Solution for high memory usage

[Guest keiron]

PMDG Simmers! Keiron here,Over the past week i've being trialing out this new software that frees up memory. It's so good that on average I have over 900mb RAM free and memory load has literaly halfed! That's whilst sitting @ busy airports or approaching with ASA & PMDG 744 or MD-11 never mind flying!.Yep in the past there's been alot of debate about memory cleaners and optimises wether they really work. Well i'm not even gonna go down that lane because this one bloody works! Usually my flightsim would be using between 1gig -1.3gig or RAM and slowly creaping up to 1.4gig in worst case scenarios before OOM. Either that or i'd be left with about 90 -220mb RAM left, fluctuating in certain flightsim conditions.Anyway if you've had similar experience then I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's called "CleanMem"http://www.pcwintech.com/node/145After reading on the web page how it works, I quickly installed it, tested it over a few days and yeah it does exactly what it says on the tin.

[Guest manniko]

Thanks Keiron for sharing this little cute but very effective program with us. It does exactly what you mentioned. Initially - after loading FSX with all the bells and whistles - it sucks about 1.2 GB of RAM. After starting CLEANMEM it goes down to approx. 300 MB. After a few minutes it increases again up to about 700 MB but stays all the way up to 50% of the initial memory usage. I have made a flight with MD-11 and a lot of scenaries loaded and I could not feel any problems. We will see how it works on the long run.Manfred (Riyadh OERK)VA LH113

[aentwis 61]

Thank you for this, there are a few people that might well seriously benefit from such an application... I have not been suffering from the OOM problems since 4Gb and the /3Gb switch, but I will try it anyway and see... The logic behind the way it works is plausible... and for free it is worth trying...Thanks for the heads up!Andrew

[HUSSAR 262]

Keiron - Good find. Have a qucik question... installed CleanMem and tried the .exe but I did not see anything happen. Do you see a pop-up when you run CleanMem?Thanks,Robert

[ehasanov1 1]

Hi guys.This is great stuff.No any performance hit and memory load has halfed.Just put under Cleanmem onlylist your fs9.exe (i putted also ASV6.exe) and execute Apply Only list bat.And watch memory usage :-)No any pop up Edin

[Guest keiron]

Keiron - Good find. Have a qucik question... installed CleanMem and tried the .exe but I did not see anything happen. Do you see a pop-up when you run CleanMem?Thanks,Robert

That's the art of it, once you install it, you're done! From then onwards it will work with the Windows API and do it's fantastic job. IF anybody hasn't tried it, I really recommend reading the release note on that web page, it tells you everything on how it works and it even covers the debate on terminology from critics and how they've got it wrong time and time again, interesting read.As ehasanov1 mentioned you can even just assign it to chosen programs or just let it clean every memory hog. I just installed it and left it to do its thing.I completed another flight earlier using some 32bit high quality repaints on my PMDG 744 and I've still had shed loads of memory left. Whilst I was approaching Aerosoft EDDF Frankfurt Main, I still had 1012mb of Memory left out of 2Gig! My Entire Flightsim was using just under 900mb. Memory load was 47%.If I compare this to last week before I discovered CleanMem when I did exactly the same flight using DXT3 Paint, I had 88% memory load, 91mb Memory free and entire Sim was using 1.3gig. Finally with an OOM just as I taxied off the runway lol.I do have alot of AI traffic, aftermarket airports and ASA though :DI'm glad it's working for you guys, keep the reports coming :(

[markadeane 272]

Keiron, this sounds really promising mate.A question though. Are you noticing any stutters or pauses during a flight? Any adverse effects at all?Currently away from home but when I get back I'm going to give this a try, SR MD-11 from LSZH to VHHX sounds like the trick. :-)

[tipitout 5]

Keiron - Good find. Have a qucik question... installed CleanMem and tried the .exe but I did not see anything happen. Do you see a pop-up when you run CleanMem?Thanks,Robert

You will not see any popups when you run the CleanMem.exe file manually. According to the documentation it only runs for a fraction of a second, automatically running every half hour unless you alter it in the windows task scheduler. If you want to see it working, simply bring up the windows task manager, run the .exe manually and watch your memory usage plummet!

[MELKOR 5]

Well...Hate to burst your bubble people, but all this type of software does is force the process "working set" (reported as "Mem Usage" in Task Manager) to zero (equivalent to marking all the memory as "paged out"). The "working set" is defined as the amount of physical RAM that has been recently used by an application. So it may "appear" that your process is using less memory, but it's an illusion. And, all that is going to happen is that the process will swap back the pages as it needs them - you may (or may not, your milage may vary) notice stutters and other lag effects when the memory gets paged back.The most meaningful metric for a Windows process is the "Private Bytes" (reported as "VM Size" in Task Manager - this column is hidden by default, you need to show it via View->Select Columns). This is the amount of virtual memory which resides in the "private" portion of the virtual memeory space (the default maximum size of the private space is normally 2GB, but can be set to 3GB via a switch during O/S boot). You will note that this software will NOT affect the "VM Size" of the process. Nothing can, since the VM Size is entirely under control of the owning process.So, long and the short of it: if you paid money for it, I would recommend you get it back. This is Snake Oil at its best.I don't expect anyone to believe me, since you don't know me or my credentials, but if there are any other Windows VM experts out there, please lend your voice and Stop The Madness! :(

[twasono 3]

As long as this tool works fine and safe, I think it worth a try.Me myself haven't tried it yet because I'm out of town. But from above testimonies, I can conclude:1. It doesn't have a performance impact2. It solved the OOM problem. So people do not have to use windows 3GB patch which may cause some problem with certain add-ons.Those are my two cents. :)Wasono

[Kosta 122]

Same here, don't want to burst anyons bubble, BUT this util doesn't change the Virtual Size of the fs9.exe, thus it will not cure any OOMs. It does however change the Working Set, which is not relevant for OOMs.And yes, I noticed stutters, when I saw fs9.exe getting its memory back, as Melkor said, was very noticable on approach.The only real solution is 64bit + fs9.exe that has been large address aware changed. That for the fact changed my FS9-life.EDIT: Oh yes, and I tried another thing: watch working set while executing MemClean, would go down as advertised, then I would press texture reload in FS9 which would bring it back to where it was. This can't be good, as we all know, reloading textures in FS9 will usually cure stutters...

[out 769]

I completed another flight earlier using some 32bit high quality repaints on my PMDG 744 and I've still had shed loads of memory left. Whilst I was approaching Aerosoft EDDF Frankfurt Main, I still had 1012mb of Memory left out of 2Gig!

Oh, man! You've made my day! Another chance for me to return to flying my PMDG 744 Luffi back to Frankfurt without OOMs.Thanks a lot! I'll give it a try today.

[Guest keiron]

Well...Hate to burst your bubble people, but all this type of software does is force the process "working set" (reported as "Mem Usage" in Task Manager) to zero (equivalent to marking all the memory as "paged out"). The "working set" is defined as the amount of physical RAM that has been recently used by an application. So it may "appear" that your process is using less memory, but it's an illusion. And, all that is going to happen is that the process will swap back the pages as it needs them - you may (or may not, your milage may vary) notice stutters and other lag effects when the memory gets paged back.The most meaningful metric for a Windows process is the "Private Bytes" (reported as "VM Size" in Task Manager - this column is hidden by default, you need to show it via View->Select Columns). This is the amount of virtual memory which resides in the "private" portion of the virtual memeory space (the default maximum size of the private space is normally 2GB, but can be set to 3GB via a switch during O/S boot). You will note that this software will NOT affect the "VM Size" of the process. Nothing can, since the VM Size is entirely under control of the owning process.So, long and the short of it: if you paid money for it, I would recommend you get it back. This is Snake Oil at its best.I don't expect anyone to believe me, since you don't know me or my credentials, but if there are any other Windows VM experts out there, please lend your voice and Stop The Madness! :(

I'd recommend reading the release note on the web page on how it actually works mate. Also it's a freeware app btw.

Same here, don't want to burst anyons bubble, BUT this util doesn't change the Virtual Size of the fs9.exe, thus it will not cure any OOMs. It does however change the Working Set, which is not relevant for OOMs.And yes, I noticed stutters, when I saw fs9.exe getting its memory back, as Melkor said, was very noticable on approach.The only real solution is 64bit + fs9.exe that has been large address aware changed. That for the fact changed my FS9-life.EDIT: Oh yes, and I tried another thing: watch working set while executing MemClean, would go down as advertised, then I would press texture reload in FS9 which would bring it back to where it was. This can't be good, as we all know, reloading textures in FS9 will usually cure stutters...

Correct. It does not change the virtual size of the exe; CleanMem does something completely different. Again i'd recommend reading how it actually works by following the link. Obviously if you're running 64bit then you don't even need to bother with CleanMem as you can easily edit the FS9 exe to use large memory anyway, providing the user has the RAM. This CleanMem is more for less fortunate 32bit users. I myself have not experienced these "stutters" or FS9 returning back to high memory usage. I guess each to their own machine on that one.

[Tabs 2,790]

I'd recommend reading the release note on the web page on how it actually works mate. Also it's a freeware app btw.

From his page:"It then grabs the ID of each process and calls the Windows API EmptyWorkingSet for each processes."That sounds exactly like what he said to me... This isn't doing anything other than "freeing" memory that isn't even being used, the OS already does this when it needs it. The idea that Microsoft is so incompetent as to leave some sort of massive flaw in the OS's memory management system and that it can be solved using a tiny freeware utility is pretty questionable logic to me...You know who should be asked about this sort of thing... Mark Russinovich from Sysinternals, he would be able to explain exactly.

[Guest Mower]

Memeory managers have been around for years, and anybody from Microsoft will tell you they do nothing substantive...the best memory manger remains windoze itself AFAIK.