Memory allocation error on PC

Reaper

When playing certain games such as "Robinson: The Journey" and "Budget Cuts"  it keeps crashing with the error "Memory allocation for X bytes failed" (where X is some large number).

I found online people saying those with 32 bit Windows can do this to give a game more space:

bcdedit/set IncreaseUserVa 3072

I am on 64 bit Windows and have 16GB of RAM so I should have no need to do that but in desperation I tried it and it worked!

However now I'm worried what other effect it might have. Have I now limited all programs to only using 3GB of the 16GB available?

Neil_Jones

All 32-bit programs can only use 4Gb of memory no matter how much memory the computer has.

This sort of error is almost always caused because Virtual Memory isn't on, or is not in a state that helps the issue.  Virtual Memory in a nutshell uses the hard drive as extra memory at the expense of speed, but this figure is capped.  You can check at Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System -> Advanced System Settings -> Advanced -> top Settings button -> Advanced.  This figure may be set to some arbitrary amount, you can specify a custom size.  Setting it larger may help the issue.  Turn off the other option re: IncreaseUserVa, as that's more designed for 32-bit operating systems.

As a general rule though, one should disable all running programs you don't need prior to starting big games like these.

Reaper

I ticked "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" which was previously turned off. It now says "Total paging file size for all devices: 16384 MB"

Is that figure OK? It sounds like a lot and I wonder if it should be capped a bit lower.

Anyway I deleted the IncreaseUserVa and just tried a game and it seems to be behaving at the moment. Fingers crossed it keeps doing so.

Many thanks.

Carrot007

Reaper said:

I ticked "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" which was previously turned off. It now says "Total paging file size for all devices: 16384 MB"

Is that figure OK? It sounds like a lot and I wonder if it should be capped a bit lower.

Anyway I deleted the IncreaseUserVa and just tried a game and it seems to be behaving at the moment. Fingers crossed it keeps doing so.

Many thanks.

Same size as ram is a reasonable value. Just let windows manage it and forget about it.

Neil_Jones

In days of old Virtual Memory used to be a recommended value of 1.5x RAM, but that was back when a) it was a luxury to have an amount of memory that reached three figures in the first place, and b) you didn't need a lot of processing power to run a gaming system anyway.

Today though, that rule of thumb is impractical and if you have enough physical memory Virtual Memory is hardly used anyway, but its always useful to have enabled just in case.

I believe Virtual Memory effectively gives you another "workspace" as it were, so if you turn it off, you're effectively capping your system resources.  Yes it'll be slower (even on a high speed SSD) but it makes a lot of applications/engines happy even if its not entirely obvious why.  If you have enough physical memory it won't be used anyway, its just a paging file or overspill if you like.