Morrowind memory leaks (progressive slowdown) -- any solut..

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

(also posted in alt.games.elder-scrolls ... sorry for the duplication if
anyone sees both. I didn't notice this NG at first).

I just started playing Morrowind ("Game of the Year" edition) a couple
of weeks ago... love the game, but can only run it for 1-2 hours at a
time between restarts. After that it starts getting progressively
slower, with pauses every few seconds, sound cutouts, long delays in
moving between areas, etc.

Cities are the worst for bringing this on, especially Vivec, and if I
travel around a lot the slowdowns can start after as little as 30-45
minutes.

This seems to be a well-known memory leak problem that Morrowind's had
from the beginning, which unfortunately even the latest patch from
Bethesda ( v1.4.1313 for Tribunal) hasn't fixed. I've never seen leaks
this bad with any other game

Upgrading my gaming PC from 512MB to 1 gig allowed MW to run a bit
longer before symptoms of the leak show up, but eventually the same
thing still happens.

I don't run with many mods, just the Better Heads, Better Bodies, Visual
Pack texture upgrades, but removing those doesn't help. Had started
with just the base Morrowind install (1.2.0722), but added Tribunal
later for its journal-sorting feature. Presence of Tribunal doesn't
seem to affect the leak much, if at all. I haven't installed the
Bloodmoon CD yet, as from what I've read it only makes this problem
worse (perhaps only in the new areas?)

Have also tried

- fresh install of Win98SE
- setting ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 in SYSTEM.INI, along with
various Pagefile settings (turning off Virtual Memory
completely seems to work best with 1GB installed, but it eventaully
becomes just as laggy)
- setting DontThreadLoad=1 in MORROWIND.INI ... helps a bit


Any other ideas? From reading other posts about this on Google,
apparently not everyone runs into the memory leak issue. Is there
anything else I should try to at least lessen the problem?


System specs are

- NF7-S motherboard, nVidia nforce2 chipset
- Athlon XP2400+ running at 11 x 200Mhz (~XP2700-ish performance)
- 1 GB PC3200
- Maxtor 7200rpm EIDE drive, 45 GB
- GeForce FX 5700 LE, clocked at 420 / 420 MHz, Forceware 61.76...
tried a few other driver versions with little difference
- Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller, Toshiba SCSI DVD-ROM
- using onboard motherboard sound & Ethernet
- Windows 98SE, FAT32 filesystem - would 2000 or XP work any better?


thanks!
--
Jordan.

 

[starwolf]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

"Jordan Hazen" <jnh@aug.com> wrote in message
news:1106268756.564394@coelacanth.aug.com...
> (also posted in alt.games.elder-scrolls ... sorry for the duplication if
> anyone sees both. I didn't notice this NG at first).
>
> I just started playing Morrowind ("Game of the Year" edition) a couple
> of weeks ago... love the game, but can only run it for 1-2 hours at a
> time between restarts. After that it starts getting progressively
> slower, with pauses every few seconds, sound cutouts, long delays in
> moving between areas, etc.
>
<snippage>
From reading other posts about this on Google,
> apparently not everyone runs into the memory leak issue. Is there
> anything else I should try to at least lessen the problem?
>
> System specs are
>
> - NF7-S motherboard, nVidia nforce2 chipset
> - Athlon XP2400+ running at 11 x 200Mhz (~XP2700-ish performance)
> - 1 GB PC3200
> - Maxtor 7200rpm EIDE drive, 45 GB
> - GeForce FX 5700 LE, clocked at 420 / 420 MHz, Forceware 61.76...
> tried a few other driver versions with little difference
> - Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller, Toshiba SCSI DVD-ROM
> - using onboard motherboard sound & Ethernet
> - Windows 98SE, FAT32 filesystem - would 2000 or XP work any better?
>
>
> thanks!
> --
> Jordan.

For what it's worth, I found the Morrowind Tweak Guide at
http://www.tweaktown.com a big help in fixing the issue my system had with
CTD and slowdowns. It still icks up occasionally, but nothing like it used
to, and that's with a system way less than yours. I play with many many
mods, and really only started having a noticable level of slowdown after I
added some gigantic (but excruciatingly desirable) mods like Necessities of
Morrowind.

Coyote

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.morrowind (More info?)

In article <1106268756.564394@coelacanth.aug.com>, jnh@aug.com says...
> - Windows 98SE, FAT32 filesystem - would 2000 or XP work any better?
>

Absolutely not. I get a lot of Crash to Desktop in the same context (but
no slowdown). (Same mobo as yours, 512 Mb RAM, Barton chip overclocked
to 3200+ specs (slowing it down had no effect on Morrowind crashing),
WinXP Pro ServicePack 1 (SP 2 made things a lot worse for me).

Sloppy programming of this kind, I am afraid, has been a 'feature' of
Bethesda since Arena first came out. Integer overflows, memory leaks,
you name it - it's just sloppy; about the first thing you should learn
to avoid once you get into advanced programming (i.e. go beyond "Hello
World" programs). Flow errors and logic and driver problems are a
different kettle of fish - those things are serious and tricky and can
hit everybody. :-\

-P.