How to increase the amount of memory OpenMW can use

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Mordigant
Posts: 9
Joined: 12 May 2021, 18:17

How to increase the amount of memory OpenMW can use

Post by Mordigant »

I have 24GB memory in my computer. During regular use I don't get above 6gb used at a time. When I run OpenMW it seems to cap its memory use at 1-2gb memory. Is there a way to increase the limit and push my OpenMW to the max and use more of my unused memory? Could it solve some of the lag issues I've been having recently during gaming sessions?
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AnyOldName3
Posts: 2668
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: How to increase the amount of memory OpenMW can use

Post by AnyOldName3 »

OpenMW will use as much memory as it thinks it needs, so the most likely that there's just not 24 GB of stuff in use at once. However, there are some settings that increase how much memory it thinks it needs. These might well just increase memory usage without giving any performance benefit, though. Several examples are here: https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/latest ... cells.html
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Atahualpa
Posts: 1176
Joined: 09 Feb 2016, 20:03

Re: How to increase the amount of memory OpenMW can use

Post by Atahualpa »

Mordigant wrote: 23 May 2021, 14:34 I have 24GB memory in my computer. During regular use I don't get above 6gb used at a time. When I run OpenMW it seems to cap its memory use at 1-2gb memory. Is there a way to increase the limit and push my OpenMW to the max and use more of my unused memory? Could it solve some of the lag issues I've been having recently during gaming sessions?
Please keep in mind that OpenMW is pretty much limited by your CPU or GPU (depending on your setup). RAM is only a minor consideration if you are above a certain threshold (and 24 GB is more than enough in that regard).
ezze
Posts: 513
Joined: 21 Nov 2013, 13:20

Re: How to increase the amount of memory OpenMW can use

Post by ezze »

In my setup OpenMW was shuttering mainly for loading sounds. It helped a lot to enlarge the sound buffers in settings.cfg:

Code: Select all

 
[Sound]
buffer cache min = 112
buffer cache max = 128
elsid
Posts: 20
Joined: 01 Aug 2017, 08:20

Re: How to increase the amount of memory OpenMW can use

Post by elsid »

You may increase https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/latest ... cache-size (default is 256MiB) that will allow to cache more generated navigation mesh data in memory:

Code: Select all

[Navigator]
max nav mesh tiles cache size = 1073741824
But it makes sense only for long game sessions when revisiting same locations. For example all navmesh data for Balmora exteriors is about 10MiB. If there is navmesh in the cache for a location then no time will be spend to generate it that means less load on CPU. You may monitor how much memory is used by navmesh cache via "NavMesh CacheSize" metric in the debug HUD (F4).
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