Skyrim 1.3.10 PC patch adds support for 4GB of RAM
Bethesda snuck out a small Skyrim PC patch yesterday, updating it to version 1.3.10 with official support for using up to 4GB of memory. If you want Skyrim news with more vim, vip and vigor, new Nvidia beta drivers tease performance boosts of up to 25%.
Bethesda snuck out a small PC patch for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim yesterday, updating it to version 1.3.10 with official support for using up to 4GB of memory. What, you want your Skyrim news to have more vim, vip and vigor? How about new Nvidia beta drivers teasing tantalizing performance boosts?
The patch notes for 1.3.10 are simple:
- Support for 4-Gigabyte Tuning (Large Address Aware)
- Fixed issue with accented characters not displaying properly at the end of a line
Support for accessing up to 4GB of memory will allow Skyrim to happily run mods and prettier graphics settings, if you have the RAM to back it up. Modders found a way to bump the previous 2GB cap soon after release, but Bethesda inadvertently blocked it with a patch. Those clever modding types soon found a new workaround, but hey, now it's official--no patches required!
The patch will update automatically through Steam. You probably already have it, in fact.
Nvidia teases performance boosts of "up to 25%" in Skyrim with its new 290.53 beta drivers, though this is of course with specific settings and hardware in certain locations, not a blanket improvement. Nvidia's ambient occlusion profile for Skyrim has also been given a bit of extra pep.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Skyrim 1.3.10 PC patch adds support for 4GB of RAM.
Bethesda snuck out a small Skyrim PC patch yesterday, updating it to version 1.3.10 with official support for using up to 4GB of memory. If you want Skyrim news with more vim, vip and vigor, new Nvidia beta drivers tease performance boosts of up to 25%.-
how do modern PC games (especially of this caliber) NOT support 4gb ram out of the gate?!?!?!
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Generally 32-bit programs leave room for the OS and up until recently that would mean not using all of the spectrum available to the program. This is comparatively new ground for a lot of game developers.
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Most PC gamers have had 4gb of ram for 3-4 years now. I think the real answer is consoles.
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yes, but 64-bit OS's as the primary gaming platform is comparatively new. Consoles have slowed down this as well, but if a 32-bit OS is running a 32-bit program then that program cannot make use of the full 4GB else it would have to drop the OS from RAM and blue screen your ass.
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I still blame consoles, 64-bit OS would be the standard across the board if the Xbox 360 used it.
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No console today has that much RAM, GPU and otherwise, that it would make a difference. The problem stemming from consoles is that games are developed to generally fit inside their limited hardware spec, not an OS issue.
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I guess I keep underestimating the time gap between now and the console launch. I was just thinking to myself "why the fuck did they only put 512 ram in those suckers?!" or whatever the exact number is. Then I realized that this was like 7 years ago, when that was actually still a viable amount to have (kind of).
Fuck we need new consoles.-
I remember when the PS3 specs were announced, I read how much v-ram it had and all kinds of red flags went up. I think it was less of a design decision and more of a cost one. RAM was expensive back then, I remember. And they knew they were going to sell it at a loss for the first few years - I just don't think it was doable.
When the PS3 came out there was already talk of the newer graphics cards and processors coming out. The PS3 was powerful for the first few months maybe, then it was old tech that could only get older.
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i almost doubt the next-gen systems will be 64bit either... i kinda doubt the systems will have 4+GB.
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I'm guessing the Wii U will probably have a UMA with 2GB or so, and the 720/PS4 will likely be around 3GB, but I have absolutely nothing to base that on.
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IIRC both the 360 (PowerPC) and PS3 (Cell) have 64-bit CPUs; they just don't have over 2 GB of RAM (256MB sys / 256MB video for PS3, 512MB unified for 360).
Server apps and heavy-memory-usage client apps on Windows have been 64-bit or at least large address aware for years and years. Game developers have just been too focused on squeezing down under the console memory ceilings to try and use over 2 GB of memory, despite the obvious benefit of caching more assets in memory.-
As strange as it sounds... the next generation of consoles could be the best thing that happens to PC gaming (as long as they take advantage of 64-bit architecture and higher RAM). Either way, raising the hardware bar of the consoles will push developers to 'unlock' some of the power we've had in out PC's for years.
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Yah... the current consoles have been holding back PC games a bit. Only a handful of developers have really pushed PC hardware.
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Umm... you make it sound like RAM == Memory, which isn't the case. RAM is cache.
I've linked to this before: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2009/06/08/out-of-memory-does-not-refer-to-physical-memory.aspx http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=26320549#item_26320549
Although the title deals with "Out of Memory", the contents cover allocation.
A 32-bit program can use that much memory, regardless of the amount of RAM.-
Well yes, but the likelihood of a time-out crash when putting the entire OS on disk instead of RAM is extremely high.
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The memory manager would have to be retarded to swap critical kernel space cache to disk.
Also, it would never happen or need to happen because even if you only had 2GB or RAM and allocated 4GB of memory, there is no guarantee that any of that is residing in RAM.
You might as well complain that your L1 cache is only 256KB and you could never hold the entire code segment in there.-
Agreed, which is why they wouldn't be large address aware to 4GB or larger without a 64-bit version of Windows since that's how they made sure it wouldn't do that. Just about every other OS is smarter than that but if we want DX then we're on Windows. Also, we're getting way off topic here. Suffice it to say 2GB was more than enough for a very long time and has only recently become an issue.
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Mind your paged pool and non paged pool differences. Some stuff is never, ever written to disk.
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Well, technically RAM is memory - physical memory. Windows utilizes it as part of its virtual memory management, along with disk.
The problem with 32 bit exe's and 32 bit windows is the addressing limitations that your link touched on. Here is another good link on Windows limits: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx
These days, most computers ship with 64-bit CPU's, so there is no need for the 32-bit versions of Windows anymore and I hope to see more 64-bit support for games in the near future.
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They are talking about virtual memory, not RAM. Every single process on your computer has a virtual address space. A 32-bit number has a range of 0-4294967295. This is the range of addressable memory, which is why a 32-bit OS has a limit of 4GB of RAM. It also has a limit of 4GB of virtual memory. Virtual memory is not the same as physical memory (RAM). What happens is that in 32-bit Windows, Windows splits the virtual memory space into two parts: 2GB for the program, 2GB for the OS to do... whatever it does. This is where the "2GB limit" that you hear about comes from. There is a boot option in Windows to alter this split so programs get 3GB while the OS gets 1GB, but this can potentially cause problems depending on which drivers you have, which is why it is not enabled by default.
A 64-bit OS uses a 64-bit number for its address space. A 64-bit number can range over 18 quintillion. That is a lot of virtual memory that a process can use. Because of this, the OS can easily map its memory in some address range out in the middle of nowhere, which allows a 32-bit process to use the full 4GB of virtual memory. However, Windows still defaults a 32-bit process to 2GB of memory? Why is that? Because programmers do stupid things. People have written programs that assume that they will only have 2GB of memory. If you were to open up the full address space, the OS may give them memory above the previous 2GB limit and cause the program to crash. That is why Microsoft added the Large Address Aware flag. By enabling that flag in your program, you tell Windows that you don't do stupid things and that you can use the full address space.
All this patch does is enables that flag. This lets the program use the full 4GB of address space on 64-bit Windows. On 32-bit Windows, it will still use 2GB of address space, unless the user is using the /3G boot option, in which case it will get 3GB of virtual memory to use. This will let people run higher detail textures and more mods, which they couldn't before because the game was hitting the 2GB limit and crashing.-
So what happens when you disable virtual memory?
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You are thinking of the pagefile. You cannot disable virtual memory. Nor can you completely eliminate paging (I believe Windows will still page various .dll files and whatnot.) If you turn off the pagefile, I believe you run the risk of getting "out of memory" errors if your programs try to use more memory than you have RAM.
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^this.
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Where does Windows normally store virtual memory on the HDD, out of curiousity?
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I stopped using the compass in general in Oblivion, Skyrim, and even Dead Island....so much better for me just to happen on quests than make it a point A to point B/connect the dots type game.
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That's normal for the Liberate x quests.
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Will Smiyh should now run around the Whiskey Media office shouting "Exzecutable!! Exzecutable!!"
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haha that was funny. i totally used to say that too so he's not alone.
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What the what? Ground and wall texture flicker is back and my FPS took a nosedive.
