[lead341]

I am running games like Dragon Age 2 or Dawn of War 2 Retribution on the following system:

I7 - 2600 k, Geforce 570 GTX, Asus P8P67, 8 GB Ram etc.

I have been observing the following: whenever I stay in a game for a longer time, performance starts to decrease. In Dawn of War 2 it gets obvious: when I do the benchmark in the beginning it is a bit better than when I do it 2 hours after having played already.
Temperatures are perfectly ok (measuing with AIDA 64). So what might be the reason for that?

Greetings,

lead

 

[Ascii Aficionado]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lead341;13148840
I am running games like Dragon Age 2 or Dawn of War 2 Retribution on the following system:

I7 - 2600 k, Geforce 570 GTX, Asus P8P67, 8 GB Ram etc.

I have been observing the following: whenever I stay in a game for a longer time, performance starts to decrease. In Dawn of War 2 it gets obvious: when I do the benchmark in the beginning it is a bit better than when I do it 2 hours after having played already.
Temperatures are perfectly ok (measuing with AIDA 64). So what might be the reason for that?

Greetings,

lead

Memory leaks and heat are the only things that come to mind.

 

[Farih]

The game eating up more memory over time ?

 

[lead341]

thank you for the very quick replies.

Memory leak could be it - but just for clarification: a memory leak is caused by the software, so it is a mere software issue - right? Or can memory leaks also be "hardware-based"?

 

[-Apocalypse-]

A hardware based memory leak is theoretically possible, the memory simply being unable to erase no longer valid memory, but that would be an epic failure of your RAM, and you'd be unable to really do anything after the computer was turned on for longer than a half hour.

Memory leaks are completely software based and also effectively impossible to solve by the user. I believe DA2 is known to have a huge memory leak, though I thought that was patched. DoW I have no idea about, however memory leaks are not uncommon in rts games.

 

[lead341]

That was very clarifying - wish I had known this forum years ago so probably I could have solved many issues during the last years earlier ;-)

Allow me to ask about another "classical strategy": many times when performance decreases - also in the past - people "restarted" their system.
As far as I understood memory leaks are software/gamebased. So exiting the game should solve the issue. Why should then a restart of the whole system be an option? Is this just a "myth", or can there be particular reasons which deem a system reset a viable option?

 

[-Apocalypse-]

Normally restarting the program is all you need, but sometimes a program won't clear memory correctly when exiting, this occurs a lot in MMOs from my experience.

A system restart will also clear out any memory leaks from OS or another application that you're not thinking of. It's usually unneeded, but it can't hurt. It's kind of like using a blowtorch to light a candle, it does light the candle quite well.

The best way to tell if a program needs a relaunch or a reboot is to restart your computer, load up the game and see how much memory it's taking. Play the game until you see a performance cut, then relaunch the game and see how much memory is allocated, if the two numbers aren't quite close, you probably want to reboot.

Also, if you plan on staying around OCN, do this: http://www.overclock.net/specs.php

 

[brettjv]

Aside from Apocalypse's good advice, I also recommend using the OSD (onscreen display) in the Afterburner application. You can choose for it to provide any (or all) the following numbers while gaming, which appear in one corner of the screen: FPS, Clocks, DirectX Version, Temps, GPU Usage, VRAM usage, Core Voltage, and Fan Speed.

It's an excellent tool for troubleshooting ... it won't detect a system memory leak, but it can help with a LOT of other problems you may encounter. And it's almost inevitable around here that if you ask for advice, people are going to be inquiring along the lines of 'what is your <spec that the OSD shows> looking like'? As Ascii did (indirectly), regarding your temps.

On-topic: I've seen one or two games have this same problem and been able to solve it with an alt-enter ( toggles windowed mode) or an alt-tab out and back in. It's worth a try anyways ...

And welcome to OCN

and as advised, please fill in your system specs so they appear in all your posts like it does w/everyone else. People knowing your gear is critical to giving good advice.

 

[lead341]

Thanks for the good advices and the welcome to the forum. I started editing my signature and inserted some facts about my pc-configuration. The remaining information I will fill in step by step.
Furthermore, I will install the Afterburner programm on my pc and check the OSD. So in case I have further questions I will post it accordingly.

Usually I am searching the forum first for comparable postings, but some problems are quite specific and hard to discern from the large number of posts.

Allow me another question regarding forum usage: right now I got another question regarding memtest86 and prime - what do you recommend: open a new thread in case there aren´t others answering it or continuing this thread, despite that it gets "off-topic"? How is this generally done in this forum?

 

[Ascii Aficionado]

Try to be more specific about the details in your pc sig, it will help in the future.

Example, it says "8gb ram* Try to name the speed and company, and if you OC'd it list the speeds.

Just look at most other peoples system sig.