Windows 10: Low memory issues when playing Overwatch

Hi,

This issue has occurred whenever I play Overwatch. It can occur when I have only played for 10 minutes or it may not appear until after many hours of playing.

I have 8GB of RAM and the most I have seen Overwatch use via task manager is 2GB. I usually have at least 40% (so a little over 3GB) of free memory when this issue occurs.

A message pops up saying that Windows is low on memory and needs to close some applications; it always wants to close Overwatch. I will usually cancel out of this message and continue playing, and this works for awhile, but eventually the game will crash. I have recently tried shutting down all other programs when this happens to be able to continue playing, and this sometimes works. But regardless, this shouldn't be happening. I have plenty of free memory left. Not sure of what to do to fix this. This is really the only high intensive game I play, so I haven't tested it out with other games.

:)

 

Windows 10 not releasing standby memory when required.

A restart does indeed free the standby memory. It quickly climbs to about 2.5GB (most being mapped files) when I open my standard programs.

So I did 3 tests..

1. While running Overwatch, loaded as many programs/webrowser tabs as I could to get Zero + Free close to 0 MBytes. The standby memory stayed very close to the same size (checked this by refreshing RAMMap a number of times during the testing period). Opened
one more small memory footprint program to see if the standby memory would free but instead had errors with programs not being able to allocate memory. Taskmgr showed that is was only using 9.7GB at the time.

Restarted.

2. Ran Overwatch for a bit, closed it down. According to Taskmgr->Details Overwatch was no longer running. RAMMap showed the large overwatch files in standby memory which at the time I would expect it to as I still had over 6GB Free (according to RAMMap). Again
opened programs to get to close to 0 Free/Zero MBytes, refreshed RAMMap but standby memory stayed. Opened the last program and same error.

Restarted

3. Same as other tests but DIDN'T run Overwatch. Standby memory (2.5GB) Same problem again.

I didn't get to see in the first test but did in the last two was that when windows gives the low/no memory error it then starts to release the standby memory, but it's too slow and memory allocation fails. So it's not that the standby memory won't release,
just that it's too slow to be useful. This seems like Windows isn't managing the memory properly.

 

Superfetch For Gamers

TLR Microsoft stop making secretary OS's and make Gaming OS's. Start with tweaking Superfetch to be more gamer friendly.

Superfetch is an odd program. It both does what it is suppose to do and is a big fat inconvenience to those on a slower low end computer. While it is doing it's thing it is a big memory hog. If I play a game like, let's pick popular Overwatch, at 7pm
every day then superfetch gets it nice and ready to launch at that time for me. But what if I get a day off and play at 7am instead? Why can't I tell Superfetch just keep Overwatch ready all times and don't try to figure out what time I'm going to use it.

Can't Microsoft offer gamers a gamers' version of Superfetch? So it wont be zipping up my unused apps at the same time I want to play my massive memory hogging game? So it will not be repeatedly unzipping my most used game? I mean, why can't I tell superfetch
to leave all Windows apps zipped up even if I use them. Cause I don't care if Outlook or Alarms&Clock or Weather opens up fast. But I care if Overwatch loads up fast! Why can't I tell Superfetch to keep Paint.net and Overwatch at the ready at all time?

And could MS give Superfetch an auto abort command when I load a massive memory using game? So it will not be running at the same time I am trying to play a memory hog of a game?

Do Microsoft Devs even play hard core games and understand what we want our PC's to do? Like, NOT LAG DURING GAME PLAY because superfetch is farting around with some win app in the background we so do not care about.

 

Windows has several kinds of memory, some of which can get used up when you still have a lot of available free memory otherwise.

These are called Resource Heaps, and they apply to things like Window, file, bitmap, etc.. Handles, as well as kernel paged and non-paged memory.

It sounds like one of your resource heaps is being exhausted, and it's not easy to know which one without having some experience in this. One thing to look for is to open up task manager, and check on the Performance tab whether your Non-paged pool memory is very large (larger than a few hundred MB). That would indicate a device driver leak of some kind.

Also, make sure that you have enough disk space on your C: drive for the page and swap files. Even though you have free memory, these files still get used for various purposes. If your disk is full or almost full, this can cause the problem you mention.

 

there has been talk on the overwatch forums of the game having a memory leak on high settings , ultra seems unaffected , not sure if this is proven however , if your memory use isnt going up over time then this isnt the case and if your usage is fine when playing ie its 40% and windows is reporting low memory incorrectly thyen it may be a pagefile issue , what about trying a clean boot then playing? use a program like msi afterburner to monitor your physical ram usage ingame , also as has been mentioned low disk space can cause this although usually windows will reserve space for your pagefile . You didnt change your pagefile size for any reason no?

 

My non-paged pool memory was 195MB, and it looks like I do have drivers that are not up to date. I'm not into paying for a tool to update my drivers though. I'll manually do it.

I have plenty of disk space free.

 

The other issues is likely that Overwatch is a 32 bit application, which means it can address at most 4GB of memory, even if you have 16GB on your 64 bit system. The app is still 32 bit and subject to 32 bit memory limitations.

 

well no overwatch is 64 bit only it doesnt support 32 bit doubt it will even run on a 32bit or even install

 

its not a driver problem , look on the official forums loads have the same issue (some have solved it with a missing windows update so check that) Game crash due to low memory - Overwatch Forums

 

I didn't realize they were making 64 bit games. Shows how long it's been since I was a gamer.. lol

 

Well I am on Windows 10, so it's not like I can ever miss an update. I looked at those forums, and they have not helped. This still goes on, someone said it was an issue with the high settings on the game and that ultra actually worked better. This didn't help either.

Any other suggestions, it is really annoying.

 

The game uses at max about 2 GB of memory for me.