Windows needs more memory...

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GlobusDiablo
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Windows needs more memory...

Postby GlobusDiablo » Wed Mar 02, 2016 8:28 pm

Never seen this one before.

On turning off E: D I see a warning on my desktop. Windows (8.1) needs more memory. Please close Elite: Dangerous exe.

I've got a gtx780 with 3 gigs, and 8 standard.

And I've Horizons.

Is it my standard ram, or graphics card?...
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby charlie2alpha » Wed Mar 02, 2016 8:40 pm

That kind of warning is always about the main system RAM. I find it strange though, Windows will just use the page file in such a case.
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby GlobusDiablo » Wed Mar 02, 2016 8:45 pm

charlie2alpha wrote:That kind of warning is always about the main system RAM. I find it strange though, Windows will just use the page file in such a case.


Cheers. I have no idea what you are on about. I'm just a regular PC user. Never seen that warning before though and I've been playing Horizons since release.

No other windows open behind.

Update:

I had just spent the last hour trying to get to grips with surface missions. Taking off, landing, deploying SRV, going back up, down again and so on. Don't know if that stressed the memory more than usual.
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby StaticRadion » Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:33 am

Could also be talking about your page file. Unless you set the size manually yourself windows sets the max size of your page file aka disk space it uses as a type of RAM and sometimes it does not set it anywhere near large enough. Windows 7 has the reverse problem and it sets a monstrously large page file that it can never use.

General rule is that your page file should be 1) mostly on a different drive than your boot drive, 2) a maximum of 1.5 times larger than your RAM, and 3) in increments of 250. The min dump file that can be offloaded to the page file is 250MB. That being said you should have a very small page file on your boot drive and the rest on another as seen here.
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WIth 8GB of RAM you are looking at a min page file of 8250MB and a maximum of 12250MB. For referance I set my computer back to system managed size and I created a very small page file of 1856MB in comparison to the 12250 I usually have it set at. Getting into more advanced modalities there are windows experts that say to use the max usage, peak commit, - physical RAM formula for the min and double that number for the max.

This takes into account the idea that your cpu will nearly grind to a halt if it is processing the full usage of your RAM and a large page file. While this is true you would have to go to the effort of finding out what your peak commit is and well most people would not want to go to that effort considering we live in the age of terabyte drives.
Last edited by StaticRadion on Fri Mar 04, 2016 12:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby DustKart » Thu Mar 03, 2016 8:52 am

I used to get the same problem occasionally with my 780.
I have no pagefile but added 8GB of memory and the problem went away. :)
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby stereoBear » Thu Mar 03, 2016 9:21 am

DustKart wrote:I have no pagefile but added 8GB of memory and the problem went away. :)

Yeah you managed to fill the original 8GB and w/o pagefile that's it, you're out of RAM 8-)
With 16GB you should be fine for the time being. I only have a pagefile because there was a game that could not cope with that fact, i don't even remember what it was :|
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby Flip » Thu Mar 03, 2016 11:41 am

Could also be a memory leak somewhere, if you didn’t shut your PC down for some time. The fact that you never saw this error before would tend to make it plausible. The workaround, in this case, would be to shut the PC down, wait a couple of minutes, then start it up again.
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby StaticRadion » Thu Mar 03, 2016 11:43 am

DustKart wrote:I used to get the same problem occasionally with my 780.
I have no pagefile but added 8GB of memory and the problem went away. :)

I am on windows 10, I have 12Gb of Ram, my normal commitment of RAM is 2.5 GB, and my peak commitment when I game and or record is 22GB+ of system memory. I have seen a lot of "I dont use page file" comments around the internet the last few years and they are really kind of irk me because of how easy it is to set up your page file correctly. The other reason is because with the exception of one person I have not been able to get a single person to give me a good answer to the question, "What was your reason for removing your page file?"

So what was your reason? You can choose to not answer, but really if you are going to throw out advice that will reduce the performance of the average gaming computer and can potentially cause a system to become unstable then you should at least be able to back it up with some comprehensive reasoning.
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby DustKart » Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:17 pm

Easy tiger! first world problems and all that!
It wasn't advice, it was a statement.
I didn't want my pagefile on my SSD nor my games drive so I chose not to have one.
Sorry that irks you!
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Re: Windows needs more memory...

Postby GlobusDiablo » Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:35 pm

Thanks very much everyone for trying to help me. :)

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Horizons indeed did use more ram, and it's definitely a larger work load as my fans become noticable when entering a planets "sphere".

I'll be keeping my eye on it, but as I plan to buy a new rig (16 gigs this time) when the Pascal hits (hopefully this summer) I don't think I'll be doing anything about it unless I have to.

Fly safe and play nice. ;)
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