SmartHeap error and the "Stutters" May Be Related

[dogness]

So far, these have been treated as two separate issues and I think they may be related. If you have either one, please read the following.

I have a pretty high-end system and I played 1.29 just fine with all graphics settings set to max. Machine specs:

Core i7 920 running @ 4Ghz

3GB DDR3 RAM

Pair of 8800GTs running in SLI

Pair of WD Raptors running in RAID 0

WinXP (32-bit)

After installing 1.30, I noticed that during initial game load my hard drives run like crazy and continue to run for about 10 minutes. Eventually they settle down. However, every time I encounter something new in the game, my FPS goes to 1 and the game freezes for a couple seconds while my hard drive goes crazy. In other words, I was suffering from the "stutters".

The other night, I did some tests using Windows Task Manager to monitor the ww2_sse2.exe process while the game was loading. Here is what I saw:

Once I got to the persona select screen, my hard drive would still be running. My mem usage for ww2_sse2.exe would be under 100MB. However, my virtual memory (VM) usage would be 500+ MB and climbing. I would wait for the hard drive to stop and my VM usage would cap out at a little over 1 GB. Meanwhile ww2_sse2.exe was somewhere around 100MB. Considering that I have plenty of RAM free on my machine, this cannot be by design. Something is very wrong here.

Now, when I ran those tests, I had my VM file set to 6GB. I thought I could trick ww2_sse2.exe into using my RAM by shrinking the size of the VM file to 600MB. My hope was that (in some very backwards logic), ww2_sse2.exe would run out of VM and start using the available RAM. That did not happen.

Instead, ww2_sse2.exe reported using about 900MB of VM. How it did that when the VM file was only 600MB, I do not know. I pressed on and tried to spawn in somewhere. That's when the game crashed and I got the "SmartHeap" error. It told me I was out of VM.

"Interesting" I thought to myself.

My temp solution for the problem is to crank my VM file back up to 6GB. I suggest that anyone else who has this problem should try the same.

For the long term, CRS is going to need to fix this. I had not heard of SmartHeap before this problem, but a quick Google search reveals it to be some sort of 3rd-party memory allocation manager. I can only guess that this is something new that CRS added for 1.30 and that they do not have it configured properly.

[dogness]

Here's an image to demonstrate what I am talking about. All I did was launch the game and wait for my hard drive to stop running.

[elegance]

For the long term, CRS is going to need to fix this. I had not heard of SmartHeap before this problem, but a quick Google search reveals it to be some sort of 3rd-party memory allocation manager. I can only guess that this is something new that CRS added for 1.30 and that they do not have it configured properly.

http://forums.battlegroundeurope.com/showthread.php?t=213715&highlight=smartheap

Smartheap is definitely not new in 1.30

[xenon84]

Here's an image to demonstrate what I am talking about. All I did was launch the game and wait for my hard drive to stop running.

Althought probably not directly connected.

wmpnetwk.exe is using half a gig of ram as it is. free this up & other unwanted applications using "EndItAll" & give wwii a bigger playground.

S!

[elegance]

Dogness did you try to run the game without the 2 resident trojan scanners, zone alarm firewall, carbonite online backup service, windows media player network sharing service, zune network sharing service and 2 chrome instances running at the same time in the background. And thats only stuff I can see on your screenshot there is probably more.

[Tigger6]

I think we need all these threads in one. It seems to me that about 30% of people are hit with FPS problems in 1.30, however Gophur is not one of them, we need to find a way how to recreate this on their computers, so they can actually fix it. Unless that happens, I'm one of those who will need to unsub.

[hathcock]

I tried bumping my PF up to 6GB (in addition to the 3GB of actual RAM). No luck. SmartHeap still "runs out" of memory.

ONLY happens when I despawn.

[branko]

Up until 2 days ago, I was s******ing at you, Hath. Then, in two busy battles, I got the Smartheap error (yesterday and earlier today - 2 different towns ... but a common thread).

Machine Specs:

Intel® Core2 Extreme CPU X9650 @ 3.00GHz (Quad Core ... not 'clocked)

4GB DDR3 SDRAM

9800GT x 2 (in SLi mode) - GeForce Driver Ver 185.85

700GB SCSI HD

Page File: 1236MB Used 4099MB Available (before game start)

Windows Vista Ultimate (SP1)

(GFx drivers and BIOS are up to date)

Both times I have got the "Out of Memory Error" was when respawning into a hectic firefight.

On the first occasion, after three tries at "IGNORE" (one after each respawn) - which allows me to carry on playing - I got the SmartHeap error and CTD.

On the second occasion I was able to carry on playing after 3 "IGNORES", but my mini-map whited out, the main map was a white out and on death and respawn the brigade screens were shown in the Map Window, with the last view of the game world still visible behind it. I should note that other avatars were moving in slow motion! Although it took some time, eventually the main map began to work again whilst at the Lobby screens, and after even longer the brigade lists reappeared. However the game was running so slowly that I had to EXIT.

Like you, Hath, I get a serious drop in FPS when a "new unit" is close by.

I also get the stutters when an onscreen message (The Enermy has captured XXX) is displayed.

My FPS is down in general from 1.29.3 and seriously down in hetic situations.

Looking at certain trees in binos also brings back that old FPS reduction thing, from way back when.

I should note for clarity: I only get the serious problems when respawning (a few times) into hectic situations ... A day of light fighting (or FB duty) causes me no Smartheap issues.

As you say, something is definately amiss.

[AHWULF]

Smartheap has been around for 15 years. I used to compete with them on the Mac (which they don't support now). It's good software, when you have smartheap "errors" it means there are bugs in the game code, not SH. All memory in either OS is virtual memory, the OS VM system uses physical memory on demand. All the disk thrashing you hear is loading from the archive files. It's possible you need to defrag your hard drive if the archives are fragmented the hard disk will spin a lot extra.

On the mac currently it take about 1.05GB of ram to load the game, and about 1.30 at spawn time. This is waaay up from 1.29.

Why FPS is affected for some people (even with lots of RAM) and not everyone is a mystery.

[dogness]

All memory in either OS is virtual memory, the OS VM system uses physical memory on demand. All the disk thrashing you hear is loading from the archive files. It's possible you need to defrag your hard drive if the archives are fragmented the hard disk will spin a lot extra.

1.29 did not have all that disk thrashing. My initial game load time has gone from less than a minute to several minutes. Just to placate the inevitable calls to "defrag" I did it a few days ago and it had no affect. This is not a disk fragmentation issue.

What is happening is the game is loading everything into my VM page file instead of RAM. This, of course, is pointless as it is just copying the data from one part of the disk to another. There is no reason for the game to be using 15MB of RAM at the Persona Select Screen.

Someone above mentioned that SmartHeap is not new. In that case, CRS must have modified something so that it is no longer configured properly. There is nothing I can do as an end-user to make the game take advantage of the 2GB of RAM that are available instead of putting everything into the VM page file.

[dogness]

Dogness did you try to run the game without the 2 resident trojan scanners' date=' zone alarm firewall, carbonite online backup service, windows media player network sharing service, zune network sharing service and 2 chrome instances running at the same time in the background. And thats only stuff I can see on your screenshot there is probably more.[/quote']

No need to. I run all that stuff all the time with every game I play including WW2OL version 1.29. If you added all that stuff up, it is less than 100MB of RAM on a 3GB system.

I understand that you are trying to be helpful, but none of that is related to the fact that version 1.30 is using 1 GB of VM and ignoring my available RAM.

[Tigger6]

No need to. I run all that stuff all the time with every game I play including WW2OL version 1.29. If you added all that stuff up, it is less than 100MB of RAM on a 3GB system.

I understand that you are trying to be helpful, but none of that is related to the fact that version 1.30 is using 1 GB of VM and ignoring my available RAM.

Ha! I'm gonna so check this. I suspected a harddisk problem all along, as I have a laptop with a slow disk.

[elegance]

Its really strange because the 1.30 loads for me faster then 1.29. Doesnt matter if its on my WIN XP desktop (X2 4200+ and ATI Card) with a 7200rpm hd or on my wifes VISTA Home Premium laptop with a 5400rpm hd (core2duo with nvidia card). I do have some issues on the laptop though. I get the white map (despite affinity set to all cores) and very low fps sometimes when I start the game. But when I exit the game and reload it again everything is fine.

[dogness]

Its really strange because the 1.30 loads for me faster then 1.29. Doesnt matter if its on my WIN XP desktop (X2 4200+ and ATI Card) with a 7200rpm hd or on my wifes VISTA Home Premium laptop with a 5400rpm hd (core2duo with nvidia card). I do have some issues on the laptop though. I get the white map (despite affinity set to all cores) and very low fps sometimes when I start the game. But when I exit the game and reload it again everything is fine.

This is definitely a problem that is isolated to a subset of the userbase. So far, though, we have been unable to identify the characteristic that is common to all those affected.

[Bierbaer]

I'm also getting the smartheap error. Also CTD's and CTHL became more often.

I mostly run 2 accounts at the same time, sometimes even 3. Funny thing with CTHL's is, that only one account is cthl'ing but not the other one(s). So I figure it has nothing to do with my connection, its rather game related?

Compared to 1.29 I also was monitoring that it is taking forever to alt tab between 2 or 3 online accounts now. it happens only in the beginning, getting a black screen for up to 5-10 seconds till the other window loaded.

Also but not that often, I'm monitoring dramatically performance hits when I get the system messages we captured this or that cp. but that is not happening very often.

Last but not least tho I would say that performance (fps) have been increased. I had 3 accounts online right before the server burp, all spawned in and still roughly 90 fps on each.

There was no big battle around tho.

Systems specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550

2x 2 GB DDR3 - 1600 eXceleram

ASUS Rampage Extreme Socket 775 x48

Gainward Radeon HD 4870x2

PSU Tagan PipeRock 1300W

Vista 64bit Ultimate SP1

bb

[dogness]

Nothing to say Gophur?

[branko]

Did a bit of memory checking while in and out of game today:

In Lobby (first access):

800MB Physical RAM used

PageFile: 3240MB Used - 2096MB Available

In game (1 hour playtime):

1011MB Physical RAM used

PageFile: 3787MB Used - 1548MB Available

1 Hour 30 mins - Memory Error - SmartHeap Out Of Memory (CTD)

I respawned and played in Twerp - So spread out action, for 3 hours ... no issues.

Went to Schilde - Condensed Action - Got Memory Error (twice) but exited before SmartHeap CTD

[Tigger6]

I have stutters (video in my new thread), but my memory stays at about constant 1-1.3GB RAM and 0.9-1.3GB VM (with 3 GB of RAM). My stutters do not seem to be related to memory, although I wonder why is the game using swap when the memory is not full. This is not the usual behavior I suppose, for instance right now (different OS of course):

Mem: 3976364k total, 940192k used, 3036172k free, 31436k buffers

Swap: 3908480k total, 0k used, 3908480k free, 463036k cached

[dogness]

tigger, what OS are you using?

[dogness]

Come on Gophur, you reply to every thread but this one.

Take a look at the picture I posted and tell me that is expected behavior.

[buckly]

I offered to send my PC to CRS so they could use my compy to find and fix these issues. I really don't mind. I just want them to fix it.

[elegance]

Buckly turn of the notifications in hud settings (the messages that make you ctd) and try to turn off player names (no icon, ctrl+i by default). See if that helps you.

[GOPHUR]

Come on Gophur, you reply to every thread but this one.

Take a look at the picture I posted and tell me that is expected behavior.

Dunno for sure, I'll ask the coders to look.

I can say that I am not surprised with all of the non essential processes you are running. The 3 gigs of ram you are running is probably not enough for all of that to run efficiently.

Still, it might be a good way to find out what is causing the memory conflicts with smart heap.

[dogness]

I fixed the problem.

http://forums.battlegroundeurope.com/showthread.php?t=278892

[bogol]

I fixed the problem.

http://forums.battlegroundeurope.com/showthread.php?t=278892

lol