Is RAM a limiting factor for FF16?

[Fomortiis]

Had task manager open whilst booting up FF16, and noticed that the game loads the entire shader cache into RAM when booting up. The cache appears to eat up around 10GB of RAM, and once done the game starts loading on top of that. I've got 16GB of RAM, so this quickly reaches near the cap and so the game has to start clearing parts of the shader cache to make room for the actual game, resulting in a load time when booting the game in excess of 15 minutes even on SSD.

Whilst playing I notice that as more assets are loaded for the game, the shader cache RAM usage slowly drops down to compensate, implying that it's having to clear more of that cache to make room for the actual game assets. This also appears to coincide with the heaviest of stuttering from my experience.

Is it possible that 16GB of RAM just isn't enough to run 16? Is there an option to reduce the amount of RAM the shader cache eats up?

[iameatingjam]

No it doesn't use much ram at all, I'm in the middle of boss fight right now and its using only 5GB. But.... one big caveat... unless you have a low vram graphics card, in that case, yes very much as this game needs a lot of vram and if its not in your video card its gonna use your system ram instead. But if you get to that point, where you are significantly over your dedicated vram limit, your performance is gonna be pretty bad regardless.

This actually suggests to me there's probably a lot of things in the vram ( since ps5 have uniform memory) that would function fine in system ram instead of vram. That might help performance a lot on midrange hardware.

[Fomortiis]

I've got 8GB of VRAM in my 2080, so I'm not sure if that is a limiting factor in my case.
I'll boot up again and see what happens to the VRAM, see if something is hogging it when loading up or not.

[iameatingjam]

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

I've got 8GB of VRAM in my 2080, so I'm not sure if that is a limiting factor in my case.
I'll boot up again and see what happens to the VRAM, see if something is hogging it when loading up or not.

Yeah... well there's a lot of contradictory information going around but I've come across several people with 3070s 3060 tis and 4060s that all tell me the same runs fine. But I've had people with same cards tell me the exact opposite so, its hard to parse.

So, I'm not really sure. But on my 4090 I've seen vram exceed 15GB. But its hard to say if its caching things because it has the room to do so, or if its using it irresponsibly.

[2D神]

If VRAM was the issue, you would have notice heavy shuttering due to your Vram offloading that to the slower RAM of your PC.

[iameatingjam]

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

I've got 8GB of VRAM in my 2080, so I'm not sure if that is a limiting factor in my case.
I'll boot up again and see what happens to the VRAM, see if something is hogging it when loading up or not.

Couple questions for you.

I know this first one sounds stupid but but apparantly some people don't know... your gpu is in the top slot, right? because this game is pcie bandwidth heavy.

Also, whats your OS? I'm hearing win 11 is working much better than 10. Which matches up with my experience which has been pretty good... but you know... that could also just be the 4090.

[iameatingjam]

Originally posted by 2D神:

If VRAM was the issue, you would have notice heavy shuttering due to your Vram offloading that to the slower RAM of your PC.

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

This also appears to coincide with the heaviest of stuttering from my experience.

[Fomortiis]

Originally posted by iameatingjam:

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

I've got 8GB of VRAM in my 2080, so I'm not sure if that is a limiting factor in my case.
I'll boot up again and see what happens to the VRAM, see if something is hogging it when loading up or not.

Couple questions for you.

I know this first one sounds stupid but but apparantly some people don't know... your gpu is in the top slot, right? because this game is pcie bandwidth heavy.

Also, whats your OS? I'm hearing win 11 is working much better than 10. Which matches up with my experience which has been pretty good... but you klnow... that could also just be the 4090.

My card is in the top slot and is Pcie 3.0.
I'm on Windows 10.

[iameatingjam]

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

Originally posted by iameatingjam:

Couple questions for you.

I know this first one sounds stupid but but apparantly some people don't know... your gpu is in the top slot, right? because this game is pcie bandwidth heavy.

Also, whats your OS? I'm hearing win 11 is working much better than 10. Which matches up with my experience which has been pretty good... but you klnow... that could also just be the 4090.

My card is in the top slot and is Pcie 3.0.
I'm on Windows 10.

3 is okay since its a 16 lane card, that should be enough. But try upgrading windows. (EDIT: a fresh install if possible is best) And a ram upgrade probably wouldn't hurt either. 32GB is the standard now. And its super cheap. You can get ddr4 32GB kits for ~$50, and you can always sell your old kit too.

[Fomortiis]

Just booted up with all of the togglable graphic settings on low, and it skipped the shader cache stage for some reason.

VRAM is sitting at 4.9/8.0GB of Dedicated GPU Memory used, and 0.7/8.0GB of Shared GPU memory used. RAM usage is around 5GB

[Fomortiis]

I may look into upgrading my RAM, wouldn't hurt with modern games these days being quite resource hungry.

[iameatingjam]

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

Just booted up with all of the togglable graphic settings on low, and it skipped the shader cache stage for some reason.

VRAM is sitting at 4.9/8.0GB of Dedicated GPU Memory used, and 0.7/8.0GB of Shared GPU memory used. RAM usage is around 5GB

You mean the shader compilation? That only happens once. Anyway, thats good but.... where in the game are you? because its the kind of game that tends to get more demanding the further you get into it. But if its working well for you, thats a good sign.

[Fomortiis]

Just booted with everything on medium, and again it skipped the shader cache stage. RAM is sitting around 5GB again and same with Dedicated GPU memory.

[Fomortiis]

Originally posted by iameatingjam:

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

Just booted up with all of the togglable graphic settings on low, and it skipped the shader cache stage for some reason.

VRAM is sitting at 4.9/8.0GB of Dedicated GPU Memory used, and 0.7/8.0GB of Shared GPU memory used. RAM usage is around 5GB

You mean the shader compilation? That only happens once. Anyway, thats good but.... where in the game are you? because its the kind of game that tends to get more demanding the further you get into it. But if its working well for you, thats a good sign.

I had the shader caching every time I booted up, that might've been a glitch causing it to partially rebuild each time though.

I just got past the first hideout, so I'll give it a play for a little while to see how it fares with these lower RAM/VRAM use values.

[iameatingjam]

Originally posted by Fomortiis:

Originally posted by iameatingjam:

You mean the shader compilation? That only happens once. Anyway, thats good but.... where in the game are you? because its the kind of game that tends to get more demanding the further you get into it. But if its working well for you, thats a good sign.

I had the shader caching every time I booted up, that might've been a glitch causing it to partially rebuild each time though.

I just got past the first hideout, so I'll give it a play for a little while to see how it fares with these lower RAM/VRAM use values.

If you've reached the hideout and it continues to run well thats a good sign. Thats where a lot of people run into problems. Btw, there does seem to a slow memory leak. So, if you find the game starts stuttering after a few hours, you may just have to save and reset the game. Some have said its related to dlss but I'm not sure if thats true or not.

[Fomortiis]

Yeah I've seen mention of that. Thanks for the advice.
Just played through the forest level immediately after the first hideaway section. With everything on medium, DLSS on balanced at 1440p I had stable 60 for the majority of the level, occasional dips down to 40fps every now and then, but nothing as bad as before.

No clue what changed, only difference is that shader compilation is no longer happening every time I boot up.