bboy-mass Guest

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    Since installing 2x7970 (3G Video Ram) my memory usage has upped to 4320M in MSI Afterburner.

    Using my Hd6990 I was only consuming 2890M of video ram?

    This means that BF3 will use whatever is available and that its video ram is not set.

    its a hog - simple.
     
  6. tb77

    tb77 Member

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    A user mode process in Windows cannot "look for the page file" - It cannot say, ah okay, put some memory requests in the page file.

    That is entirely up to the Windows memory management!
    Another thing, BF3 is 32-bit, so it will never take more than 4GB, it cannot take more, so it will fit quite nicely into a 12 GB or 16 GB system.

    You can try to tell Windows, it should not page drivers and system code to the page file and see if that helps, instead of deactivating the page file:

    http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/cc757875(v=ws.10).aspx
     
  7. tb77

    tb77 Member

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    Thats is true for most games. It does not make sense, not to use available GFX memory. If DICE had limited the game to, let's say, 512MB - then people would cry out, why the hell has the game blocky(low res) textures and why is the texture streaming so visible. So instead, it does, what most modern games do, ask the graphics driver, how much physical memory is available on the card and uses that as a limit.
     
  8. PhazeDelta1

    PhazeDelta1 Guest

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    damn, people still use a page file?
     
  9. tb77

    tb77 Member

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    Yes, esp. developers - it very helpfull on driver crashes!
     
  10. ultra5711

    ultra5711 Guest

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    would you guys recommend turning pf off with 8gb of memory?

    Guess I'll find out, I'm giving it a shot.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2012

  11. AmD6000

    AmD6000 Guest

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    i give a shot with 14GB find no different on BF3 but windows boot up more faster
     
  12. ultra5711

    ultra5711 Guest

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    noticed the same about faster boot up.
     
  13. onemoar

    onemoar Guest

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    completely disabling the page file is never a good idea .... even if you have 24Gbs of 2200Mhz DDR3 its there for a REASON
     
  14. StarvinMarvinDK

    StarvinMarvinDK Maha Guru

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    Yeah, but I have disabled mine ever since I got a SSD disc and have not nocticed a single problem, so whatever the reason is - it doesn't apply to me :p
     
  15. BlackZero

    BlackZero Guest


    Thanks for the link.




    Windows 7 x64 - Disable Pagefile



    Windows 7 x64 - Enable Pagefile

     

  16. slickric21

    slickric21 Guest

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    I just have a 1gb pagefile on a Ramdisk for compatibilty reasons, but im sure it'd be safe to disable it completley these days with 8gb+ ram
     
  17. linyanti

    linyanti Master Guru

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    After two days of pretty good use, there have been no problems with not using virtual memory.

    I also have another computer with a Z68 motherboard with 18 GB of 1600 memory and a 2600i with two 560ti in sli and it also works better.

    I have the EVGA "ECP" which gives a digital readout to show the cpu temp. It had been 65 during BF3. I had never seen it that high before BF3. Now it is just in the 50's.

    Go figure. One guess (and it is just a guess) is that the x58 is the first intel consumer motherboard that puts the memory controller on the CPU. Maybe that is part of it if only certain cpu's benefit from turning it off.
     
  18. Pill Monster

    Pill Monster Banned

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    Here is a thread dedicated to the PF on/off debate....(stickied at top of page).
    http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=27

    No, it means that you're running Crossfire/SLI and MSI AB is displaying the total for both cards.
    The actual memory used is 4320MB but really it's only using 2160MB because the data is mirrored from one card to the other.

    Haha - true..:)

    Also true...although debuggers don't always help (imho)...

    PF can be turned off with any amount of RAM as long as your system doesn't use more memory than what is installed.

    The reason it's there is so that we can disable it.

    This doesn't really disable the PF, rather it keeps kernel memory in RAM iirc...

    Sure as long as your system doesn't use more than 8GB...(look at the committed bytes amount in Task Manager).
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2012
  19. BlackZero

    BlackZero Guest

    It's explained what it does at the linked site.

     
  20. adrock311

    adrock311 Guest

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    so does this actually help BF3?
     

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