A Messy Transition: Practical Problems With 32bit Addressing In Windows
by Ryan Smith on July 12, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Software
Final Words
As we wrap things up, we'll reserve a few words for game & application developers who are working on projects that will hit the barrier. Supreme Commander is extremely disappointing in how it handles running out of addressing space. Ideally we'd like for it not to crash, but realistically we'd settle for just an error message pointing out that it hit the 2GB barrier so that we could quickly reach a solution. Otherwise seemingly-random crashes tend to be one of the hardest problems to resolve as a user. Developers need to take care here to offer some kind of warning when the 2GB barrier is the problem; not everyone is or will be well read on the subject or have the time to diagnose it, when it's actually an easily solvable problem.
Getting back to the point at hand however, we feel that this is only going to be the tip of the iceberg. As games and applications continue to come out that push the boundaries of computer hardware and run afoul of the 2GB barrier, these problems will only pick up in pace. For many power users this experience will be a common occurrence, and for most it will be a frustrating experience.
We're at the front end of a messy transition, one that may not end for several years. Today, 32bit games will hit the 2GB barrier, and tomorrow games with support for large addressing will hit the 3GB/4GB barrier. Not until 64bit versions of games are ubiquitous will we be completely through this transition, and that will still be a few years away.
Until that point, stories such as these will continue to be told as users unknowingly hit the 2GB barrier. Developers need to be doing a better job at handling the issue via better crash reports, but our inner cynic says that they can't be solely in charge of the matter. So it will be up to users to diagnose their own problems and take the appropriate action, be it switching operating systems and/or modifying executables. A little knowledge in this regard can go a long way.
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instant - Saturday, July 21, 2007 - link
Could the writer please detail what, exactly, is wrong with XP-64bit edition?Having run it since it was released and never had a problem with it, I would be interested in knowing what problems I should have experienced.
BUL - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - link
A few things I've found about /3GB in XP...1) In terms of "consumer" OS's, XP Pro is the only one to support it. (XP Home and W2K Pro DO NOT!) Vista has a different method, outlined in the article.
2) If you change boot.ini, make sure you add a "3GB" boot option to your operating systems, not just change the one entry to /3GB. If a new driver gets installed that doesn't like /3GB, you could be left without the ability to change boot.ini back. (I can't find any info on whether /3GB affects Safe Mode, however safe mode may run in "3GB" mode!) So, unless you have the ability to WRITE to NTFS partitions outside of Windows, you may be stuck if you don't. See http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/catia/catia/catia...">http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/catia/catia/catia... for how to do it...
Now, personally, I feel that a limitation like memory shows the "men from the boys" in terms of programmers. Windows and "endless memory" has allowed for bloatware for far too long and allowed for sloppy, inefficient programming... Just think back how many games & other programs could run on an XT with 640KB of RAM because the programmers wrote highly efficient code. (Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS was written primarily in assembler; Quattro Pro could open even larger spreadsheets than 1-2-3 because it utilized pseudo-virtual memory).
Now we've come full-circle into the world of Windows, and some of these programs now have to become more efficient. That's what programmers are paid to do...
Anorax - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
On some of the larger maps in AW2 the game will occasional crash to desktop and leave an error window saying it has exceeded the 2GB memory space. Not that helpful but at least it tells you why it crashed.the Chase - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - link
Thank you so much for this article. I had a post awhile back in the forums asking for help on why in Vista I couldn't even run PR for bf2 unless I turned down the texture setting to Medium.Never figured it out though people here did offer some good ideas for fixes. After reading this article I knew this is what was going on. I searched on the Net and found out how to use Visual Studio C++ to modify the Bf2 executable. Problem solved! (I have the 64 bit version of Vista).
And to think I was ready(thinkeng about anyway) going to buy another 2 GB's of memory to try and cure the problem. Thanks again.
P.S. I also did the same fix for XP pro 64 and now PR runs much smoother than before in that OS also.
spookware - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
Just wanted to mention that the description of how windows uses memory is correct for XP and previous versions but it is not quite how windows vista works.Specifically, vista does not automatically take the upper 2GB of adress space for the kernel any more. It instead grows the kernel adress space downard on demand. Allthough the associated switches (/3G) have the same prupose in vista what they are setting is actually the upper maximum for the kernel adress space.
Magumi - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
I guess this means that if I want to buy a computer to last me at least three or four years, I need to get 64bit Vista and 8GB of RAM and hope that drivers and incompatibilities get resolved soon.Greyhead - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
Ryan, great article. Some other posters mentioned the use of the /PAE on servers. I recently discovered that MS recommends NOT using the /3GB switch in conjunction with /PAE. I followed their advice on a large SQL server we have and saw immediate positive results. The problem with /PAE /3GB combination is that when the OS is limited to 1 GB, there is not enough room for the size of the heap needed to support the /PAE option! This can be viewed using performance monitor - selecting "memory" options and then viewing total PTEs available (Page Table Entries). There are MS articles that describe the minimum PTEs needed, and before I changed our server it was way under the minimum. We had stupid errors on the server - blue screens, "not enough memory" errors when transferring files to another machine. Once the change was made, these problems disappeared. 2003 server has a more tunable /3GB switch using the /USERVA switch. There are technet articles which provide guidance on it's usage.Keep up the great work -
-bill
redpriest_ - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
binary is illegal.Kougar - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
The moment I saw the title I was thinking of Supreme Commander. I particularly enjoy the insanely huge 8-player games, but it only took about 40 minutes before these would crash... oddly enough they did not always crash either in some situations, making the crashing appear random and only confusing my attempts to troubleshoot this game. It would have been quite appreciated that this issue would have at least been mentioned in the game's readme file, if nothing else.Having (very luckily) stumbled across MadBorris's thread I made the modifications to XP and SC has been running since. I have not run into any instability or issues with XP configured with the /3gb switch for what it is worth. Am I wrong in that users with video cards featuring smaller onboard memory sizes will have an "advantage" with this problem? There is a large difference between a 320mb GTS and 740MB GTX, or heaven forbid a 1GB HD 2900 card? And while on the subject does a dual-GPU configuration (and therefore dual VGA memory) make things even worse?
Ryan Smith - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
Yes to the first question. To the second question I believe that's also a yes, but I don't have a system configured to test that theory.