Devs, looks like you have a memory leak...

[szalkerous]

I know this is a technical issue, but I figure this aspect of it might be good to bring up here in short form. I'll submit the rest through the proper channels, you just never know if it ever gets to the dev desk...




Exhibit A: Initial startup of PC, fresh DDO session.



Exhibit B: After running DDO for 3 hours.

Both screenshots of memory usage were recorded at the exact same position in the world, with the exact same # of players in the area.

I started my snooping after having DDO crash constantly every 3-4 hours ever since the last MOD release. For the record, I tried DX10, but have since shut it off, having blamed it originally for the BSOD occassions. No other game, DX9 or DX10 causes this type of behavior. But the crashing is something I will submit to support along with the memory dump and dxdiag.

Not sure what kind of garbage collection the client is using, but there's definitely some significant leakage going on there.

Food for thought!

-Szalk

[frugal_gourmet]

This does not mean a memory leak.

[Impaqt]

This does not mean a memory leak.

correct, this alone does not mean there is a Memory leak.. But there is one for sure..... Probobly many.... I've seen my client climb to almost 2 gigs of ram useage......

[frugal_gourmet]

correct, this alone does not mean there is a Memory leak.. But there is one for sure..... Probobly many.... I've seen my client climb to almost 2 gigs of ram useage......

The bar indicating the amount of memory used in a managed application isn't a reliable indicator of a memory leak. If memory is available, it may attempt to use it. If memory runs out, it may attempt to free it.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

I'll join the 'that doesn't mean there is a leak' crowd. There are lots of good reasons not to purge every byte of data instantly.

Doesn't mean there isn't a leak.. but it doesn't mean there is.

[KoboldKiller]

I thought I had a memory leak once, but then I couldn't remember if I did.

[Impaqt]

The bar indicating the amount of memory used in a managed application isn't a reliable indicator of a memory leak. If memory is available, it may attempt to use it. If memory runs out, it may attempt to free it.

No Aplication should obsessivly comsume more than half your physical ram. THats what page files are for. If its not a leak, Its poor programming... I'd rather give the Devs the benefit of the doubt and hope its simply a Memory Leak.

[Lorichie]

No Aplication should obsessivly comsume more than half your physical ram. THats what page files are for. If its not a leak, Its poor programming... I'd rather give the Devs the benefit of the doubt and hope its simply a Memory Leak.

I concur, i see these same numbers and sometimes higher. There are times when i'm logged in for 12 hours or more. I make it a habit to log in and out quickly more often and i notice less issues than others have if i do. Then again i rarely have any issues, i just get nervous when i see numbers that high.

That being said, i'm not sure if it is a leak on Turbine's end but i can say for sure that in some of the games i beta, i have these same numbers, and much higher and it has been, every time.

R

[Lorien_the_First_One]

No Aplication should obsessivly comsume more than half your physical ram. THats what page files are for. If its not a leak, Its poor programming... I'd rather give the Devs the benefit of the doubt and hope its simply a Memory Leak.

If an application assumes it is the primary app running then the programmers may deliberately go after RAM as a faster alternative to the swap file. SQL comes to mind as an example of this. Given all the past performance problems maybe the Turbine programmers figured that when DDO was up you were probably just playing DDO.

[Impaqt]

If an application assumes it is the primary app running then the programmers may deliberately go after RAM as a faster alternative to the swap file. SQL comes to mind as an example of this. Given all the past performance problems maybe the Turbine programmers figured that when DDO was up you were probably just playing DDO.

Well, that indeed would be a very good example of Poor coding...... Instead of making the calls more efficient, Make them more accessable......

[frugal_gourmet]

No Aplication should obsessivly comsume more than half your physical ram. THats what page files are for. If its not a leak, Its poor programming... I'd rather give the Devs the benefit of the doubt and hope its simply a Memory Leak.

It's not really consuming it. That memory is still available for use if needed.

[Impaqt]

It's not really consuming it. That memory is still available for use if needed.

Is it? I've NEVER noticed the ram useage go down. It simply continues to increase.. As it increases my game actually becaomes less responsive. Small lag spikes whneI change gear and cast spells too....Even if I open up a few IE Pages, Fire up some other aps like Word or Excel (I'll ofthen have these up if I'm designing a character or writing a guide) and I've run other things on my unused Processor cores like F@H.

The DDO Ap just continues to use more and more memory until you physically shut it down and restart it. It doesnt appear to be dynamic at all.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

The DDO Ap just continues to use more and more memory until you physically shut it down and restart it. It doesnt appear to be dynamic at all.

And that's a problem. Even if it is coded to be a hog for data access speed, it should also know how to get out of the way as other apps are loaded and eventually it should know to start unloading things that are no longer needed.

[Auran82]

Not sure if its just me, but I have noticed since MOD 8 came out that when I alt+tab out of DDO to load a firefox page or something else the computer seems to hang for a few seconds taking DDO out of focus and when I try to go back.

Could just be me though.

[baddax]

I was in that 3 hour marathon quest last night and i think I have a memory leak! Not sure if this has any bareing but i think you were also laggy in various parts of the quest. I know also you mentioned something about a blue screen while in meridia. I find it strange, but i had very few lag issues and i checked my memory after we got done and did not see anything strange.

[Sibyl]

Try alt-enter when your client starts hitching and lagging. See if your performance gets better.

PS: Vista can make games take up a lot more memory than they would under XP. Have you installed Service Pack 1?

[szalkerous]

This does not mean a memory leak.

I'm giving the developers the benefit of the doubt in that they would not allow the application to glutton itself on memory without releasing it after it is no longer reasonably necessary. That's a cardinal sin of software.

Also, I have as well, watched the peak memory consumption climb with no return to original size. I expect minor inflation in all things, but to double in size without an apparent cause seems to me there's memory being "leaked" (i.e. handles being lost after a malloc - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak )

But I get far ahead of myself- I'm not here to point fingers, I'm here to offer my example to the dev team for their own investigation... and if there's anything else needed of me from that perspective, I'm a PM away.

-Sz

[szalkerous]

I was in that 3 hour marathon quest last night ...

OT: That was a hell of a marathon! We'll have to coordinate another attempt sometime in the future.

[query]

or the "Virtual Memory" errors (luckily never got a BSOD or computer crash?)


I suspect memory leak if those with double my computer resources see the exact same trending (and yeah that Vista w SP 1 or XP w SP 3 is installed.)

[Xithos]

I am seeing the same thing and having similar issues sometimes when switching equipment and getting that stutter.