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.

[BillJackson]

Originally posted by 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.

Are the slow downs permanent or they go away after a while?

[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.

[Solaron]

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

[Hola Carlos3]

memory leak is from ram not vram

[FBI]

well before the patchs my game runs perfectly and after the patchs my games uses 12gb this doesnt make sense, and all you talked about just works on apu not gpu, and almost every setting doesnt have fps, vram or ram change, my 1650 runs this game with mixed medium-ultra without any fps loss.

[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 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!

[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.

[Dexter Morgan]

Originally posted by 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.

That's caused by your GPU's memory. When it gets above 6400MB utilized on 8GB cards, the performance drops drastically, which means the CPU has to work less to maintain the frames being rendered by the GPU.

[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.