Game with 180 assets eats ALL of my 16 Gbs of RAM. What is happening?

[dandeedata]

I have read about users complaining that the game uses all of their RAMs and they can't play, but they always have at most 8 Gbs of RAM with like a metric ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of assets subscibed.

I only have ~50 mods and ~180 assets installed, and the game won't even load a map. And while it's loading, it uses 95% RAM. If I'm rigth 16 gigs should be enough for 800 assets.

Any ideas what might help me?

[Driver Kaldie]

I do onderstand that this game takes a lot of ram memory. I play the game at the moment with 8gb ram and a 2gb Nvidia videocard. I have somewhat 20 mods selected and about 550 assets. I have snowfall, industry, mass transit and after dark.

When I start up my maps I van see in the loading screen mod that the load time is about 10 minutes...virtual memory is 10,2gb and memory used is at max 6,5gb.

When the game runs it uses, according to taskmanager, 6,7gb at most. So really no big problems, it's only a little slow when I click on one of the bottom menu's.

I want to buy a new pc very soon with 16gb ram and 4-6gb videocard. Does that mean that of I start up the game on my new pc it will swallow all of nu memory as well ?

I can't understand why pc's with a higher memory then mine have trouble with less assets and mods then I have...

[CyberVibes]

There's quite a few others factors to take into consideration, how fast the ram is, how fast the cpu is, are they using a old HDD a SSD or a Nvme drive, how big are the assets they are subscribed to, what graphic settings also play a part especially if they only have a small amount of video ram, how much pagefile they have and how fast is the drive that the pagefile uses is on and how many DLC's they have bought.

There's a few tweaks you can do like using the loading screen mod to cut down on ram usage, skipping prefabs, share of textures and optimisation of the menu images. but for most people 16GB of ram and a 48GB pagefile is more than sufficient, if you like detailing then you should go for 32GB, get the fastest single core cpu with at least 4 cores get a SSD or Nvme drive of around 500GB this might seem a bit rich for one game but in fact you'll see benefits right across the board with boot times and using other apps etc.

[dandeedata]

Originally posted by aubergine18:

The log file you've posted looks truncated - did you load a game in that session? If not, load a game to reproduce the errors then share new log file after quitting to desktop.

I unsubscribed from the mods you mentioned and made a new log file.Here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aLcunhn7aJNwMOYyTgYo50PHJ4rf8OE5/view?usp=sharing

The thing that I don't understand is that how is it possible to have over 2000 items loading when I'm only subscribed to 240?

[Metacritical]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-steam-game-crashes-in-loading-screen.1141452/#post-25004320

[leftbehind]

@dandeedata: The asset count includes game assets and DLC assets too, not just workshop assets. The game and a few DLCs will probably be over 1000 assets when you consider all the houses, offices, industries, offices, each with low/high density and building levels, services, vehicles, cims, animals, trees, props, etc...

[A-mak]

If you use Windows 10, don't set a manual page file. People need to stop suggesting that.

In newer windows, it will increase the page file automatically if required. THE ONLY REASON to set a manual pagefile is when you initially setup windows and you want that micron improvement of reserving the inner part of hard disk slides. If you're well past "I only just formatted" you will actually reduce performance by messing with the pagefile as it becomes defragmented accross the drive, you would be better off getting fast USB key or sd card and setting that to readyboost.

I have a potato pc, 3ghz, 9gb ddr 3 1066mhz ram (4gb of which is reserved by my bloody gpu as shared vram, cities doesnt even friggen use it!) 50+ mods 1000+ assets game takes 3-4min to load uses 18-24gb of pagefile. My game runs fine in terms of hot loading (moving around the map/zooming). Mods that use my cpu have the biggest impact on performance, Im actually looking at subscribing to more Assets, I seek out ones below 5mb,

Also be sure to use the load screen mod and set texture quality to low.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by A-mak:

If you use Windows 10, don't set a manual page file. People need to stop suggesting that.

Maybe you should look into the inner workings of how the page file works. It works the same for all windows. Wn10 is nothing special.

In newer windows, it will increase the page file automatically if required.

Only to twice your RAM size. Even though Microsoft recommends a max of x3. I've gone over 5x manually without issue.

THE ONLY REASON to set a manual pagefile is when you initially setup windows and you want that micron improvement of reserving the inner part of hard disk slides.

Not sure what you mean?

If you're well past "I only just formatted" you will actually reduce performance by messing with the pagefile as it becomes defragmented accross the drive,

It only becomes fragmented from windows resizing it all of the time. If you manually set the size, it can't defragment as it is preset to a static amount.

you would be better off getting fast USB key or sd card and setting that to readyboost.

Readyboost is horrible. It is very slow using USB interface. All it does is use it for a drive cache, like the one your drives already come with, but much slower.

My game runs fine in terms of hot loading (moving around the map/zooming).

Hot Loading refers to loading a saved game while you are currently playing the game. This game has a memory leak and will chew up more RAM. If you have workshop subscribed and enabled, then it will load it in part or whole again, and usually crash your system.

Mods that use my cpu have the biggest impact on performance, Im actually looking at subscribing to more Assets, I seek out ones below 5mb,

Actually your 5MB assets use over 25MB. They are compressed on your drive and downloads, but get extracted in RAM for up to 40x their original size. 5x is roughly an average.

Also be sure to use the load screen mod and set texture quality to low.

Remember, the loading screen mod only works for assets, but not mods.

Also, setting page file to auto slows down load times a lot, as it has to resize your page file constantly. It is made worse from the individual workshop items loading one by one and windows resizing constantly. If the game could compress all workshop into one file then it would only need to resize at once (as it should be).

[shaneturner12]

Originally posted by A-mak:

If you use Windows 10, don't set a manual page file. People need to stop suggesting that.

In newer windows, it will increase the page file automatically if required. THE ONLY REASON to set a manual pagefile is when you initially setup windows and you want that micron improvement of reserving the inner part of hard disk slides. If you're well past "I only just formatted" you will actually reduce performance by messing with the pagefile as it becomes defragmented accross the drive, you would be better off getting fast USB key or sd card and setting that to readyboost.

I have a potato pc, 3ghz, 9gb ddr 3 1066mhz ram (4gb of which is reserved by my bloody gpu as shared vram, cities doesnt even friggen use it!) 50+ mods 1000+ assets game takes 3-4min to load uses 18-24gb of pagefile. My game runs fine in terms of hot loading (moving around the map/zooming). Mods that use my cpu have the biggest impact on performance, Im actually looking at subscribing to more Assets, I seek out ones below 5mb,

Also be sure to use the load screen mod and set texture quality to low.

From experience letting Windows set the page file itself can actually cause problems with gaming as it will cause freezes/pauses when it's adjusting the pagefile size.

[A-mak]

I've looked into the inner workings and I have seen my pagefile hit over 30gb which means your assertation of "only max of 3x" well 3x9 is 27gb mate.

By hot loading I meant how the game handles assets and textures, it "hot loads" between pagefile and ram to ensure smooth gameplay, which is where Readyboost works great as it creates a copy of the page file and stores the information created by the memory manager. So rather than smash your hdd, it will smash that readyboost since CS preloads everything anyway. You can put readyboost on a SD card reader which can connect via PCI-E. A great cost effective option for pc's lacking ram slots/upgrades. Ofcourse if you have a good SSD this is kinda useless, but not sure of OP's specs.

Actually your 5MB assets use over 25MB. They are compressed on your drive and downloads, but get extracted in RAM for up to 40x their original size. 5x is roughly an average.

Where did I say it wasnt compressed? Do you just go around looking to argue with people? Exactly the reason I stick to under 5mb, 40x10 is a bit more than 40x5 hey?

All I can say is my 3ghz i7 950, 9gb ram, AMD 78503gb, pagefile on an old 7200rpm ide and CS on a 2x7200rpm RAID.

My game works fine, I havent hit any limits. The only stability issues are from dodgy MODS.

@shaneturner12 if your windows cant run itself automating the page file, I'd say you've got other issues mate. I've never had any problems with windows handling it and it is designed to do so. But I guess if people need to set it to something like 50gb whatever works for them.

[CyberVibes]

This about pagefile has been discussed so many times is becoming a nag now, all you have to do is search this forum for people who have had problems because Windows couldn't manage the pagefile properly to get your answers and looking at A-maks system he's hardly in a position to be giving technical advice using a 10 year old processor and old HDD drives.

[A-mak]

^ lol @ this guy.

Stop suggesting it maybe? It puts the stability of windows in question especially when these machines are used for other things outside of 1 single game. hence why so many people 'argue' over it, years of technical experience should tell you not to suggest people edit their own system settings. You have no clue what else the machine is used for or even the actual specs of the machine.

Would LMAO at you if OP decides to readyboost and it solves all the problemo's.

[CyberVibes]

Readyboost was created to help machines with poor hardware to run Win Vista and is dead tech now, here's one set of tests that defy your logic, there's many more i can retrieve but don't feel it's warranted as this sums it up quite nicely.

Conclusion:
You will not notice any difference with ReadyBoost enabled when you play games or you run applications that are CPU or GPU intensive. Also the improvements get smaller when you add more RAM. On a system with more than 4GB of RAM you will not notice anything getting better. ReadyBoost is most effective on systems with 2GB of RAM or lower. Also, adding an SSD drive to your computer means that there is no point in using ReadyBoost. We've done some very quick tests after adding an SSD and we quickly noticed that ReadyBoost becomes irrelevant.

https://www.digitalcitizen.life/does-readyboost-work-does-it-improve-performance-slower-pcs

So we are gathered here today to lay to rest Readyboost, in it's short life it didn't achieve much but brought pleasure to some, and now as we scatter it's ashes along with Win ME Win Vista and Win 8 we close the book on this chapter.

[A-mak]

Righto LOL. Because you've done real world tests from the sounds of things hey ;).

"looking at Cybers link he's hardly in a position to be giving technical advice using a 5 year d news article and a desire to be right."

How about we close the book on the chapter where you keep recommending people screw with windows pagefile?

[CyberVibes]

Ignorance is bliss, Readyboost is dead and so is the point of you trying to flog a dead horse to ppl who know better.

[A-mak]

You must be in heaven if that's the case.