Possible memory leak fix and windowed revert at start up possible fix!

[AdicusDio]

OK, I changed several things at once, so hopefully one/all will work help. Don't have the patience or time to experiment, so try one and GL. Update if it helps.

**1. I closed Steam completely (double-check in task manager) then opened the game via the actual "ffxv_s.exe" in the steam-common-FFXV folder. This won't disable controller support. Steam will still open in the background (EDIT: **This one doesn't seem to matter)

2. Changed hardwarefullscreen to "0" in the game's "GraphicsConfig.ini" in the documents-my games-FFXV folder. Supposedly changes to borderless full screen. This also seems to have fixed the forced revert to windowed mode at start up, though YMMV. (Should have an in-game option now since latest patch added it)

3. While I doubt this actually helped anything as I was unable to actually hit physical memory cap now (before it was constantly capping), I used a back up HD (game and OS are on a Samsung SSD 850 pro) as the pagefile source, while disabling pagefile from SSD and any where else, and set a stupid high number of 50gb on the empty HD only.


After more than an hour of testing with constant fights, hunts, hunt turn ins, etc. RAM usage barely increased more than 800mb. Using fast travel to go from say a diner to the harbor (beginning areas) RESET the RAM usage this time, vs. increasing/staying the same before.

At least try starting the game's .exe with steam closed, and see if your RAM usage remains calm. The .ini change is known, but don't think people knew it could possibly prevent the screen from reverting to windowed at start.

I'm NOT using the 4k texture pack, and have TRAM set to low FWIW (even though I have 16gb RAM +11 GB VRAM, etc.). If something here helps, please update so it can help others. Can use something like afterburner to monitor RAM, VRAM, etc. with it's OSD.

[AdicusDio]

Almost forgot, I had changed "TextureStreamingMemory=0" to "TextureStreamingMemory=2048" in the .ini file. No idea if that actually did anything, but figured it was worth a try. YMMV here as well, as different systems might have issues with that value? It didn't revert to "0" after playing, so game doesn't seem to auto overwrite the value, though going into the settings-graphics menu might.

Just want to give full disclosure. Game is at least playable now. Please update if anything helped stop the memory from leaking.

[➕⁺+₊ ⁺]

How long does it run before the crash now?

[Hehe boi]

The memory leak happens kinda randomly. Sometimes I can play for 2-3 hours straight but don't have any issue at all, other times there might be a leak within an hour lol. It's hard to pin down the cause for this one.

[AdicusDio]

I've yet to get any leaks/crashes since doing this. About 5-6 hours worth of play. Prior to this, I could go longer than an hour, and everything from cut-scenes to enemy drop ships+ large enemies (hunt) just piled the RAM up until it ran out. Very 1st crash after starting the game for 1st time, it had crashed where you are auto-forced to push the car, if that gives any indication of how quickly it could crash before.

Ram barely fluctuautes now. Starts around 13.7 when first coming out of a save, and after 45-60 minutes, it'll hover around 15gb, which is fairly normal for me @4k in other games as well.

I accidentally started the game FROM Steam last time (Play Button) vs. the game's .exe, and it stayed low (no leak), so possibly No.2 from post at top, or adding TextureStreamingMemory=2048 . I don't know if the large pagefile made the difference.

I've done numerous hunts, waited as numerous enemies and drop ships spawned, did the 1st 2 king weapons, did a handful of side quests, got 99 in the pinball machine, fast traveled all over, fished, collected chests/ingredients, etc. etc. and it's yet to leak memory.

At least try the borderless windowed mode + the TextureStreamingMemory=2048 or maybe 1024. All I know is the game was routinely leaking from the get go, now it's not. And it didn't stop until the changes. Won't hurt to try if you get constant leaks. Wouldn't be surprised if it might have to do with fullscreen, as I've seen others state theirs reverted to windowed mode + they were having the memory leak. I now have neither.

[AdicusDio]

I can't be the only one this has helped? Game is very playable atm with the settings mentioned. It might be still be leaking a dribble at a time (If I see RAM usage around 15.5gb I'll just reset the game regardless until an actual patch addresses the issue outright) after several hours, but NOWHERE near as bad as the 1-2gb jumps from anything taxing like before.

[Chillin]

strange..im running an i7 7700k, 1080ti ,16gb ram os on 840evo and game on a western digital black 4TB drive running the game at 4k textures 4k native mostly max settings and i have yet to experince one crash on this game and i am pritty far in. The only issue is fps but thats to be expected.

[J.P.]

Physical memory isn't the problem, it's the virtual memory that bloats up. My amount of committed physical barely goes up beyond 11.5 of 16 GB.

[E_ZRO_Joka]

Originally posted by J.P.:

Physical memory isn't the problem, it's the virtual memory that bloats up. My amount of committed physical barely goes up beyond 11.5 of 16 GB.

This is exactly my problem too, i have 16GB Ram and the Game only uses between 8,5 and 9,5.
But Virtual Memory Bloats up like Hell.

My Specs:
Msi B350 Gaming pro Carbon
Ryzen 1600X @stock (always Full 3.7Ghz)
Gskill Ram 16 GB (3200 / 16-18-18-38)
Gainward Gtx 970 Phantom
2 TB Western Digital Black HDD (for Games)
128 GB SSD from ADATA (Win 10 and Pagefile)
Pagefile managed by System

Nvidia Control Panel Settings:
Tripple Buffer = on
Vsync = on
Max Prerendered . . . = 1
Powermanagement = Optimal Performance
Threaded Optimizing = on

My Graphic Settings in Game are from Geforce Experience. Shadows, Lighting and Screenfilter Average, Nvidia Settings all off, Geomapping off because i read it's responsible for the leak, all other Settings High (even TRAM and my Vram never goes above 3,5), Vsync off, Cap at 60 Fps.

My Fps ar between 45 an 60 so far.

So far i play in Fullscreen Mode, because i dont no which Setting is the best.

[fmb-ita]

I thing i crashed 6 times so far trying to complete castlemark castle dungeon. Very long dungeon. I think I coul finish it if I get outside anytime I have the chance (the red disc on the last room), save, restart, and then get back... But this is not normal, I have even tried 800x600 anything on low, that session lasted a bit longer, true, but then, ram usage hit 15 gig (out of 16), 2d texture error (if you "ignore" you can still play), then crash, what the hell??? I'm now trying wihth something lile 50 gig of swapfile on multiple hard drives... But, still, this is not normal...

[Syl]

The issue is your TRAM, set it lower. "high" TRAM uses up to 6GB and it will try to fill all of it regardless of how much VRAM your videocard has, which causes huge stuttering issues and all sorts of annoying ♥♥♥♥.
There's no leak with geomapping as I played the game in its entirety with it turned on. Damn does it look good.
I'd also put the texturestreaming back to the default.

I never had issues with the game and ram usage. I did, however, have tons of issues when I switched TRAM to "highest" before I realized just how demanding that setting was.

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Syl:

The issue is your TRAM, set it lower. "high" TRAM uses up to 6GB and it will try to fill all of it regardless of how much VRAM your videocard has, which causes huge stuttering issues and all sorts of annoying ♥♥♥♥.
There's no leak with geomapping as I played the game in its entirety with it turned on. Damn does it look good.
I'd also put the texturestreaming back to the default.

I never had issues with the game and ram usage. I did, however, have tons of issues when I switched TRAM to "highest" before I realized just how demanding that setting was.

I have 1070 Ti (8GB VRAM) and 16GB DDR4 with TRAM set to high (which is appropriate for my VRAM, and because I want the 4k textures that costed me an extra 50+GB of space) and I am still getting random crashes due to memory leaks. After big battles, I seem to get less playtime (a big battle involving daemons, native creatures like the giant toads, and a couple ships of Magitek troopers will cut playtime by an hour or two). It's ridiculous, especially considering many dungeons do not have camps for saving progress. So even if you restart just before a dungeon, you could still lose over an hour of progress due to the multiple medium sized battles that happen within dungeons.This basically just ruins the game.

[Pragmatic Tornado]

I noticed yesterday that my RAM usage was over 70%, which is weird since I have 32GB. And my vRAM was maxed out, which is less weird, but still a bit since I have an RTX 2080Ti with 11GB.

So FFXV managed to hog a grand total of around 31GB RAM with vRAM and system RAM combined. Pretty crazy. Game ran just fine though at a solid 60 fps, with absolutely everything set at max, in 1440p. But I wonder if it would if I halved my system RAM..

I hadn't played for that long either; maybe 2 hours.

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Pragmatic Tornado:

I noticed yesterday that my RAM usage was over 70%, which is weird since I have 32GB. And my vRAM was maxed out, which is less weird, but still a bit since I have an RTX 2080Ti with 11GB.

So FFXV managed to hog a grand total of around 31GB RAM with vRAM and system RAM combined. Pretty crazy. Game ran just fine though at a solid 60 fps, with absolutely everything set at max, in 1440p. But I wonder if it would if I halved my system RAM..

I hadn't played for that long either; maybe 2 hours.

Even with 50GB pagefile, 16GB RAM, 8GB VRAM will crash after a while. According to some people, it has to do with the NVIDIA gameworks settings. I am going to try turning that off (as well as remove some pagefile from my HDD to reduce stutter) and see what happens.

[Pragmatic Tornado]

Originally posted by aaronth07:

Originally posted by Pragmatic Tornado:

I noticed yesterday that my RAM usage was over 70%, which is weird since I have 32GB. And my vRAM was maxed out, which is less weird, but still a bit since I have an RTX 2080Ti with 11GB.

So FFXV managed to hog a grand total of around 31GB RAM with vRAM and system RAM combined. Pretty crazy. Game ran just fine though at a solid 60 fps, with absolutely everything set at max, in 1440p. But I wonder if it would if I halved my system RAM..

I hadn't played for that long either; maybe 2 hours.

Even with 50GB pagefile, 16GB RAM, 8GB VRAM will crash after a while. According to some people, it has to do with the NVIDIA gameworks settings. I am going to try turning that off (as well as remove some pagefile from my HDD to reduce stutter) and see what happens.

Has been rock solid for me so far, and I've played quite a few hours in one session. Maybe I'm over the memory leak limit, as it were. Haven't seen the system RAM usage exceed the 70's percentage wise yet.

But 32GB RAM is still fairly uncommon among gaming systems (as it should be, it's still overkill), so I am surprised they haven't fixed this issue.

[Kaldolek]

Originally posted by Pragmatic Tornado:

Originally posted by aaronth07:

Even with 50GB pagefile, 16GB RAM, 8GB VRAM will crash after a while. According to some people, it has to do with the NVIDIA gameworks settings. I am going to try turning that off (as well as remove some pagefile from my HDD to reduce stutter) and see what happens.

Has been rock solid for me so far, and I've played quite a few hours in one session. Maybe I'm over the memory leak limit, as it were. Haven't seen the system RAM usage exceed the 70's percentage wise yet.

But 32GB RAM is still fairly uncommon among gaming systems (as it should be, it's still overkill), so I am surprised they haven't fixed this issue.

It's not overkill for open world games. It might be for a simple load-screen after load-screen game, but anything that streams textures and various other assets will ALWAYS perform better with more headroom and 16 GiB is basically the minimum you're going to get by with.

You'll run into various resource constriction issues (i.e. engine has to hitch while compacting and defragmenting available RAM) during longer gameplay sessions but can probably find them tolerable. I wouldn't, but I mean if all you've got is 16 GiB of RAM you really don't have much in the way of choices.