Stop claiming the game suffers from a memory leak!

[Dexter Morgan]

A memory leak is only when your GPU's memory gets maxed out, so the game starts hogging up on system memory, and then it eventually goes into your page file. The game just simply uses a lot of memory because it was made in the first ever version of Unreal Engine 5, which has a lot of CPU optimization bugs that are not present in UE5.5. In order to stop all stuttering and fps drops into the single digits, you have to be utilizing under 80% of your GPU's memory. For example, the safe zone for 8GB cards is 6400MB. If it goes past that in utilization in any game, the textures will die or performance will drop. Also, Steam uses around 700MB of GPU memory when you have it opened. Therefore, to fix this issue, you must minimize Steam launcher to tray after launching the game. I hope I have been of great help to you guys. Enjoy a smooth and buttery game!

To help people out with 8GBs of GPU memory, you need to be running a mix of high and medium settings in order for fps to not immediately die when saving inside settlements. All you can do is 1080p native high preset with: textures on medium, environmental shadows on medium, object shadow quality on medium, object quality on medium, clouds quality on medium, sky rendering on medium, and global illumination on medium.

[BillJackson]

Wait, what now? If a GPU vram gets maxed out, you get poorer performance because it needs to swap out data via the bus on the mobo to make operations on the rest of the data. That's if the vram isnt sufficient to hold all the graphics data.

Memory leak is caused by bad memory management, which will increase the ram load over time as obsolete data gets lost or forgotten in memory, taking up ram space that is never freed. If the leak is bad to the point of ram getting maxed out, the program has to swap data from the HDD/ SDD to ram and vice-versa, which is really slow and not a good thing.

[CupCupBaconBox]

I have two systems, one with a 3070, and one with a 4070 Super. The slowdowns happen on both of them, though they occur sooner on the 3070. I have found that setting everything to high and keeping FSR frame gen off eliminates most of the problems on the 3070, though it can still very occasionally happen if I am moving from town to town a lot. The 4070 does this too even on the same graphical settings, but it seems to take longer for it to happen. Idk, I feel like something is off with the memory management, but I'm no expert.

[Mordikan]

Even by your own definition, the game would have a memory leak. In truth, a memory leak occurs whenever the heap is not cleared. That occurs in this game (for whatever reason), therefore it has a memory leak.

[Belmont]

OP doesn't know what a memory leak actually is.

It's incorrect management of available memory. It doesn't release the memory after its not needed anymore. Therefore the longer you play, the less available memory there is because it's not being released.

A memory leak has nothing to do what so ever with having Steam up after you launch.

[LykosNychi]

the problem I encoutner is that the CPU will just suddenly stop processing things at full power, and drop to ~40% useage until it either fixes itself or I close the game. Sometimes this lasts 5 seconds, sometimes 5+ minutes.

[Dexter Morgan]

Originally posted by cerealkeller:

even with 24 GB on my 4090, after 2-3 hours of game play, my VRAM buffer will overlfow, game stutters like crazy, forcing a restart. I can watch it fill up progressively more and more the longer I play. Starts off around 14 GB, ends up using 23 GB after awhile and starts stuttering. Which is exactly what you'd expect from running out of VRAM. I don't know if one of the updates fixed it, haven't been playing as much the past couple days.

Driver related issue. If you were running the latest driver, it would explain it. Same thing can be noticed while playing Black Myth Wukong on the October driver. Try the July driver

[Rootbeer Safety Team]

I've encountered a memory leak *once*. and that one time it happened, the game had already crashed. and I just noticed in task manager, the memory was going up and up and up whilst the program was already hung. Killed the task before the computer crashed.

other than that. I've never seen any evidence of a memory leak on my end in normal gameplay. crash-state not withstanding.

[Belmont]

Originally posted by 76561199069329982:

Originally posted by Solaron:

16GB GDDR6X here with my RTX 4080 Super, max settings 4K, no problem yet.

Because there are no problems. People on crap hardware are creating nonsense around like they always do to try to hate on the studio that made the game. Just follow the system requirements with recommended settings screenshot from the official Stalker 2 discord server. Or simply copy the settings I suggested above and enjoy the game!

You still don't know what a memory leak actually is.

Your thread, in of itself, is the same misinformation you were claiming against.

You categorically misidentified something and claim a fix, that has nothing to do with what a memory leak actually is.

Again, a memory leak is when a program is not freeing up used memory in a recycling process once it is no longer being used, hence the build up over time.

Exiting out of Steam has no effect on this. Whatsoever.

[BillJackson]

Originally posted by Sigmoid:

Even by your own definition, the game would have a memory leak. In truth, a memory leak occurs whenever the heap is not cleared. That occurs in this game (for whatever reason), therefore it has a memory leak.

Unreal 5 has a garbage collection system, but it runs at set intervals, and that interval can be modified I believe. It can also be called manually. This means you can have memory space taken up by unused stuff until the garbage collector runs, which may give the impression that there is a leak, unless that stuff is still referenced somewhere, then it wont be cleared until nothing references it, which could cause memory issues if ref is never cleared.

Also anything that is not tagged with unreal properties has to be managed by the devs, because c++ has no garbage collection. That could be another source of leak,

[c0Zm1c]

The devs described fixes for memory leaks in the 1.0.1 update patch notes. So it appears it had them and it's not unreasonable to speculate there might still be some in the game awaiting fixes.

Fixed issues with performance drops/potential out-of-memory crashes in hubs and locations crowded with NPCs during long play sessions.

Also, we fixed approximately 100 different crashes, including potential memory leaks and EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION issues.

[BillJackson]

Originally posted by c0Zm1c:

The devs described fixes for memory leaks in the 1.0.1 update patch notes. So it appears it had them and it's not unreasonable to speculate there might still be some in the game awaiting fixes.

Fixed issues with performance drops/potential out-of-memory crashes in hubs and locations crowded with NPCs during long play sessions.

Also, we fixed approximately 100 different crashes, including potential memory leaks and EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION issues.

Yes, on a project of this size, there will probably be leaks for some time, there may be leaks that are so small they may not be identified yet.

[Belmont]

Originally posted by c0Zm1c:

The devs described fixes for memory leaks in the 1.0.1 update patch notes. So it appears it had them and it's not unreasonable to speculate there might still be some in the game awaiting fixes.

Fixed issues with performance drops/potential out-of-memory crashes in hubs and locations crowded with NPCs during long play sessions.

Also, we fixed approximately 100 different crashes, including potential memory leaks and EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION issues.

Because UE5 is absolute dogwater at clearing its own crap out at the default intervals, as BillJackson said above.

This mystical "Removing Steam to the tray" method of the OP's is a placebo effect.

The problems lay within the game's exe. Removing or getting rid of other processes just offers a temporary respite, but the end result still becomes the same.

The memory doesn't get freed up, builds up usage over time, and maxes itself out. In other words, the definition of a memory leak.

[Nite69]

the system specs don't matter OP, Low detail or maxed out detail it doesn't matter the Lag fps drop happens randomly for everyone its a game engine issue, they said they fixed it in 1.0.1 but they didn't

I'm on an 8GB card yes, But if its my GPU ram being maxed out why is it smooth for a few hours some session but happens within minutes other sessions? the within minutes means it a memory leak.

[Alias]

I think op is confused. When your system doesn't have enough virtual memory it has to read and write from a portion of the hd/ssd. It's called a hard fault. That is the closest thing I can think he is talking about. He is wrong about ddr leaks. Probably a troll.

[c0Zm1c]

Originally posted by Belmont:

Because UE5 is absolute dogwater at clearing its own crap out at the default intervals, as BillJackson said above.

This mystical "Removing Steam to the tray" method of the OP's is a placebo effect.

The problems lay within the game's exe. Removing or getting rid of other processes just offers a temporary respite, but the end result still becomes the same.

The memory doesn't get freed up, builds up usage over time, and maxes itself out. In other words, the definition of a memory leak.

Just to be clear, I'm not agreeing with the OP. We have it straight from the horse's mouth - the developers of the game - that there has been memory leak issues with the game. So pretending such claims to be false - that the game supposedly doesn't have a memory leak problem - is kind of pointless.