Why does this game eat my ram so much?

[Beer Man™]

I have a ryzen 7 2700x with an rtx 2060, i can get 100 fps on high, i play at 1080p but after long play sessions the game starts eating my ram like hell and it drops down to 40 fps sometimes. I have 16gb of ram. i saw it use 7 - 8gb at worse times, not even gta 5 used this much ram. Ik its in alpha but still this is quite alarming, what is using so much ram??

[Shurenai]

Loading the map is using so much ram. Unlike GTA which constantly loads and unloads play area, in 7DTD the entire map is loaded in with a lightly initialized state the start, and made active as you travel around and explore.

You might also have some of your video settings too high and have vRam stuff dumping over to normal ram. Textures especially will eat your vram, if you have it on full that alone is 8gb vram i think. This would definitely cause performance drops if its happening.

[Katitoff]

On top of above, lack of optimization isn't helping here either.

[Beer Man™]

Didn't know textures eat so much vram. I do have them on full should i turn them down a bit? my friend with a 4gb rx 580 runs the game at same settings as me and doesn't really have these issues. although he does have a 3rd gen quad core ryzen. I heard the game runs worse on anything above 4 cores

[JimmyIowa]

Fully destructible world. It has to maintain the state of every block of terrain and buildings in memory.

[BigRowdy]

Originally posted by NICULL™:

Didn't know textures eat so much vram. I do have them on full should i turn them down a bit? my friend with a 4gb rx 580 runs the game at same settings as me and doesn't really have these issues. although he does have a 3rd gen quad core ryzen. I heard the game runs worse on anything above 4 cores

Anything besides full twextures is just horrendous looking. I only got a 1060 3gb and I run full textures. But i put ground textures to low, thereby eliminating grass shadows..helps a lot.

[BigRowdy]

Originally posted by JimmyIowa:

Fully destructible world. It has to maintain the state of every block of terrain and buildings in memory.

And the longer you play the more it needs to keep track of. Just shut er down after an hour or two. then restart..

[blazha]

7-8 GB is not much RAM usage, 16BG is kinda minimum for gaming today. It's not really alarming. Low VRAM can be an issue, because when your VRAM gets full your RAM get's used for the rest of required space which can slow down the game dramatically

[Beer Man™]

Originally posted by BigRowdy:

Originally posted by NICULL™:

Didn't know textures eat so much vram. I do have them on full should i turn them down a bit? my friend with a 4gb rx 580 runs the game at same settings as me and doesn't really have these issues. although he does have a 3rd gen quad core ryzen. I heard the game runs worse on anything above 4 cores

Anything besides full twextures is just horrendous looking. I only got a 1060 3gb and I run full textures. But i put ground textures to low, thereby eliminating grass shadows..helps a lot.

What do you mean by ground textures?

[Beer Man™]

Originally posted by blazha:

7-8 GB is not much RAM usage, 16BG is kinda minimum for gaming today. It's not really alarming. Low VRAM can be an issue, because when your VRAM gets full your RAM get's used for the rest of required space which can slow down the game dramatically

7-8 GB is a lot of ram usage for a game from 2013. made on unity. 16GB is starting to become the minimum but it should be way more than enough for this game. I used to play this game on 8gb of ram on my old athlon system with a 1050 Ti in windows 7, high settings 60 fps.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by NICULL™:

Originally posted by blazha:

7-8 GB is not much RAM usage, 16BG is kinda minimum for gaming today. It's not really alarming. Low VRAM can be an issue, because when your VRAM gets full your RAM get's used for the rest of required space which can slow down the game dramatically

7-8 GB is a lot of ram usage for a game from 2013. made on unity. 16GB is starting to become the minimum but it should be way more than enough for this game. I used to play this game on 8gb of ram on my old athlon system with a 1050 Ti in windows 7, high settings 60 fps.

If the game had remained unchanged since 2013, your argument might have merit- But it hasn't. The game has been dramatically updated since then. Yes, it began in 2013. But that was as Alpha 1, Build 1; The very first working copy of the game. Yknow, like the prototype AAA developers show the higher ups to get greenlit for a project.

It's had years of development since and has become much more robust in a lot of ways, including graphically. Also notable is that the way map generation and loading was handled back then was very different from how it is now. Back then it worked kinda like minecraft and you could explore semi-infinitely- But it lagged pretty horribly whenever you were exploring, at least for most people. Now the whole map is generated up front, and when you load up a save, the entire pre-generated world is loaded into memory ahead of time to minimize lag that would be generated by perpetually loading/unloading things to and from memory.

Edit: For sake of clarity, having had a bit of time to gather my thoughts while prepping dinner, 7DTD is not 'from 2013'; It hasn't even released yet. It's still early access. So it could be 'from 2021', or 'from 2022', or from later than that; But not 'from 2013'. That you've had access to it during it's development does not mean it has been officially released.

[SuperMeatBag]

Originally posted by NICULL™:

Originally posted by blazha:

7-8 GB is not much RAM usage, 16BG is kinda minimum for gaming today. It's not really alarming. Low VRAM can be an issue, because when your VRAM gets full your RAM get's used for the rest of required space which can slow down the game dramatically

7-8 GB is a lot of ram usage for a game from 2013. made on unity. 16GB is starting to become the minimum but it should be way more than enough for this game. I used to play this game on 8gb of ram on my old athlon system with a 1050 Ti in windows 7, high settings 60 fps.

Over time, the requirements have increased, currently the suggested is 12GB. They might have started in 2013 but a few things have changed since...

[Beer Man™]

Originally posted by SuperMeatBag:

Originally posted by NICULL™:

7-8 GB is a lot of ram usage for a game from 2013. made on unity. 16GB is starting to become the minimum but it should be way more than enough for this game. I used to play this game on 8gb of ram on my old athlon system with a 1050 Ti in windows 7, high settings 60 fps.

Over time, the requirements have increased, currently the suggested is 12GB. They might have started in 2013 but a few things have changed since...

Well god mothafaking dam. i guess i need to pay 200 euro for a 32gb ram kit now that doesnt black screen my system with xmp on, 1st gen zen is so stable!

[FT]

Originally posted by NICULL™:

Well god mothafaking dam. i guess i need to pay 200 euro for a 32gb ram kit now that doesnt black screen my system with xmp on, 1st gen zen is so stable!

Why?
You said the game is only using 8gb of your RAM at worst.
Lol, kinda agree about Ryzen though. I love my cheapo 1600, but...

The occasional slowdowns to 40fps you're getting aren't related to the RAM usage. They're most likely from a glitch of the ShadowDistance option...which hits when you place too many torches in an area OR it simply happens during night/morning in the Forest Biome and Wasteland Biome regardless of what you're doing.
Temporarily lowering ShadowDistance to NEAR or OFF will work-around this for now. Hopefully the devs will find a good fix in the future (it's been a stubborn bug though).

...Or you have the HordeNight ZombieCount option set too high if the drops only happen on the horde nights. Usually, a well setup computer can handle up to ~30zeds, but more than that tends to hit FPS where it may fall below 60. If you play with friends, your HordeNight ZombieCount will multiply X every extra player...so a setting of 12zeds with you and two other players will be 12X3zeds...and 36zeds might lower performance below 60fps.

[Beer Man™]

Originally posted by FT:

Originally posted by NICULL™:

Well god mothafaking dam. i guess i need to pay 200 euro for a 32gb ram kit now that doesnt black screen my system with xmp on, 1st gen zen is so stable!

Why?
You said the game is only using 8gb of your RAM at worst.
Lol, kinda agree about Ryzen though. I love my cheapo 1600, but...

The occasional slowdowns to 40fps you're getting aren't related to the RAM usage. They're most likely from a glitch of the ShadowDistance option...which hits when you place too many torches in an area OR it simply happens during night/morning in the Forest Biome and Wasteland Biome regardless of what you're doing.
Temporarily lowering ShadowDistance to NEAR or OFF will work-around this for now. Hopefully the devs will find a good fix in the future (it's been a stubborn bug though).

...Or you have the HordeNight ZombieCount option set too high if the drops only happen on the horde nights. Usually, a well setup computer can handle up to ~30zeds, but more than that tends to hit FPS where it may fall below 60. If you play with friends, your HordeNight ZombieCount will multiply X every extra player...so a setting of 12zeds with you and two other players will be 12X3zeds...and 36zeds might lower performance below 60fps.

I will try turning shadows to near ig, i literally had a black screen crash in dying light last night, couldnt even turn the pc off from power button. ive been having stability issues with this ♥♥♥♥ for a couple of weeks now but game performance hasnt been affected

[FT]

If your RAM's XMP profile is faster than 3000mhz and crashing things, you might STILL want to enable that XMP (because it typically sets looser timings which are easier to run) and then set it to manual mode and set the speed to 3000mhz or a little slower while leaving the looser XMP timings as-is.

You might also want to check out the free version of HCI Memtest or some similar RAM stability test if you have a few minutes to read the short instructions and a few hours to let it run while you don't need to use the computer.