Skyrim Memory Patch - fixing ILS, uGrids CTD, freezes

[sheson]

It's going to feel weird to actually play Skyrim rather than fixing and tweaking Skyrim. Thank you so much for this!!!

I know exactly what you mean. I am so sorry.

[sheson]

@ Sheson

Took up your suggestions, but nevertheless still crashed twice in the last 1.5 hour. The error is now the same 0xe06d7363 for both reports, and I checked some older dumps from yesterday night as well and they all have that same error code (although some things like the 'BUCKET_ID' and a few others do differ per log).

Tried it on both SR:LE as well as STEP:Core, same results.

Hope these logs are somehow able to provide you with a hint of what is crashing the game, and whether it is resolvable through your patch or not:

minidump latest: http://pastebin.com/XWjYjrPs

minidump 2nd latest: http://pastebin.com/xpk9Guxh


Thanks again and in advance for your help.

P.S. Saw Boris saying somewhere on the forum that "Out of video memory (vrma crashes as you called it) can't cause issues, it's not acting like ram, you searching in wrong direction." So I'm even more confident now that vram is not the cause, nor ram as I have plenty left and the tesv.exe process takes up about 1gb ram only with enboost.

Yes I don't think this is running out of memory or vram. This is something else.

both minidumps show that you run with performance monitor? Turn it off too.
In fact turn everythig off, also anti virus Boris keeps mentioning that too - can have affect. Any uneeded ATI thing.
Also test without ENB just to be sure. You maybe have more luck in the step forum since they will have more experience those type of crashes. I think I saw you ask there too already. We will see.

[sheson]

There is now a version of this with a handy little guide over on the Nexus site http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/?

Has anyone had any testing of things like the cache killers ? just curious if others are having the same experience as I am and no longer need them.

I am also attempting to track down some unusual AI behaviour that has started to occur in my game with higher uGrid values, has anyone else seen similar ?

Precache killer can still be useful if loading lots of assets would mean to exhaust the allocated memory. So if you have a large enough first block you won't need it.
I guess it all depends on how often you change your hair style?

Personally I would not recommend more than 7 maybe 9. With SDO from Grieche and Skymills+Skyfalls. Then a set a few select statics to never fade I am set.
Some old timers will still say go with 5 to be safe. Only time will tell.

It helps to raise things like max active actors in bashed patch.
The populated series with some of the immersive stuff make for crowded skyrim.

We are boldly going where no man has gone before, though unless somebody does some real testing it will be all just anecdotal evidence. I believe the good people from S.T.E.P. will figure it out in time.

[Tase]

There is now a version of this with a handy little guide over on the Nexus site http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/?

Has anyone had any testing of things like the cache killers ? just curious if others are having the same experience as I am and no longer need them.

I am also attempting to track down some unusual AI behaviour that has started to occur in my game with higher uGrid values, has anyone else seen similar ?

Which doesn't include a non-steam version/method.

[tony971]

There is now a version of this with a handy little guide over on the Nexus site http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/?

Has anyone had any testing of things like the cache killers ? just curious if others are having the same experience as I am and no longer need them.

I am also attempting to track down some unusual AI behaviour that has started to occur in my game with higher uGrid values, has anyone else seen similar ?

Which doesn't include a non-steam version/method.

I'll get right on that

edit: added.
re-edit: I've taken down the non-steam patches until I get Nexus' approval to have them hosted on their site. I've put in a support request for it. Not looking to get banned :p

[keithinhanoi]

I've posted over on the STEP Forum thread, but thought it might help to check in here with some more recent findings, notes, and ideas. My first post will focus on using VMMap to monitor memory usage in TESV.exe:

Regarding the advice on how to choose the right sizes for the two memory blocks allocations that the patch affects, I've noticed that although VMMap is a beautifully simple program for finding out how much memory your SKSE.exe is using at any particular moment, it does not automatically refresh the displayed memory usage at a regular interval.

So, the numbers you see in VMMap only apply to the moment you start the program, or each time you hit F5 to refresh it's display.

This is a problem because #1, just the act of alt-tabbing out of Skyrim to refresh VMMap's display of memory usage may affect the usage of those two memory blocks, as the game effectively pauses when it's in the background, and #2, for many people alt-tabbing out causes the ENB memory management features to stop working properly.

This also means that there's actually no way to know VMMap memory usage numbers right before a CTD without tabbing out to refresh VMMap - nd that tabbing out may be the reason for the CTD, in that case. Also, if you got a CTD, but had left VMMap in the background, the numbers you see there after the crash are actually not the last values just before the CTD. They would be from the last refresh of VMMap.

VMMap does have a Launch and Trace feature, which allows you to log all VM usage, but the problem here is that we must have SKSE launch TESV.exe, so we can't use that feature of VMMap.

Interestingly, if you do use the refresh (F5) function in VMMap, it saves every instance as a "snapshot", all of which can be viewed using the [Timeline...] button at the bottom of the main menu. In the Timeline viewer window, it displays changes in overall VM usage, with lines for each snapshot that you can click on and VMMap's main windows is instantly updated with all the usage values from the moment of that snapshot. It's a real shame that there is no built in "automatic" refresh feature.

VMMap also has a very nice "Save..." feature allowing you to save the current set of memory usage values in .txt, .csv (for Excel), or in VMMap's native .mmp format, which can then be loaded back into VMMap to display that save snapshot in it's main window.

Really what we want is to run VMMap right after starting SKSE, and before Skyrim comes up full screen, and not have to alt-tab out to refresh VMMap's display. Instead, we want to make VMMap automatically refresh every second or so, such that we have a history of the usage of the two memory blocks adjusted by this patch.

A possible couple ideas I have for getting the data I need include:

• writing a .bat file which recurrently runs VMMap via Windows cmd console every second, producing an output file that is then renamed with sequential numerical suffix (so as not to be overwritten on the next run of VMMap, or
• finding some program that can send a F5 keypress to VMMap every second, if such an app exists.

I've looked at a whole list of other utilities in an effort to find one that can log allocated memory block usage, but with no luck so far.

Finally, I have also posted on the WindowsSysInternals Forums to ask about the two ideas above - let's hope somebody here or there can suggest an easy way to get it working.

In the meanwhile, I am working on the .bat file idea.

[MattBOM]

@keithinhanoi

Full screen Borderless windowed mode? Easy with ENBlocal.ini settings. Two or more displays helps here too.

[astrob0y]

Thank you for this awsome fix and for the informative (and fun) discussion in this thread. Ive followed the original text and have tested it with a new character.

My humble test:
130 mods (mostly 1k retextures, but some scripts)
Phinix neutral ENB
Ugrid 11
player.setav speedmult 500, tgm, tcl
spawning 10 dragons, 10 stormcloak archers, 10 impirial archers, 10 ice mages, 10 fire mages, 10 gigants at diffret locations...and the game is rock solid.

Now its time to finally play the game....23.01.14

[keithinhanoi]

@MattBOM

Thanks, but I'm aware of that. It doesn't stop Skyrim from pausing, and doesn't work 100% depending on other settings.

More importantly, I don't think it preferable to tab out every second or two to refresh VMMap's display.

Ideally, it would be automatically refreshing in the background, keeping a record of the memory usage, while you run around doing your test runs, uninterrupted.

[Phinix]

I have re-compiled the version I built for PNENB using Visual Studio 2008 on the advise of Purple Lunchbox, one of the SKSE co-authors.

One question I've run into, which happened on the 2010-built version as well, is that when running VMMap I never see the 1st block go over 256mb, even though it does successfully change the total reserved to 512mb as per my .ini config.

VMMap

I am curious if this is just due to my relatively low-impact install (minimal mods, standard uGrids, etc.). The patch otherwise works as intended: all my ILS issues are totally gone after hours upon hours of play. The appropriate lines are output to the log and again, as seen in VMMap above, it does indeed reserve 512mb for block 1 as it is supposed to.