Rostok memory leak issue

[RR x MyTH]

Man i just cannot stay in rostok for more than 5 minutes (memory usage 100%, game crashes)

[MROOD]

Originally posted by Deranger:

Try this:

Task manager
Set the more active process to Realtime
Set the other process to High

I also did a shader cache reset/deletion which other posts here have mentioned.

(Use search, this problem has multiple threads now).

can you clarify what this means?

Set the more active process to Realtime
Set the other process to High

[RR x MyTH]

Originally posted by °Dofus:

Originally posted by RR x MyTH:

Man i just cannot stay in rostok for more than 5 minutes (memory usage 100%, game crashes)

you should deinstall your antivirus and enable printer access in windows.if that wont help try a fresh windows installation after formating the hard drives.
:bfengineer:

I already tried deep-frying my PC while running in circle counting downward from 100000, nothing helped ...

[nahirzaharenko]

Are you overclocking your GPU at all? I was and I found that disabling that fixed it for me.

[I'm the Cook]

It's a known issue, staying in Rostok for more than a couple min will freeze your game, as well as using all your available RAM (hence the mem leak).

Just wrap up your business in Rostok quickly and leave the town. It's the only workaround to this issue currently.

If you desperately need to sort your inv chest, I would recommend doing it at another camp.

[Sparhawk122]

I get memory leak in Rostok too. And extremely heavy framerate dips. Eventually my game freezes in Rostok with 99% memory usage on task manager.

My specs: RTX 4090, i9 13900k, 64GB DDR5 Ram @ 6400Mhz and 4TB NVMe M.2 Gen 4 SSD. Windows 11 version 23H2 at 3440x1440p resolution. Mix high to medium settings. DLSS Quality and capped at 85 FPS. No frame gen.

Rostok can't maintain stable 85 FPS. Dips into the low 70s. And then after a while that memory leak hits and the game freezes up.

No issues at Slag Heap, Zalissya or Chemical Plant. There's the initial FPS flactuation when I cross over into the hub area as it loads all the NPCs etc. But then the FPS stabilises. I am assuming it is background loading happening. No issues with shader compilation either. My PC is very stable.

[cs8492]

I run the GoG version of the game. And have experienced this. Not only when in the personal chest, but a new one is being in Rostok during a Emission immediately after the emission was over, I walked into the market with the Western weapon dealer and the armor dealer and instant freeze with audio continuing. Watched most of my RAM slowly get used up. Then finally the Task Manager opened and I was able to kill it. By that point it was using 48GB of RAM. I do mod. But it has had little effect overall. Rostok is the only place I now get this issue.

[seven_stars]

Personally I wonder if the giant, giant, giant, super large gravity anomaly in the center of town is causing issues for that area.

[Sparhawk122]

Originally posted by cs8492:

I run the GoG version of the game. And have experienced this. Not only when in the personal chest, but a new one is being in Rostok during a Emission immediately after the emission was over, I walked into the market with the Western weapon dealer and the armor dealer and instant freeze with audio continuing. Watched most of my RAM slowly get used up. Then finally the Task Manager opened and I was able to kill it. By that point it was using 48GB of RAM. I do mod. But it has had little effect overall. Rostok is the only place I now get this issue.

It is a very fast memory leak. Probably one of the worse memory leaks I have experienced in gaming. It used up my 64GB DDR5 system RAM extremely fast. Usually memory leaks are a slow burn overtime.

[cs8492]

Originally posted by Sparhawk122:

Originally posted by cs8492:

I run the GoG version of the game. And have experienced this. Not only when in the personal chest, but a new one is being in Rostok during a Emission immediately after the emission was over, I walked into the market with the Western weapon dealer and the armor dealer and instant freeze with audio continuing. Watched most of my RAM slowly get used up. Then finally the Task Manager opened and I was able to kill it. By that point it was using 48GB of RAM. I do mod. But it has had little effect overall. Rostok is the only place I now get this issue.

It is a very fast memory leak. Probably one of the worse memory leaks I have experienced in gaming. It used up my 64GB DDR5 system RAM extremely fast. Usually memory leaks are a slow burn overtime.

I remember Fallout 4 had a similar leak and I remember others that were very slow. This one is the fastest I've experienced.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Originally posted by I'm the Cook:

It's a known issue, staying in Rostok for more than a couple min will freeze your game, as well as using all your available RAM (hence the mem leak).

Just wrap up your business in Rostok quickly and leave the town. It's the only workaround to this issue currently.

If you desperately need to sort your inv chest, I would recommend doing it at another camp.

My work-around in Rostok so far has been to:
1) Only have inventory open for a minute or less, same with Vendor trading or Technician repair screens
2) Once I close inventory or the Vendor screen I then save my game.

Doing that I am able to do everything I needed in Rostok with no freezes, played for several hours.

Then earlier today I tried a different person's work-around (not the task-manager process one) and froze up in Rostok after 18 minutes, while in the Inventory screen (not doing my work-around).

But tomorrow I'll try Deranger's Task Manager trick and report back. I'm leery of adjusting application priorities since Windows usually manages those for a reason, but since Deranger has not ran into any unusual OS behavior it seems safe to try.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Originally posted by Deranger:

Try this:

Task manager
Set the more active process to Realtime
Set the other process to High

I also did a shader cache reset/deletion which other posts here have mentioned.

(Use search, this problem has multiple threads now).

Deranger, I just tested out this process-priority workaround, and, unfortunately, the test failed for my system.

The test, which took about 18 minutes

1. Loaded game, froze at shaders compilation, so deleted Direct X temp files, reloaded game, got dialog from GSC apologizing for Shader issue, got to main screen, quit game, re-ran game, shaders compiled OK this time.

2. Switched out of game to Task Manager, go to Details tab, set the Stalker2-Win64-Shipping.exe process priority to "Real time", and then set the Stalker2.exe process to "High", then closed Task Manager

3. Switched back to the game. Left Rostok to check out a new stash, just to get the game in a situation where I was coming back to visit Rostok. Got back from the stash and saved the game before entering Rostok's parameter. Then would do no more save-games for this test.

4. Went to private stash to unload loot. Went to Screw/Technician to upgrade my AR416 rifle. Then went to Eugene to trade for food items - I sold food, and bought food from Eugene. Then went to Armor lady to check her inventory items. Then went to Ragman, traded food and ammo. Then went to underground Barkeep and traded food. Then went back upstairs to bar to see Ganja, traded food.

5. Went back to private stash, kept it open for 3 or 4 minutes, looking over inventory and moving items back and forth. Got Seva-1 suit and went to Screw, got the suit upgraded until I ran out of coupons and could not upgrade the suit further. Then repeated sequences back in Step 4, going to the various traders and interacting/trading small items

6. Went back to my private stash, grabbed my Seva-1 suit, Starting comparing the properties of my Seva-1 suit with other armor in my inventory. Then tried to close the inventory screen and found it would not close.

7. The in-game mouse was still moving, but I could not close inventory. Then the game's music stopped. I switched out to Windows and tried to run Task Manager, got an error that the Task manager EXE was not responsive (!!!). Went back to Steam to try to close the game but Steam had crashed.

So I went back into the Stalker 2 game, and the screen was still frozen on inventory and my armor comparison. Switched back to desktop and finally got Task Manager to launch this time.

8. Checked my system memory in Task Mananger and it was 98% full, with Stalker taking up around 24GB of RAM. Then I killed the Stalker 2 process.

End of the test (18 minutes total time)

Maybe the process-priority changes will work with other systems similar to your configuration? Perhaps your system is newer than mine. My system is almost 3 years old, Intel i9-10900K with 32GB Ram, ASUS gaming motherboard, latest bios updated and Intel MB drivers updated, RTX 3090 Strix card, also from 2021, and running Windows 10.

I'm also running Stalker 2 with no mods (decided I didn't need to mod the game).

But fortunately my current work-around still keeps the game from freezing, as I was able to play in Rostok last night with no freezes in-between exploration missions around Rostok. I keep inventory screens open for no more than a minute, same with vendor interactions, and that seems to help me avoid the freeze problem.

But I hope this process-priority change work-around can still work for other people's systems.

[Atairiastos]

Originally posted by Deranger:

Originally posted by MROOD:

can you clarify what this means?

Set the more active process to Realtime
Set the other process to High

So I remember how you do it in Windows 11.

In Task Manager go to Details tab on the left side
Scroll down to Stalker 2
Set Stalker 2-Win... to Real time (right click and set priority)
Set Stalker 2.exe to High

NOW

I only keep saying this because it was this and the shader cache reset that I went through that seemed to be the reason I no longer have the memory leak. Nothing else has been done or altered to achieve my "luck".

BUT

I am always of the opinion that PCs can suck the testes... Embrace the chaos.

Going over my results I realise that although I had used Task Manager and immediately the Rostok crash was gone for me every time since I had not bothered to alter Priority in Task Manager again. It was running with no alteration (that i am aware of) than when it did crash (it was happening every time in Rostok with no exception since 1.1.3); other than the shader cache reset but I can't imagine that was actually connected.

So yeah, it "worked" for me but turns out I wasn't even using my own fix; it just worked because... PC.

I tested and work for me!

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Originally posted by Atairiastos:

I tested and work for me!

Great. Do you have Windows 11, like Deranger has? Maybe this process-priority fix works for Windows 11 users, and not for Windows 10 users like myself.

[Sparhawk122]

Originally posted by Deranger:

Windows 11 24H
1080Ti
i9 7980XE
32GB RAM
960 EVO M2 (I think)
3440 x 1440 resolution 100hz (1440p UW)

Still seems OK, but I don't go to Rostok as much so hard to test if it is still working for me.

Glad it might have worked for some, although Devs ARE very aware and hopefully being mainly one place it will get a resolution in the coming new year.

Indeed.

However I believe this issue happens in other parts of the game as well. Siircaa and Pripyat. And there might be a inherent link to the stash, inventory and vendor inventory causing the issue. Maybe some item IDs are corrupt and when the stash or imventory is opened it makes the issue worse? Maybe NPCs in these areas are causing the issues? Who knows.

But I bet if they can fix these issues. They will see framerates increase across board.