Lets talk about the DDO Client and its Memory Leak

[Forzah]

This is the most serious issue in this game. I fear it is too time-consuming to solve and hence put aside...

[lhidda]

I dont play on Lammania, but I have same problems on Khyber. to the devs: please fix this, its the most annoying issue in this splendid game.

[anatomyofaghost]

While I agree this behaves like some kind of memory or caching issue I am really not convinced it's a memory leak in the truest sense. It seems more like either the DDO client or something else (maybe .NET related?) is trying to hit the protected memory cache of the OS and causing a crash.

Folks, perhaps it would be helpful if everyone who experiences this issue would post up their system specs.


Win 7 Pro (x86) up to date
AMD Opteron 180 @ stock speeds
2 GB RAM (1GB x 2)
Motherboard is an old Ali DualSATAII 939
ATI 4850 1 GB video card
ATI Catalyst drivers 11.5 w/ the control center that requires .NET
500 GB Seagate SATA hdd
Dual partitioned with C as the OS drive and D for programs

Maybe we can find some common factor between all our systems, or perhaps it would e useful to have someone who does NOT experience these kinds of issues to post here?

[Seikojin]

While I agree this behaves like some kind of memory or caching issue I am really not convinced it's a memory leak in the truest sense. It seems more like either the DDO client or something else (maybe .NET related?) is trying to hit the protected memory cache of the OS and causing a crash.

Folks, perhaps it would be helpful if everyone who experiences this issue would post up their system specs.


Win 7 Pro (x86) up to date
AMD Opteron 180 @ stock speeds
2 GB RAM (1GB x 2)
Motherboard is an old Ali DualSATAII 939
ATI 4850 1 GB video card
ATI Catalyst drivers 11.5 w/ the control center that requires .NET
500 GB Seagate SATA hdd
Dual partitioned with C as the OS drive and D for programs

Maybe we can find some common factor between all our systems, or perhaps it would e useful to have someone who does NOT experience these kinds of issues to post here?

I think having your system specs and some results from perfmon would help the most. Embedd your replies in a code tag to keep it all clean.

I will do so when I try this weekend.

I personally don't have these issues, but I am also using a dual quad core computer with 6 or 12 gigs of ram. So I may not experience pagefile issues for a while. IIRC I set my pagefile to be none.

[grodon9999]

What annoys the **** out of me is the stuttering when every your UMD score changed from an equipment swap. I'd hope this is a priority in getting fixed.

[protokon]

I am using pretty high-end hardware on a custom built machine, and although I don't have in-game lag after swapping multiple times, I do notice a longer and longer loading time each time I swap characters - and the client does inevitably crash after a certain amount of character swaps (seems to be between 4-6 log ins/outs before this happens). It is not a zone-in crash either, it is just client has stopped responding error, and exits out.

I have noticed lately, extremely big lag spikes when swapping equipment - for instance, if I am wearing a belt and swap to a planar gird to throw GH on myself, the entire screen can freeze for a second or two, before the client resumes functionality - also a large drop in frame rates when this occurs (I am seeing a drop from around a steady 60-65 frames a second dipping to 2-3 momentarily, then spiking back up to normal).

very irritating considering I am a heavy clicky-type player, and it seems to get worse and worse after swapping toons a few times (the lag spikes when changing gear).

[Zharfie]

this is one of those issues that everyone talks about but I never seem to be affected by it...

[HettarDDO]

I guess fragmentation of the disk is only an issue if the swap file is on that disk. Also fragmentation does not necessarily gain you space on a hard-disk, it just reallocate the space that more consecutive memory is available. Also important is to know that the default Windows XP defrag is not capable of defragmenting the swap space. Anyway, I have a whole disk with several Gig for my swap and the maximum of 4Gig of RAM for Windows and still I am able to get the system to its knees if I swap through several of my characters and then enter one of the bigger areas like Sands. If I even swap more characters I am even able to crash on loading e.g. the Harbor.

I also noticed that if I reduce my graphics settings that it seems to take a bit longer before crashing. Probably the reason why regions like Sands crashing with the graphic settings set to a large distance drawing as this mean that the engine probably load all the environment and mobs to check if they are visible or not.



Well, internally a pagefile still can be fragmented, you just don't see it as the Windows just show it as one big block. Try to increase the size of the pagefile, which at least may put the point of a crash a little further away.

You can defrag the swap file by changing it to 0 and than defraging the drive. Then change it back. It requires a reboot of the system after one of the changes. Can't remeber which one but windows will let you know

Oh and like stated by others it's better to set the min/max values for the page file rather than let windows do it for you. At least in XP. It also helps to put it on a seperate drive from the operating system.

[SilkofDrasnia]

While I agree this behaves like some kind of memory or caching issue I am really not convinced it's a memory leak in the truest sense. It seems more like either the DDO client or something else (maybe .NET related?) is trying to hit the protected memory cache of the OS and causing a crash.

Folks, perhaps it would be helpful if everyone who experiences this issue would post up their system specs.


Win 7 Pro (x86) up to date
AMD Opteron 180 @ stock speeds
2 GB RAM (1GB x 2)
Motherboard is an old Ali DualSATAII 939
ATI 4850 1 GB video card
ATI Catalyst drivers 11.5 w/ the control center that requires .NET
500 GB Seagate SATA hdd
Dual partitioned with C as the OS drive and D for programs

Maybe we can find some common factor between all our systems, or perhaps it would e useful to have someone who does NOT experience these kinds of issues to post here?

agreed and also ( i havent reasd the whole thread as my eyes would bleed lol) but seem most posting have regular hdd how about some input from peeps with SSD with game installed on the ssd along with the OS

[Seikojin]

Speaking of fragmentation, there was word about a ddo defrag tool so you can defrag the dat files. Apparently, someone used the Lotro tool and it worked and increased perf for their ddo client. But there were some stern warnings about breaking your game if you did that.

I haven't ran into the issue so far, then again, I have been busy elsewhere.

Win 7 ultimate (64bit) up to date
2 Intel Xeon E5430 quad core procs @ 2.66GHz/core
8 Gigs of Ram (There is physically 12 gigs, but capped at 8 for some reason)
Mobo is an HP XW6600 workstation intel motherboard.
Nvidia Quadro FX1800 with 768 Megs of ram And latest WDDM drivers (windows provided)
The game is on a 1TB drive with no pagefile.
The OS drive is a 60GB partiton on the other 1TB drive with a 8gig pagefile.

[Maren_Vond]

Premise: I didn't have time to read the whole thread, as I am raiding.

IMHO there are two aspects in this issue: one is on the pagefile, while the other is the memory leak itself.

As we know, the pagefile is a sizeable virtual memory allocation created on the HD. That's why, if you have an old computer with a slow 5.2rpm HD like me, it can become a bottle-neck and create blue screens of death.

Back in the EU days, there was a thread back on the Codemasters Forums which was named "Minimizing lag on your computer" (or summat like that, I'm going by memory as those forums are currently unavailable). Among other things (clean installs, updated drivers), it also suggested to remove page file if you have enough RAM to support it (2GB+)... I was experiencing a lot of blue screens and so I added more memory and performed that tweak.

Blue screens stopped, so I came to think that my pagefile was in some way corrupted or the HD speed couldn't keep up with data reading AND pagefile reading (bingo!).

If you have large chunks of memory (4GB+), I'd advise to get rid of pagefile: as I'm speaking, my DDO execution is taking about 1.5GB of RAM so loading it all on the memory won't be a huge issue.

On the other hand, I don't have enough data on the mysterious DDO memory leak to make speculations. When I think to the cause, all that comes to mind is:
-swapping
-zoning
So, when you perform too many of these two actions, the game will generate an error (which one?) and crash.

Just my 2 cents.