I have an e8400, Vista 64, ATI 4850, and 4 gb of DDR3 and I am getting memory leaks after 4 hours of play.  It may be due to the thousands of mines the AI is producing.  It also happens in Supreme Commander when you have too many units on  a big map.

This is not mostly due to the fact that the game is running on one processor core, but that more and more load is put on the memory (as mentioned before); the more resources (ie. the more units/buildings/mines(!) etc.) one has, more memory is required. 32-bits versions of XP and Vista have a limit at 2gb usage. (This is not 100% correct however, google it for more info ) When the game is closing that limit the game has to purge the memory more frequently to add and remove resources from it as needed, and those operations require more time and power, both of the CPU and of the memory modules. In some cases, when the game specifically requires more than 2gb resources loaded at one time the game might crash due to a memory overflow error (which means that the game is trying to use more memory than it physically can and is allowed to, forcing it to quit).

Problems like these can be hard to solve, code and resource optimizing is often the only way, as it is hard to work around the 2gb limit. (As mentioned, there are several good resources to check for more info regarding this, such as http://www.prophotowiki.com/w/index.php/IncreaseUserVa (method to tweak memory usage in Vista), http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124810.aspx (same thing for XP - note that these two modify memory allocation for Windows as well, and might cause instability), http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=2382&start=0 (the Supreme Commander issue, same deal), https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?aid=333620 (SoaSE, seemingly same thing).

It seems to be a problem with mines. I see it in every game once the total mine count in game gets up high. They must count as units or something, so the unit count is skyrocketing, which is bottlenecking the CPU.

Interesting, thanks for that info. I'll try it out hopefully it makes my sins experience better!

I'm not really sure what kind of processor this game requires now. I'm running a Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz). Before Entrenchment, I could play on any map and have no slowdown.

Now? Once the mines come out, even a medium map like Razors Edge becomes a slideshow. The engine just doesn't seem able to handle 1000 mines per gravity well.

I doubt it's the computer, since it runs stuff like Fallout 3 just fine. It ran normal Sins just fine. Without mines, it runs Entrenchment just fine. But the mines are sending unit counts up to numbers that you just couldn't reach before (even a 2000 supply fleet is fewer units then one grav well's worth of mines when the AI is laying them, and they do it EVERYWHERE).

Ok

From what I'm seeing here cpu bottlenecking seems to be an issue with the client.  I conclude this because the system in question far exceeds the recommended system requirements, even in cpu clock speed which is what seems to matter here and because only one cpu ever really sees significant use during play.

If this is the case it is disappointing because the recommended system requirements imply perfromance gains through the use of dual or quad cores.

Happy to offer any further requested information to the developer for use in creating a solution.

Take care all.

It's a beta.

I was asked to provide feedback on possible issues.

It's 100% not a memory issue.  and for the record 32 BIT OS's are LIMITED TO 3.5GB of Memory, But during even HUGE RANDOM map my Available memory is 1.3GB.

From checking the Task Manager, I think everything here is true indeed that something is amiss in the processor department.  Only one Core is working, and that core is only ever working for me at 50% so I have no idea what's going on.  Currently I'm playing a Huge Random with 9AI's and it runs well until, like everyone else says, the 4ish hour mark then Boom, lag (Though not game shattering, I find the game still quite playable.) 

I have a very weak Graphics card (8600GT) and I know that's not helping the issue (Should be getting a 9800GTX soon).  I don't understand what everyone is talking about with AI spamming mines.  I certainly find mines in AI planets, but never close to maxed.  I just think the Beta Optimization isn't there yet personally but we'll see.   It would be fantastic to get some dev feedback here on this issue.

My Underwhelming Rig:

AMD Athlon64 X2 2.4GHZ Dual Core

4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 PC6400 (DDR2-800): 32BIT OS so only 3.66GB available.

Graphics: XFX Nvidia GeForce8600GT (256MB  128Bit)  [Upgrading soon:  XFX Nvidia GeForce9800GTX 512MB 256bit]

Plays Sins on B+ Graphics at 25-35fps until the Lag wall hits.

carbon, the 8600gt is good enough for sins, the lagging is RAM/cpu core BOUND ie faster cpu/ram the better

sins runns almost as fast on my old laptop ie toshiba l20 as it does on my q66oc 2.8ghz w 4gb1066 ati4850 system

harpo

I hope all of you understand that memory optimizations doesn't mean use less ram... It means that they're refining how the data travels between different levels of memory to the cpu cores themselves.  This process is what causes a lot of the bottlenecks that we're seeing in late game.  But even if they reach an optimal solution, it will only run so well because of the amount of data that is flowing in and out of the memory and the cache.  The AMD dual core CPUs have two levels of cache and they are much smaller in comparison to your E8400.  This is why the intel chips tend to perform a bit better...  The level 2 cache on your E8400 is 6 times the size as his AMD CPU.

This still doesn't mean that you can't gain performance by using multiple cores; it only means that you have to be more clever in how you go about it.

But, more importantly, everything comes down to money. 'More clever' translates to higher development cost, and considering the same money can be spent adding features or bugfixes, IC may not wish to bankroll it yet.

I usually dont get much lag at all till around my 27th-34th auto save. Now, I play with differenting difficultly AI and with a Mod with graphical addons. It only slows down to a crawl during huge fleet engagements.  I blame it on the 200+ SC squads the AI builds per each faction. Plus my own compliment of SC. In one particualar battle I think there were around 554 SC squads in just one gravity well. I couldnt watch the battle. I had to zoom out to get it move past 6FPS.