BF4 and Memory Usage

J

jnick

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Sep 25, 2004
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I'm currently running 8GB of RAM and everywhere I read, most reviewers state that BF4 really needs 16GB as it hits 8GB pretty fast. However, I've been monitoring my memory usage and I've yet to hit over 5GB of RAM in usage when playing MP.

I'm on the fence on what to do. Am I missing something with memory usage or can others confirm that 16GB isn't really needed? I was about to buy 16GB of DDR3-2400 Gskill Trident however I'm tempted to take that $150 and throw it towards my video card funds to upgrade my 570 to a better card.

My options are something like:

A: Buy Gskill Trident 16GB 2400Mhz memory & an R9 280x
B: Don't buy memory and splurge for a R9 290/780

What are your opinions?
 
I highly doubt. I bet this is a case of the fact there are 64 bit binaries now and some people tested the game with 12 or 16GB of RAM on their rig and saw it was using 8GB of it or something and came to the conclusion it really needs 16GB of RAM. Of course a 64 bit app will use as much RAM as possible if it's free for the taking and it can use it. Doesn't mean it "needs it" but it's just very convenient it is there to offload stuff.
 
Yeah I agree with styckx. I was going to upgrade to 16GB but it's not worth it, especially where the prices are atm.

Treat yourself to the R9 290 and see your upgrade in game instead of a graph.
 
I have 16GB but I have yet to see it hit 8. It's generally somewhere between 5-6GB . Maybe once I saw 7, or close to it.
 
I have 12Gb. I usually see BF4 use 5-7GB. 8gb should be fine
 
I was just using Task Manager to show me the memory usage on BF4 and it spiked over 8GB/s total system usage so yes it will use that much memory.
 
Godmachine said:
I was just using Task Manager to show me the memory usage on BF4 and it spiked over 8GB/s total system usage so yes it will use that much memory.
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"Will" use, yes, but remember that's also running other things in the background, and Windows takes up a variable amount of memory. Unless you are running 8GB and regularly seeing page file usage I wouldn't worry about it.
 
One thing, ssd really help the mp loading. I arrive in tge server at least 5 to 10 second before everybody else. I play with some guys with ssds too and we are always the first on the server, on the prison level last weekend we actually appeared several second before the other team, we where already almost at there spawn, some accused us of hacking, but bf4 is the first game that i see a massive difference in loading times
 
There is also a bug in the game where it will use all of your system memory and require a reboot to release it.
 
Ryoohki360 said:
One thing, ssd really help the mp loading. I arrive in tge server at least 5 to 10 second before everybody else. I play with some guys with ssds too and we are always the first on the server, on the prison level last weekend we actually appeared several second before the other team, we where already almost at there spawn, some accused us of hacking, but bf4 is the first game that i see a massive difference in loading times
Click to expand...

Ugh. As nice as that sounds I would never install a 30GB game on an SSD. Regardless the size. Unless I had a 500GB slave drive just for games, which gets me thinking....
 
Blackstone said:
Any advantage to running tripple channel.
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Triple and quad channel have no benefit for gaming, that's strictly server stuff. In fact, triple and quad suffer more latency than dual. So unless you're actually running the sort of server and workstation stuff that can use it you take a slight performance hit from it.

Gaming isn't something that uses it, so it's just a hit.
 
Ryoohki360 said:
One thing, ssd really help the mp loading. I arrive in tge server at least 5 to 10 second before everybody else. I play with some guys with ssds too and we are always the first on the server, on the prison level last weekend we actually appeared several second before the other team, we where already almost at there spawn, some accused us of hacking, but bf4 is the first game that i see a massive difference in loading times
Click to expand...

It made a world of a difference in bf3 as well.
 
"Why spend money optimizing a game if we can make the same profit without doing it?"

CEO EA
 
As far as memory usage, I have seen a maximum of 7.5GB used while playing BF4. That included everything else running also such as the OS and background programs. I am thankful I got 16GB when it was cheap.$100+ tax a couple years ago WOOT! If I was running 8GB I would be close to hitting the wall already.

===========

Renapd said:
There is also a bug in the game where it will use all of your system memory and require a reboot to release it.
Click to expand...

Care to explain? I had some horrendous hard drive thrashing and saw that Windows decided to balloon the pagefile to 16GB after playing BF4 for several hours. The RAM usage at that time was about 7.5GB which is the max I've seen on numerous occasions. I wonder if it's related.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Care to explain? I had some horrendous hard drive thrashing and saw that Windows decided to balloon the pagefile to 16GB after playing BF4 for several hours. The RAM usage at that time was about 7.5GB which is the max I've seen on numerous occasions. I wonder if it's related.
Click to expand...

I'm on 8GB of ram and I've been doing fine so far but I did have one long play session over the weekend where I had almost the exact same thing happen. Saw my hard drive going nuts and noticed the pagefile was getting awful big. My performance tanked when that started happening but it is otherwise practically locked at 60FPS (vsync on). It would make sense if this was a bug because shorter play sessions are fine. No page file thrashing.
 
B!nd. said:
Ugh. As nice as that sounds I would never install a 30GB game on an SSD. Regardless the size. Unless I had a 500GB slave drive just for games, which gets me thinking....
Click to expand...

So if you had a 256GB SSD you would not install it on an ssd? Almost every game I consistently play is over 20GB. Its not abnormal. Although BF3 is 38GB lol

Swtor - 24GB
WOW - 25GB
 
Vortec said:
So if you had a 256GB SSD you would not install it on an ssd? Almost every game I consistently play is over 20GB. Its not abnormal. Although BF3 is 38GB lol

Swtor - 24GB
WOW - 25GB
Click to expand...

Damn. I didn't I haven't played WoW since TBC. I don't remember it being that much.

I have about 300GB worth of games and I'm the kind of person that likes to keep them organized and all in the same place. If I had it as a slave then yeah, I probably would. But I only see SSDs as an OS option atm and I wouldnt want to share it with any games.
 
B!nd. said:
Ugh. As nice as that sounds I would never install a 30GB game on an SSD. Regardless the size. Unless I had a 500GB slave drive just for games, which gets me thinking....
Click to expand...

Why not, it's on a 256gig, with 2 other games. My windows is installed on a old generation intel drive 80g, for the last 3 years and it's still rocking, have about 18gig left on it because i don't own much software for it.

all my other games are on WD Black..
 
Ryoohki360 said:
One thing, ssd really help the mp loading. I arrive in tge server at least 5 to 10 second before everybody else. I play with some guys with ssds too and we are always the first on the server, on the prison level last weekend we actually appeared several second before the other team, we where already almost at there spawn, some accused us of hacking, but bf4 is the first game that i see a massive difference in loading times
Click to expand...
I load into servers very fast, have never been beat with my SSD setup. Once loaded into a rush server and got the plant off before the enemy even spawned lol.

(2) 128gb OCZ Vector SSD's Raid-0, (1) 120gb Kingston V+200 SSD
 
Here is one thread on it. http://answers.ea.com/t5/Battlefield-4/BF4-PC-Memory-leaking-94-Memory-usage-with-12GB/td-p/1731447

If you are affected, which I am. BF will use all of you ram and won't release it until you reboot. The game slows to a slideshow when this happens. Quitting the game or killing the process does nothing. The only solution that works for me is to quit the server after each game.


CaptNumbNutz said:
Care to explain? I had some horrendous hard drive thrashing and saw that Windows decided to balloon the pagefile to 16GB after playing BF4 for several hours. The RAM usage at that time was about 7.5GB which is the max I've seen on numerous occasions. I wonder if it's related.
Click to expand...
 
I don't own bf4, but when I was playing bf3, I noticed a huge difference in ram usage depending on how big the servers are. On a 64 player map, ram usage reached roughly 6gb regularly. On smaller maps It was more like 4gb
 
If you can alt tab out the game instantly than you probably have enough ram. But if you alt-tab and it takes a while with hard drive thrashing you know that you could use more ram.

It's the simpliest real world test instead of just looking at your task bar for ram usage.
 
Not sure if there's a massive price difference, but getting 2400mhz RAM to actually run at that speed can be tricky on most mainboards. Some posts I've seen from MSI's staffers implying that RAM makers even listing that speed is questionable.
If you see some 2000, 2133, or 2200 RAM for less, you can probably go that route instead.
 
Same here, I rushed out an bought 16GB thinking I would need it. Waste of money since this year or next I will be moving to DDR4. :(
 
When i was playing BF4 it reached almost 9GB of ram a couple days ago. Around 8,800MB of ram was being used for it. Luckily i have 32GB of memory ;). Good to always get more ram when you can:cool:. That was when Mantle was activated though so it might be different with DX.
 
shadyqwerty said:
Have fun w/ your 4 x 4 GB = $600! :D
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ddr4 is higher density so it would likely be 4x8GB for a similar price that 4x4gb cost at the release of ddr3.

so if you went with 4x4gb it would likely be more sensibly priced.

at least you would think, but knowing the money grubbing fat cats it will be over priced any way
 
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