Guild Wars 2

Hi,

A week ago my brother showed me GW 2 on my computer, he ran the game with most graphical settings on MAX (Except reflections and shadows which were set on low) and it went really smooth.

Two days ago i bought my own account and started with the same graphical options, i could play for a day until the trouble started. Suddenly the game stopped and sent me to desktop where a message was waiting, a long one but it said “Not enough memory allocated”. This happened twice.

After some tinkering i lowered the resolution from 1920×1080 to 1600×900 as well as turning some graphic options from high to medium and disabling Anti Aliasing + Best character textures.

The game worked again, i could play for one day. I then got disappointed with the graphics and turned them up just a bit. Could play for some hours then i had two freezes on loading screens. I received the error message again after a crash when i went to the Forest of something battleground. After that twice more, another loading screen crash and one random freeze.

I turned down some graphics again and the game looks really bad now but at least i can play. Not.. i suffered a random crash and i now have the feeling that no matter what i do it keeps crashing.

My PC can handle the latest games with really good graphics, so i know that it is not a matter of a bad PC. I have the latest drivers, 60% free harddisk, tried the repair, no other applications in background.

Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 960T 3.00 GHz 32 bit QUAD core
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6670
RAM: 4.00 GB (3.25 usable)

I am not sure what else to mention besides the entire error report and more details of my PC. I could not get the error to appear again now as the game simply freezes leaving me to Ctrl Alt Delete out.

Any ideas? Of course i want to play again but i also want most graphics on high again except shadows. + Resolution on 1920×1080. Besides the game not working it also looks really bad now with the graphics options. Thanks!!

Wow. I am having similar problems as I just started playing GW2. Came to this forum looking for anyone with a similar situation and yours is pretty much exactly what I am experiencing.

Though, when my game crashes, I end up having to go through this GW2 “Repairing data archive”… As I type this, it looks like my GW2 is updating? Are you experiencing any of this or are you able to just restart GW2 after a crash without anything like this?

Judging from your brief system specs that you posted. You may not have enough RAM to run the game at the settings you want. My PC when running GW2 (plus firefox, pidgin, steam, and some other small programs) uses almost 4GB. I run GW2 at highest settings on my machine.

You graphics card also looks like it only has 512MB or 1GB of RAM. 512 is most likely too small, but if you have the 1GB version, that should be enough.

I’m also running into memory issues, but it’s because I have some bad sticks in my rig at the moment. I have to wait for santa to give me the 12GB I wanted.

@Squince – I don’t HAVE to go trough repairs to restart but i did it once, it changed nothing. The process you are seeing though is probably the repair process, it looks the same as the update one.

As i look for answers multiple people are telling me my RAM is not enough or the 32 bit is not sufficient. I think this is strange, as my PC runs the latest games on high and they look a million times better than GW graphics. Of course every game uses a different engine.

@Mithilander – It’s like playing Crysis on max and then having trouble with Runescape, it just doesn’t make sense. So i have to upgrade because some component of this game is off-the-charts intensive?

I was told by knowledgeable friends that even the newest games run fine on 4.0 GB ram, and also told 32 bit and 64 bit do not make a big difference. Are they wrong?

And if i can run the game on maximum without shadows for a few days straight, doesn’t that show that my PC is perfectly capable of doing it? How can i not have enough of something, but still play like i have enough until random times come where it crashes?

I think i have 1GB on my video card.

I assume you have 32bit OS which is why you only have 3.25 GB usable. With windows and other background apps likely you are below 2GB free ram which will cause you to crash eventually.

• get more ram
• upgrade 64bit
• disable background processes/applications.

That’s right i got 32 bit. And 3.25GB usable. Of course i don’t run any background processes. I might not know much about PC’s but this is information 101.

As i am writing this i have EVERY graphic option to MAX, except shadows which is off. 1920×1080 and boy it looks great. Everything runs wonderfully. How is it that somehow my PC is not good enough?

Obviously the smoothness of gameplay and everything else indicates it is good enough. So other than random crashes there is not much wrong. Can it be that GW2 starts out using low ram until a point where it has reached “too much to handle” for my PC? Is that what is causing these crashes? Thanks for the replies btw

You might not run background processes explicitly , but there are tons of them there.
Look at task manager. Everything you install usually tend to load background task/service/processes. Windows alone will have dozens of stuff running in the background.

When you set graphics to max settings it will use more textures etc which eats up more ram. Since your system is low on ram it will crash eventually. You have 3.25 usable, that doesn’t mean its free available ram for gw2 to use. Yes, GW2 will start out using less ram and eventually as you play more things are loaded to the point where you will crash running out of memory.

I would check to see how much RAM you are using under a typically load of your computer. If it’s anywhere near 3GB (even though you have some extra) then I would say that is the culprit.

Another thought would be if you are running out of RAM, how much of your pagefile are you using? Pagefile is like RAM, but its just space reserved on the hard drive for RAM to use. Pagefile is used when things get tight on space or information stored on RAM isn’t often accessed. If you haven’t messed with the pagefile settings on your computer, then it’s prolly at its default size, which is normally 2x the amount of RAM you have installed.

Note: Pagefile is ultra slow compared to RAM since its stored on a hard drive.

Just upgrade to 64bit and buy more ram. They are cheap now. 8GB is like 25 bucks.

Your problem is that you’re running a 32-bit OS, which can be a real pain for modern games due to the restrictions 32-bit imposes on memory allocation. I’ve noticed in the past 2-3 years more and more games are starting to have problems as a result, which at best leads to one or two restricted graphical options (for example GW2 prevents the useage of high rez character textures on a 32-bit OS) and at worst leads to out of memory / memory allocation crashes like the ones you’re experiencing.

The best way to fix these crashes is to switch to a 64-bit OS (PS: your X4 960T is a 64-bit processor and thus fully capable of running a 64-bit version of Windows).

While I know that’s not the answer some people want to hear, it is the only good longterm solution if you want to get the most out of your system. 32-bit stems from a time when it was hard to imagine we’d ever have more than 4gb of physical memory in our systems or that we’d want a single application to be able to allocate more than 2gb of virtual memory. And yet that is the point we’re at right now, with a lot of games easily being able to use up more than 2gb virtual memory with the graphics settings on high and with most gaming systems incorporating at least 4gb of system memory (which when combined with any amount of VRAM on the graphics card instantly exceeds the 32-bit limit of 4gb useable physical RAM).

Now it’s usually the 2gb virtual memory limit that’s the culprit with memory crashes like these on a 32-bit OS. In some cases though the crash may be the result of the entire system running out of memory. Normally speaking this shouldn’t happen, because if windows is running low on memory it off-loads less important stuff to the pagefile, however if you have a large amount of stuff running in the background (especially memory-hogging applications) or if your pagefile isn’t very big, you could run into problems here while running GW2.

This is why if you aren’t able to upgrade to 64-bit (or not immediately) you should check what is running in the background on your system and possibly give it a good clean, uninstall any unnecessary or leftover programs, etc. Also check the size of your pagefile by going to Start -> Control Panel -> Advanced System Settings (top left) -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced. By default your pagefile should be between 1 and 2 times the size of your system memory (so 4-8gb). If this is not the case, increase the size manually – in fact since you’re on a memory-limited system due to 32-bit I would recommend at least 8gb on the pagefile. Since your pagefile is written to the harddrive also make sure you have enough free space on your system drive (I recommend keeping 10-15% of the total size free at all times).

If you’ve checked all of the above and you’re still getting crashes then short of upgrading to 64-bit your only option is keeping the graphics settings turned down to reduce the memory the game uses.

kirito.4138:

I assume you have 32bit OS which is why you only have 3.25 GB usable. With windows and other background apps likely you are below 2GB free ram which will cause you to crash eventually.

• get more ram
• upgrade 64bit
• disable background processes/applications.

User Address Space limits are unique to each application, having other stuff open won’t affect the 2GB limit

I appreciate the responses and the time you have all taken, i have some pretty good leads now and i know what to do. I have modified the Pagefile, it is now initial size 4000MB and maximum size 8000MB. The default was 3325 MB. Let’s hope it helps.

Eventually, you’ll probably still crash since it is a 32bit OS limitation. Best to upgrade to 64bit and get more ram.

If you can’t try this or lower graphic settings.

kirito.4138:

I assume you have 32bit OS which is why you only have 3.25 GB usable. With windows and other background apps likely you are below 2GB free ram which will cause you to crash eventually.

• get more ram
• upgrade 64bit
• disable background processes/applications.

Simply not true and you should quit replying with this. You can run most modern games, while running Windows 7/32, while watching a movie, and listening to music, and it won’t go below the 2gb free ram unless the game has memory leaks.

What kirito & squall said ^^.

The problem is that the max addressable ram is 2GB in 32-bit for a single application under any circumstance, the maximum ram installed is irrelevant in this instance because it simply cannot access it due to no LAA available to 32-bit OS.

The 3GB switch is a legitimate workaround but you do have to be aware of the amount of background kernel processes when using this. I suggest you test using this first but there really isn’t any reason not to install 64-bit as it is free as the keys are identical…

I had the same problem. Upgraded to Windows 8 64 bit and added four GB more RAM and have not had a problem since. Was running Windows 7 32bit with 4 GB of RAM.