crashes and memory issues

[Llewelyn]

Had a few crashes in 1.45. I trimmed back the mod list a lot and cleaned out a lot of old steam workshop files which are no longer relevant, although not active they still get loaded at game start, so slows loading down if nothing else.

If I drive for a while, everything's fine and then the game will either freeze or go black screen, and die. Some of these occasions had a whole bunch of DX11 errors in the game log, other did not, or had nothing unusual. There are a few warnings in the game log for such as version numbers, but no errors to speak of. I daresay a vanilla profile might be more reliable (I'll check, I think I have a mod-free one for testing) but really that isn't the answer, I don't want to play vanilla. Also this same profile was reliable in 1.43 and 1.44, and that's before I trimmed back the mod list for things I'm not using right now.

One thing I have noticed is what looks like bad memory management in the game. I have 4GB video RAM and 16GB system RAM. When I start up and am ready to drive, it's using a bit under 3GB VRAM and a bit under 8GB system. The further I drive, those numbers keep increasing, until after 10 or 15 minutes it's using pretty much all the VRAM and the system RAM use climbs to about 12GB. If I park up those figures stay the same, and even if I return to the launchpad, they stay the same. Seems like the game gradually eats RAM and never gives it back. This might be related to the crashing or might not. It only seems to crash after some period of driving; I haven't seen it crash before I drive, or when I only drove a couple of minutes.

Now I know my system is out of date. Win 10 x64, AMD FX8320, Nvidia GTX960. However, these crashes and eating quite so much RAM are recent. In the previous version, system RAM use didn't go so high.

[Madkine]

After a crash, post your game.log.txt to pastebin.com (no account needed) and then post the link here and we'll have a look for you.
The file can be found at "C:\Users\*USERNAME*\Documents\American Truck Simulator" for a default install.

[Llewelyn]

I may have solved it. Turned off overclocking of my graphics card as the weather is hot and it looked to be running a bit warm. Since then, so far, no more CTD from ATS, so yay!

Although I tested that level of overclocking quite thoroughly before applying it, and it hasn't been an issue before, maybe it was slightly unstable due to the higher ambient temperature.

[Llewelyn]

The game still eats huge amounts of RAM though. I've seen it go as high as 14GB of the available 16GB of system RAM, with VRAM more or less maxed. However, it always starts up using only about 8GB of system RAM.
Previously when investigating that, I left it sit without driving anywhere for about 20 minutes and the RAM use did not increase, so I still feel the memory management could stand refining.

[MrAbner]

Why would you not want a program to use as much memory as you throw at it? Isn't that the point of adding more RAM?

[Reinhard]

I've seen it go as high as 14GB of the available 16GB of system RAM, with VRAM more or less maxed.

I've never seen such effect. And also not with the most recent patch, I've checked it after reading your post, yesterday. I've always got enough free system memory, and plenty of free video RAM. And this is with 8GB system RAM, and 8GB VRAM. More isn't needed for ATS or ETS 2, at least if you don't use super memory hungry mods.

Do you use Plugins? In theory, these could indeed eat memory, if they are bugged (memory leak).

[Llewelyn]

I don't use plugins in ATS. There was quite an extensive mods list but I trimmed that back a lot.

Interestingly, I picked up ETS2 which I haven't played since ATS came out, for a change of scene. Much updating later, and I cleared out all the old mods and just put in the ones I wanted, and started a new profile. It runs at about 2.6GB VRAM and about 8GB system RAM and doesn't appear to eat more. So maybe I need to clean out the mods list some more on ATS. One thing I have noticed, unwanted mods both local and workshop, even if disabled, still go through the load process, and then get unloaded again, every time you launch the game. Part of my mod purge was going through the steam workshop directory removing out of date stuff which no longer works, but was still in the list and slowing down loading.

I'm gonna play ETS2 for a bit, having "done" Montana. There's a whole bunch of new maps in ETS2 that I haven't explored But I'll get back to the mods list in ATS and trim it some more, see if I can find what is eating RAM.

[Reinhard]

One thing I have noticed, unwanted mods both local and workshop, even if disabled, still go through the load process, and then get unloaded again, every time you launch the game.

That's intended. It is done to feed the mod manager with every available info about all accessible mods, before any profile is loaded.

When a profile is loaded, later on, only your chosen subset is loaded.