[Win 7 - Steam] Possible Memory Leak.

Drueric

I have been debating whether or not to bring this up, since I had issues with my x-fi sound card. However, I have used windows generic driver, and 3 different x-fi drivers and have had the same result each time. After about an hour to 2 hours of play, my framerates go to hell and I have to restart the game. From my past experience with other games, this behavior generally points to a memory leak. The sound card itself could possibly be the culprit, but no other game Im playing has this issue, so I strongly leaning toward the existence of a memory leak in this program.

Gate70

Are you seeing anything in task manager which would support this. e.g. if I start the game it runs at about 90-100mb and 5-15% cpu. I'll leave it open for a while and see what difference it makes but would be helpful if you could provide your starting figures and some at the stage where you experience issues.
Thanks

Drueric

I did as you suggested. CPU usage began at about 1-2%.

After 2 hours with the program running, I played the game for the first hour, at that time the usage was around 7% then left my computer with the game running on pause for another hour. I came back, unpaused the game and continued playing and the framerates were then unplayable.. I tried to play but I was waiting just for mouse cursors to appear for several seconds, THEN I went and looked at cpu usage, and it was as high as 17% while ranging between 15%-17% when the game was idle. I may leave the game running for a third hour and see what the cpu usage says then, assuming the game doesnt close itself.

So what do you make of it.

Gate70

It sounds possible. Is the memory use increasing too?

edit, I've had a game running a bit over 2 hours, doing the odd movement and area transition. CPU and memory have both been stable and in the earlier stated range. Can you advise what area you were in when the game was left idle and who is in your party so I can check if there is anything specific there.

Thanks

Drueric

I actually left the game running for several hours and have come back to it now. The cpu usage is average 20% with spikes as high as 35% although it hasnt had any performance impact on any other application I have running at the same time. just in the game itself. I left it idle while in the shadow thief HQ, if you think its relevant.

Well the area transitions are irrelevant I think, as this happens no matter where I am in the game and even if I dont leave the current location. Ill tell you my party list and changes Ive had but I doubt it will make a difference, unless its the protagonist that is the issue.

My protagonist(of course)
Minsc
Anomen
Jahiera. Those 4 have been constant

Others who have come and gone or current in this playthrough

Imoen
viconia
yoshimo
mazzy
valygar
nalia
Jan jansen

I will note, that a few of them who were spose to go to the copper coronet after leaving the party never showed up there. I am still in chapter one.

Yoshimo, and nalia who were told to go to the CC never appeared there when I went there later.

The others, however did go to their appointed places. Mazzy went to her house, valgyar in his cabin, viconia the graveyard, and imoen went to chapter 2 spellhold presumably.

Yoshimo I kicked out of the party right after leaving irenicus starter dungeon
Nalia I kicked out after completing her story where I get her released from jail and take over the castle.

I still have a sneaking suspicion that this issue may be caused by my x-fi sound card.... even though it resembles a memory leak.

Another thing I just noticed, The network and disk monitors are having big usage spike exact same time the cpu usage spikes. I wonder if the connection to steam might be a factor.

Michail

I 've been having a similar problem, with windows becoming unresponsive after steam has been running for a couple of hours. From the task manager, it seems that memory usage by steamwebhelper reached 1,2 GB at least once, but that's only a fraction of my 16. Other times though it's not more than 100 - 150 mb.
Could it be that steam is somehow taxing the graphics card? I mean, windows measures pcu and motherboard memory usage but not GFX chipset and memory, right?

Gate70

I don't have Steam but there were earlier discussions, something like turning the overlay off for a different reason. @Troodon80 can you remember anything on this subject?

If you want to look at graphics card load I've used GPU-Z and it showed that sort of information.

Drueric

Ill try turning off the steam overlay, not sure how though..... when I do, it closes the game also. When i start the game, it starts also. They are tied together it seems. bastards...

dunbar

This may be a stupid comment but I got my games from Steam and I have absolutely no idea what this "steam overlay" is. I play all my games offline: When I start up BG I get the notification "Unable to connect to Steam" followed by the option to "Play in offline mode". In other words I have no interaction with Steam other than to tell them to just "go away" whenever I start up BG.

Drueric

Steam is still running. There will be a little blue and white icon on your taskbar down at the bottom of your screen on the far right.

Drueric

I think this is getting worse. I am having to restart the game more frequently as I progress. These freezes are at exact intervals. literally 1-2 second apart or so. Pretty sure its not a framerate issue. I know what screen tearing from low frames is like, this is different. Also, If I go afk for a little while and come back to the game everything moves in super slow motion, and of course, I then restart it. Are you guys even looking into this? The steam overlay cannot be shut down, (copy protection no doubt) You can go to offline mode but the overlay is still there.