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/3gb Boot.ini switch in XP 32bit breaking video drivers

C

Canai

Diamond Member
OK so I've been running into 'out of memory' crashes in Age of Conan (my first MMO and a massive 25Gb install) due to a well known memory leak in the program. The solutions come down to either restarting the game every hour - pretty much on the hour - or using the /3gb switch in the Boot.ini to allow AoC more memory.

I tried it and when I restarted, no 3D applications would launch, and the ATi drivers kept failing. After reading a bit, that issue is because when using the /3gb switch it limits the available RAM for the kernal to 1Gb, when the ATi drivers expect 2Gb.

Many people have had no problems using the /3gb switch, and I can't really find anything on google about fixes for it breaking the drivers.

Anybody know of any workarounds or tweaks to make the drivers play nice with the /3gb switch? I'm currently running the 8.6 Hotfix drivers and just installed SP3. I found a link to some 8.7 beta drivers I was thinking about giving a shot, but I haven't installed them yet. I also found a KB article describing video card drivers not properly initializing when using the /3gb switch, and it had a hotfix, but the KB article is several years old and warns to only apply the hotfix if I absolutely need to.

I don't remember how to change my comp specs link, but I'm running the comp in my sig with 4Gb of OCZ RAM, an HD4850, and the most recent BIOS for my board - otherwise it's the same.

I'll be upgrading to Vista 64 bit in a couple weeks, but I'd really like to play AoC without constant memory crashes before then.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice!
 
/3GB caused weird problems to me playing Far Cry on the XP Home with 3GB of RAM.

I had to disable it.

But even with it disabled, my RAM use would show over 70% - more than 2GB (Logitech G15), and the "stuttering" problems in Quake 4 and STALKER disappeared.

Not an answer that would help with your problem, but I am kinda curious myself.

And I don't use my 32-bit XP anymore 😛

An upgrade to the 64-bit Vista seems to have solved a lot of my memory problems...
 
It sounds like the game has pretty bad support

The /3gb switch is doing exactly what it's suppose to be doing, I don't think that is even close to a tweak that's needed for playing a game. And the whole memory leak stuff I hated since windows 95, it's just a way to explain something without explaining it. What's wrong ? ... Oh it's a memory leak .... Oh thanks that helps a lot.

On a quick view of this problem, I read someone said disabling sound stopped the problem, while you wouldn't want to play without sound, but if that's true then that's the direction you should be looking.


Also AV software, is known to cause issues with games, Trend Micro 2008 cause crashing in various games some low res some only on high res.

But you probably tried all that, but that just my one cent worth.
 
If it really is a memory leak in the app then upping the VM per-process to 3G will only delay the problem anyway, if it's really leaking you'll still have to restart it eventually and if it only takes an hour to hit 2G you'll probably only get another 30-60 minutes before it fills up the 3G available.
 
The /3GB switch really isn't safe anyhow, for exactly the reasons you've encountered. If you're serious about wanting more per-process memory, you should be looking at switching to XP64 or Vista64, both of which support 4GB per 32bit process.

Edit: Until you can switch to a 64bit OS, your only option in the mean time is to mess with the USERVA switch, which is used in conjunction with the 3GB switch. With that you can fine tune the process memory allocation size. You need to decrease it from 3GB until you find a value for which enough memory is left for your kernel so that it is happy (32bit Windows splits its 4GB of virtual memory between the kernel and processes; usually it's 2GB/2GB, with the 3GB switch it's 1GB/3GB which can make the kernel fussy).
 
Guys, /3gb only helps applications that are /3gb aware. This is typically server class applications such as databases and email servers. If you use /3gb with non /3gb aware applications you have provided no additional virtual address space to your application at the cost of hampering your kernel.

Understand that /3gb has nothing to do with RAM! It changes the virtual addess space of applications to be 3gb instead of 2gb. It also reduces the kernal virtual address space (not RAM!!) to just 1gb.

There is absolutely no reason to be using this on an XP box for gaming. At best you'll gain nothing, at worst you introduce problems.
 
Smilin, AoC is Large Address Aware (the final 32bit cheat), so the 3GB switch will help out here if he's running out of virtual memory.
 
Understand that /3gb has nothing to do with RAM! It changes the virtual addess space of applications to be 3gb instead of 2gb. It also reduces the kernal virtual address space (not RAM!!) to just 1gb.
Click to expand...

It does affect physical memory too because you need virtual space to use physical space, so if a process has 3G of virtual it can now also have up to 3G of physical. It's not a 1:1 mapping but it does have an affect.
 
Originally posted by: ViRGE
Smilin, AoC is Large Address Aware (the final 32bit cheat), so the 3GB switch will help out here if he's running out of virtual memory.
Click to expand...



True. However, in this case it appears to be both - In enabling the /3gb switch in order to give AoC more headroom before it crashes, the OP has a situation where his video drivers now have insufficient space... Not a lot of wiggle room, unless Virge's suggestion works out.

Apparently Peter got pissed at being robbed in order to pay Paul. 😛


For the OP - I would be careful in applying an old KB to the current situation. Before doing that I would bring the situation to ATI and see (a) if their community knows of a solution and (b) if the update you are considering applies to your currently installed components.

Any news/rumors when the memory leak(s??) in AoC should be fixed?
 
Thanks for the info and advice everyone! I think I'm just going to leave the switch off and hurry with the Vista upgrade. I guess I could play with the /USERVA and try to pin a value that the Cat's like, but it seems like I'd just be better off upgrading. Plus, I'll finally be able to see my games in DX10 😀

The mem leak has been known about for a while, and there's a 2000+ post thread about it in the AoC forums. It should have been fixed by now but who knows. I guess it's directly related to your detail settings - higher details lead to faster crashes.
 
maybe poor map design, or too much open space to render. Or maybe it's by design $$$

In layman terms: There is a hole in your virtual World thats sucking all your resources.
 
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