Steam is eating your Memory, here is a fix

[Gameplayer]

7 hours ago, johnpage said:

I am pretty positive that computer manafacturers send out waves of bugs subtly through upgrades that slowley break your hardware making you think you need to buy another part which they just happened to have released recently, we the end product user are thoroughly abused by manafacturers i often wondered when we buy a cooker we are offered insurence which always seems to run out just weeks before the thing broke down, i now dont buy anything new if i can help it i have realised now what is actually meant by the word CONSUMER as in perpetual. off topic did you know that batteries for the new electic cars consume about 2 ton of minerels per batterie causing massive sink holes in our earth home if every family owned an electric car our earth would look like swiss cheese frightning thought

 

Ya I know some aweful things about electric cars....Like the batteries catch fire from getting hot in the sun, wall to wall videos on it some parts of the web.  Lithium is severely toxic causes massive enviromental destruction when pulled out of the ground there is often radioactive material that comes up with it and for some reason uh the desposal is just to speard it across a "dead-zone' but uh deserts are not actually dead they are biomes of life that function in a way that most people dont understand or at least they were...

What about lithium well that is used for the batteries in electric cars...Well some smarty pants decided we had to use Lithium well of course we sort of have to use Lithium because it can contain enough energy....But it is quite reactive to heat...even just the heat of the sun, and now you have rows of burning cars and dozens of pages on a websearch saying no no no electric cars dont catch fire thats a lie whaa whaa.

A MSDS search on Lithium will provide information as to why Lithium is dangerous for usage in machinery....But we gotta go green man.

Bet those material safety data sheets will be burried at some point...

 

As far as your first point...Yes its called planned obsolescence in the industry.  Talk to any guy at an autobody shop that your on good terms with that is smart he already knows the ins and outs on how warranty really works....The warranty expires just before the weakest link wears out in the car at least in ideal conditions.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Gameplayer

[johnpage]

14 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

 

Ya I know some aweful things about electric cars....Like the batteries catch fire from getting hot in the sun, wall to wall videos on it some parts of the web.  Lithium is severely toxic causes massive enviromental destruction when pulled out of the ground there is often radioactive material that comes up with it and for some reason uh the desposal is just to speard it across a "dead-zone' but uh deserts are not actually dead they are biomes of life that function in a way that most people dont understand or at least they were...

What about lithium well that is used for the batteries in electric cars...Well some smarty pants decided we had to use Lithium well of course we sort of have to use Lithium because it can contain enough energy....But it is quite reactive to heat...even just the heat of the sun, and now you have rows of burning cars and dozens of pages on a websearch saying no no no electric cars dont catch fire thats a lie whaa whaa.

A MSDS search on Lithium will provide information as to why Lithium is dangerous for usage in machinery....But we gotta go green man.

Bet those material safety data sheets will be burried at some point...

 

As far as your first point...Yes its called planned obsolescence in the industry.  Talk to any guy at an autobody shop that your on good terms with that is smart he already knows the ins and outs on how warranty really works....The warranty expires just before the weakest link wears out in the car at least in ideal conditions.

Good to know at least one person out there thinks the same way i do, much love to all.

[Oldwolf58]

You don't happen to have a solution for GOG eating ram too do you? GOG REALLY loads a tone of junk when it loads , and unfortunately it has to load every time I play any of my Mass Effect games

[Gameplayer]

3 hours ago, Oldwolf58 said:

You don't happen to have a solution for GOG eating ram too do you? GOG REALLY loads a tone of junk when it loads , and unfortunately it has to load every time I play any of my Mass Effect games

 

Sorry I dont think I have used GOG yet, if I have it was 1 game and not sure what it was.

Have tried playing around with the search words yet?

When I was noticing Steam using up so much memory I had to try a few,

 

Steam uses too much memory,

Steam eating up too much memory resources

Solution to Steam using so much memory

 

Stuff like that, got to get clever with this stuff sometimes.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

GOG Galaxy Stuff, I found 

 

Uh....Mini-Launcher from Github that works with Linux for GOG

well shoot, https://sharkwouter.github.io/minigalaxy/

 

going to keep looking around, so far only finding that there are a lot of reports about GOG being as bad or worse.

 

Here is a general discussion page about how a lot of games can be played in offline mode without starting the Client,

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_do_i_play_a_game_without_client_loading

 

A discussion on how to download games without GOG client open,

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_do_i_download_a_game_without_using_galaxy

 

No you dont need GOG client open by GOG,

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212554329-Do-I-need-some-launcher-application-to-play-my-GOG-games-?product=gog

 

A quick read through I determined all single player games can be opened simply using the EXE in the games folder.

A lot of multiplayer games can be played through the games client rather than GOG's.

Some multiplayer must have GOG open such as Gwent.

GOG may or may not have servers for multiplayer games and often those games have their own servers and thus dont need GOG open.

 

Also I did find a lot of commenters saying yes GOG does use more memory than Steam with the client opened, may be why there is a Mini for Linux.  Although from my reading it seems all single player games can be played with client shut down, some multiplayer games have to have it open no I dont have a list.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Gameplayer

[Oldwolf58]

16 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

 

Sorry I dont think I have used GOG yet, if I have it was 1 game and not sure what it was.

Have tried playing around with the search words yet?

When I was noticing Steam using up so much memory I had to try a few,

 

Steam uses too much memory,

Steam eating up too much memory resources

Solution to Steam using so much memory

 

Stuff like that, got to get clever with this stuff sometimes.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

GOG Galaxy Stuff, I found 

 

Uh....Mini-Launcher from Github that works with Linux for GOG

well shoot, https://sharkwouter.github.io/minigalaxy/

 

going to keep looking around, so far only finding that there are a lot of reports about GOG being as bad or worse.

 

Here is a general discussion page about how a lot of games can be played in offline mode without starting the Client,

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_do_i_play_a_game_without_client_loading

 

A discussion on how to download games without GOG client open,

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_do_i_download_a_game_without_using_galaxy

 

No you dont need GOG client open by GOG,

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212554329-Do-I-need-some-launcher-application-to-play-my-GOG-games-?product=gog

 

A quick read through I determined all single player games can be opened simply using the EXE in the games folder.

A lot of multiplayer games can be played through the games client rather than GOG's.

Some multiplayer must have GOG open such as Gwent.

GOG may or may not have servers for multiplayer games and often those games have their own servers and thus dont need GOG open.

 

Also I did find a lot of commenters saying yes GOG does use more memory than Steam with the client opened, may be why there is a Mini for Linux.  Although from my reading it seems all single player games can be played with client shut down, some multiplayer games have to have it open no I dont have a list.

 

From what I've been able to find in searching for hours the last couple of days is ......... Gog doesn't have ANY command line parameters for their client. You CAN limit it a lot by turning off everything in the client settings especially the friends and notifications as well as all the update and in-game stuff. Each element of the friends and notifications section of the settings adds a SEPARATE client web assistant instance as does the updates and in-game stuff. I've got it down now to only the client and one web assistant instance instead of the client and about 30 web assistants. So I'd call that a win and probably the best it's gonna get.

 

Thanks for the response

Have a good one

Oldwolf58

[Gameplayer]

Example of VTAW Wardrobe8 being optimized by Cathedral Assets Optimizer,

 

Saved 10 Gigs of space.

Keeping a lot of space free on a gaming drive is also important for performance BTW....A lot of free space is about ~200 Gigs free on a 1 TB.

It may also mean being able to store more games on it.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Gameplayer

[axz2]

Steam has multiple entries in my process list but they only add up to about 70 or 80 megs of RAM out of my 16GB. 

[axz2]

On 7/4/2022 at 9:04 PM, Oldwolf58 said:

You don't happen to have a solution for GOG eating ram too do you? GOG REALLY loads a tone of junk when it loads , and unfortunately it has to load every time I play any of my Mass Effect games

 

Do you mean GoG Galaxy?  You shouldn't need to have it installed to run a GOG game you can download the games from their web site and launch them directly.  Also when I look at the process list I only see four entries for GOG.  It does take up more memory than Steam though those 4 entries combine for about 240megs or RAM usage, and when I actually open the GOG Galaxy Program (rather than just having it as a minimized icon, it increases to about 370MB of RAM usage.  If it uses more on your system, or you have a low amount of memory, or you are concerned for some other reason, I'd make sure it doesn't load on startup (could even considered uninstalling it), and then just launch the games from their directory on your drive or through a shortcut you create.

[Oldwolf58]

15 minutes ago, axz2 said:

 

Do you mean GoG Galaxy?  You shouldn't need to have it installed to run a GOG game you can download the games from their web site and launch them directly.  Also when I look at the process list I only see four entries for GOG.  It does take up more memory than Steam though those 4 entries combine for about 240megs or RAM usage, and when I actually open the GOG Galaxy Program (rather than just having it as a minimized icon, it increases to about 370MB of RAM usage.  If it uses more on your system, or you have a low amount of memory, or you are concerned for some other reason, I'd make sure it doesn't load on startup (could even considered uninstalling it), and then just launch the games from their directory on your drive or through a shortcut you create.

That might work for some games but mass effect REQUIRES a connection to the EA server to start. It doesn't do anything on the server anymore but it still requires the connection for the game to launch, which means since EA is linked thru GOG, then GOG has to launch to establish the link. When GOG launches it sets up a web helper for EVERY game in your library even if you are only playing the 1 game it still starts a web helper for each of them. I have a lot of games so I get nearly 2 dozen "web helpers"   I've gotten that down to about 4 by going off line after which ever Mass Effect game I'm playing launches and killing all the notifications and friends stuff.

[Gameplayer]

Window's 10 is Bloatware.  Lets do something about that, shall we?

Now when Win10 first launched the claim was that it would run even on a potatoe machine, I even lost a friend over this saying to him Win10 is bloatware, Win7 plays just fine with all my games.  Some friend right?

 

Well here we are in 2022 and what was a conspiracy theory back in 2017 is now fact, funny how a few years makes it so that hanging on to obvious corporate propaganda as facts is completely delusional.  Any search now with "Windows10 Bloatware" will come back with hundreds if not thousands of posts making this very claim and some go as far as to explain how to debloat default settings, every single You Tube guide about computers that anyone takes seriously will critisize win10 for being bloatware.

 

Alright enough of that,

You have options if your an unfortunate victim of Microsoft in this regard,

https://fossbytes.com/how-i-removed-bloatware-from-windows-10/#:~:text=However%2C you may not be,to remove and click Uninstall.

 

Windows 10 debloater,

https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater

Note: only use this solution if your comfortable with backing up your Win10, I am not at fault for things going bad.

 

JayzTwoCents,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcDgV-1zDKs&ab_channel=JayzTwoCents

 

Show notes on the video,

Jay attempts to find a hardware upgrade solution to fix up a laptop, finds there is no valid solution....He then turns to a software solution to the problem, eliminating first all software programs that hog resources such as Mcafee Antivirus (try to explain to a clueless computer user that you dont really need these things ><)

Then he turns to Win10 Debloater script which I listed the link for above.

Result, he realizes that the performance gain is so stupidly impressive that all his competition computer builds must be similiarly stripped of un-needed software...Jay is a paid influencer, he has to carefully word things when explaining to the audience that a corporate product is a POS, otherwise he loses his revenue and perhaps loses his position altogether.  In other words he already knew that Win10 bloat was the problem and all his competition builds have always been stripped down of all un-needed software and processes.

 

Author Notes,

 

I do not suggest upgrading to Win10 unless you have a hardrive you can put Win10 on that is not your Win7 hardrive. (i know only matters if your not on Win10)

Keeping your old OS intact for gaming on old games, heck keeping an old machine that you have built up to be the best for that era of gaming is pro move to make.  Best old parts are not cheap and are often better for the previous era of gaming and some of the best parts can even handle the next era of gaming far better than advertised.

Case in point, a GTX 295 can absolutely wreck games from 2010, and even handle Grand Theft Auto on 1080p @45 FPS medium/high graphics settings...In three way SLI it can destroy loads of games and competently play in 1080p games up too 2015.  GTX 295 sells for 80 to 150 in premium condition.

That said same hardware may also be best used as a step ladder to getting into best hardware possible today because if well kept it can return some value through selling it.

Video's on best hardware of a given era can easily be found on You Tube if your curious about rocking out with old gear on your favorite games from the past.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Gameplayer

[Oldwolf58]

3 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

Window's 10 is Bloatware.  Lets do something about that, shall we?

Now when Win10 first launched the claim was that it would run even on a potatoe machine, I even lost a friend over this saying to him Win10 is bloatware, Win7 plays just fine with all my games.  Some friend right?

 

Well here we are in 2022 and what was a conspiracy theory back in 2017 is now fact, funny how a few years makes it so that hanging on to obvious corporate propaganda as facts is completely delusional.  Any search now with "Windows10 Bloatware" will come back with hundreds if not thousands of posts making this very claim and some go as far as to explain how to debloat default settings, every single You Tube guide about computers that anyone takes seriously will critisize win10 for being bloatware.

 

Alright enough of that,

You have options if your an unfortunate victim of Microsoft in this regard,

https://fossbytes.com/how-i-removed-bloatware-from-windows-10/#:~:text=However%2C you may not be,to remove and click Uninstall.

 

Windows 10 debloater,

https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater

Note: only use this solution if your comfortable with backing up your Win10, I am not at fault for things going bad.

 

JayzTwoCents,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcDgV-1zDKs&ab_channel=JayzTwoCents

 

Show notes on the video,

Jay attempts to find a hardware upgrade solution to fix up a laptop, finds there is no valid solution....He then turns to a software solution to the problem, eliminating first all software programs that hog resources such as Mcafee Antivirus (try to explain to a clueless computer user that you dont really need these things ><)

Then he turns to Win10 Debloater script which I listed the link for above.

Result, he realizes that the performance gain is so stupidly impressive that all his competition computer builds must be similiarly stripped of un-needed software...Jay is a paid influencer, he has to carefully word things when explaining to the audience that a corporate product is a POS, otherwise he loses his revenue and perhaps loses his position altogether.  In other words he already knew that Win10 bloat was the problem and all his competition builds have always been stripped down of all un-needed software and processes.

 

Author Notes,

 

I do not suggest upgrading to Win10 unless you have a hardrive you can put Win10 on that is not your Win7 hardrive. (i know only matters if your not on Win10)

Keeping your old OS intact for gaming on old games, heck keeping an old machine that you have built up to be the best for that era of gaming is pro move to make.  Best old parts are not cheap and are often better for the previous era of gaming and some of the best parts can even handle the next era of gaming far better than advertised.

Case in point, a GTX 295 can absolutely wreck games from 2010, and even handle Grand Theft Auto on 1080p @45 FPS medium/high graphics settings...In three way SLI it can destroy loads of games and competently play in 1080p games up too 2015.  GTX 295 sells for 80 to 150 in premium condition.

That said same hardware may also be best used as a step ladder to getting into best hardware possible today because if well kept it can return some value through selling it.

Video's on best hardware of a given era can easily be found on You Tube if your curious about rocking out with old gear on your favorite games from the past.

 

You think windows 10 is bad?? Windows 11 is worse I "uninstalled" all the xbox crap from my windows 11 as well as microshits store, edge, office. After I launch Fallout 4 I pause the game Alt Tab to the desktop and open Task manager and what do I find????? Xbox game bar running three different services as well as microshits gamebar presence writer even though I "unistalled" it all. To top it off after I kill them in task manager AGAIN and go back into the game after playing a while the game will start stuttering and when I alt tab out and open task manager what do I find again ..... you got it all the shit I killed before that is supposedly uninstalled, as well as windows office background crap and even microshits Edge running a ton of background tasks although they are also supposedly "uninstalled" ? I'm sorely tempted to wipe the drive and reload Windows 7 unsupported as it is, I think I still have the install disk with service pack 3 around here somewhere.

[Gameplayer]

5 minutes ago, Oldwolf58 said:

 

You think windows 10 is bad?? Windows 11 is worse I "uninstalled" all the xbox crap from my windows 11 as well as microshits store, edge, office. After I launch Fallout 4 I pause the game Alt Tab to the desktop and open Task manager and what do I find????? Xbox game bar running three different services as well as microshits gamebar presence writer even though I "unistalled" it all. To top it off after I kill them in task manager AGAIN and go back into the game after playing a while the game will start stuttering and when I alt tab out and open task manager what do I find again ..... you got it all the shit I killed before that is supposedly uninstalled, as well as windows office background crap and even microshits Edge running a ton of background tasks although they are also supposedly "uninstalled" ? I'm sorely tempted to wipe the drive and reload Windows 7 unsupported as it is, I think I still have the install disk with service pack 3 around here somewhere.

 

OUCH!

Actually that figures and yes I believe you.

 

I've been busy tweaking the crap out of my old machine and one of the things I have been getting into position to do is to have a second Solid State drive with Win10 installation on it so that when I need it for Win10 gaming I have it.

My main issue is that even though I can switch my Boot Drive in the BIOS, my PC only has 2 proper SSD SATA ports and offers well 7 regular SATA..

I want to get my hands on some hard drive trays that eject the hard disk so I can just open the front of the case and hit a button to remove a drive and then slot another in like an old game cartridge system.

I do have some external options for running an OS at the moment though with USB...But win7 is my main tank

 

I'm just hammering out everything here on this thread and providing my findings cause I realized hey this will probably help out a lot of other gamers.

[Oldwolf58]

15 hours ago, Gameplayer said:

 

OUCH!

Actually that figures and yes I believe you.

 

I've been busy tweaking the crap out of my old machine and one of the things I have been getting into position to do is to have a second Solid State drive with Win10 installation on it so that when I need it for Win10 gaming I have it.

My main issue is that even though I can switch my Boot Drive in the BIOS, my PC only has 2 proper SSD SATA ports and offers well 7 regular SATA..

I want to get my hands on some hard drive trays that eject the hard disk so I can just open the front of the case and hit a button to remove a drive and then slot another in like an old game cartridge system.

I do have some external options for running an OS at the moment though with USB...But win7 is my main tank

 

I'm just hammering out everything here on this thread and providing my findings cause I realized hey this will probably help out a lot of other gamers.

I'm Running a z390 carbon motherboard and it's got a ton of SSD ports, it's also really affordable so you might want to check it out. Would love to see ejectable drives myself, it would really be a life saver for switching between OS's and give people the opportunity to test out different OS's to find the best one for them. I'd love to work more with Ubantu but Microshit makes dual booting a real pain in the ass so keeping up with the Ubantu attempts to make gaming simple on their platform is a headache

[johnpage]

If i could ditch windows 10 tomorrow for another more reliable intuative not so complex and no headaches os i would have been on the train yesterday. despite their claims windows 11 is utter garbage yet another system by gates to spy on you whilst force feeding crap and telling you things ara amazing all at the same time. i have had them all at one time or another from win 95 to win 8 to windows 10 which has proved to be the least headache sytem of them all however win 10 comes at a cost in bloatware and the first spying programs and a lot more, i use 10AppsManager which is a freeware tool that will help you uninstall and reinstall the default preinstalled Store apps on Windows 10, 32-bit & 64-bit but i will look at the win10 debloater, all best much love to all

[BossShogun]

OMG Yesss! Thank you.

[Gameplayer]

My findings on the topic of Graphics Cards solutions.

 

DirectX, the drivers level needed for games, current games are DX 11 next generation games will be DX 12

SLI\Nvlink\Crossfire, the use of multiple graphics cards, very niche group of gamers, only few games use this technology, mostly for running games at playable frame rates on very high resolution monitors or televisions at playable frame rates.

RTX, stands for Ray Tracing a form of special lighting available on RTX cards.

DLSS, a technology that "should" increase FPS without quality loss.

Resolution, how much can be on the screen effects image quality, mini table below.

 

1080p most gamers at 60Hrz or 144 Hrz on single graphics card here.

1440p/2K, A single 2080Ti offers playable frame rates here but ideal would be to have Hrz higher than 60 upwards of 144 standard.

4K not so much, however depending on graphics card being used SLI is very much an ideal solution for playable games and only works in certain games.

It would also be ideal to have a 144hrz monitor in order to capitalize on your possible FPS with even the old GTX 1080ti in SLI format.

8K, at this point you have to be using SLI to have playable game.  Not likely that game developers even think about making texture resolutions anywhere close to this scale, oddly enough there are mod users asking for this >< unlikely the mod author even has capability to see this stuff for themselves ouch.

 

The monster video card of choice.

 

 

Here is a look at what is currently being used by actual gamers.

Steam Hardware Survey, https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

I have linked it so that you can have a look at it yourself.

Now the most common graphics card is actually Integrated Graphics for Laptops, that sort of caught me by surprise but it really should not.  Essentially Laptops are pretty common in PC gaming and they have no dedicated zoomy graphics card.

 

Our concern though is what is the most common graphics card on Desktop machines?

It happens to be the GTX 1060 or equivalent to a GTX 1060, not even a GTX 1060Ti which is actually a beefier card than 1060.

So this means a lot of PC gamers have 3 Gigs of VRAM.

About 1% of Gamers have a RTX 3080 and about 0.50% have a RTX 3090Ti, that is the most current beefy graphics card out there atm.

For that matter only 1% of gamers have a 1080Ti or a 2080ti 

 

After some browsing I have found that on the used market over a period of a month, 10xx and 20xx prices have dipped some

1080ti about ~225-325 used market

bridge if SLI ~ 50

2080ti about ~425-550 used market

bridge if Nvlink ~50-250 (all over the place)

Price depends on well what kind of 80ti card it actually is some are more desirable than others.  Also prices are effected by new market as well and 

 

Fan Style, how the card removes heat

Blower, a single fan card that pulls air in through case and expels the heat out the back of the case.  Blower is good for tightly packed PC case.

 

Double and Triple Fan, method is to pull air from case and then dump it back into the case relies on case fans to remove heat from case.  Usually has thicker heat sink....Fins and heat plate are bigger and thicker with more copper running the length of the card as well.  These cards usually overclock higher.

 

Ballpark 

1080Ti is about as good as a 2070

2080Ti is about as good as a 3070

 

2x1080ti is about as good as a 3080ti in SLI games

2x2080ti is about as good as a 3090ti in SLI games

 

10xx cards will work on "some" motherboards with 2.0 slots check your motherboard forums and aftermarket plus Nvidia also has some specs of compatible boards.will work on PCE slots 2.0 and 3.0

 

20xx cards will work on "some" motherboards with 2.0 slots check your motherboard forums and aftermarket plus Nvidia also has some specs of compatible boards.will work on PCE slots 2.0 and 3.0

 

Ballpark Baseline Requirements of Multi-Gpu

16 Threads of CPU(s), has been mostly only 2 CPU motherboards until last ~7 years.

Enough RAM, lot of RAM for good DTR, target is more than VRAM plus background processes

Multiple PCE slots (way more than 2), mostly only found on workstation\server boards aka Multi-CPU motherboard

-Note that workstation\server motherboards may have much better DTR for PCE slots

-Many workstation\server boards can overclock PCE slots in addition to OC CPU/RAM and much more.

Power Supply of at least 1,000 watts prefer more typically 1200 or 1400 wattage.

Better Cooling Solutions

-Most have a roomy case that literally sits on roller wheels and is quite tall aka its literally 2 to 4 times more case than consumer case.

-Features enormous amount of fans if air cooling

-May use liquid cooling solution if small case or intended for high overclocking

 

So basically its out of reach for most people right off the bat, its just that typical motherboard and CPU will not be able to leverage 2 GPU outright.

Again single GPU for 99.9% of population is way better option because of how much has to be accounted for, just hardware wise.

After all of that one needs a proper monitor that can actually display all of that as well otherwise its pointless exercise to begin with.

 

Then there is the argument, "Well most games dont support it."  

Too that I will say most games should not support it because its not needed remotely for 99% of games.  It is a stupid argument on its face should not even be really considered, no one needs Mindcraft to play in 8K.  It should be understood that the majority of games require integrated graphics and not a single flagship card.

 

So what is the point of SLI/Nvlink/Crossfire setup?

It is to play games in very high resolutions not available to everyone else, basically its for 4K or greater resolution sizes in the handful of games that were built to support such resolutions in the first place and do so at playable FPS that is to reach FPS lows of at least 60 FPS and its not about pushing extremely high FPS numbers or about longevity or about being able to play games in the future because obviously games in the future may crap out the card because the technology needed on that card is not there.

So SLI/Nvlink/Crossfire only really makes any sense for gamers that will play a heck of a lot of a specific group of games or a specific game or who just want to have best graphics in a specific era of gaming on games that have SLI option.

So examples of games that one might think multi-GPU would actually be a good idea?

World of Warcraft, Star Citizen, Black Desert Online....Games that are MMO's that a gamer might pour hundreds if not thousands of hours into.

Bethsada Games and other modded games like Sims4....Games that one might play hundreds of hours in a year for up to 7 years.

Total War games, a lot of these feature multi-GPU compatibility and likely people will play each of them for hundreds of game hours.

Although there are games such as,

Witcher 3 (might play that 200 hours)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (~200 hours+)

Cyberpunk 2077 (great example of a game that "should" be made SLI, it is not.)

Then there are competitive first person shooters...

There are quite a few here such as Battlefield but BF5 does not support it why?

Well in competitive first person shooters its desirable to have high FPS rather than best graphics following that logic high resolution is not needed or desired by most people in competitive play and therefore multiple GPU is not as desired as single powerful GPU.

 

So multi-CPU, multi-GPU set-ups because these go together hand in hand are only really going to be enjoyed by people that just put a lot of time into specific games.  Video Game Streamers get a benefit in that their PC will be beefy enough to run a lot of processes allowing them to monitor live streams while playing the game.  MMO gamer would benefit in that well as far as MMO's go they will likely play for years on same game and the system requirements do not change much over the life span of said MMO.  Modding games get some benefit in that there is always a crowd of mod users that desire next generation graphics and fully intend on pushing the envelope of what is possible in gaming, they are very likely going to be playing hundreds if not thousands of hours on the same game or group of games.

 

The point of all of that is to put actual logic to what multi-gpu is really for and who might actually consider using it.

In almost all cases it will always be best to use a single graphics card unless you yourself fit the bill for one of the people I mentioned above.

IF you are complaining that your modern graphics card 30xx or AMD version does not fit the bill for 4K gaming at desirable FPS well honestly you built the wrong PC to fit that desired range of FPS and/or are attempting to get something out of your game perhaps that its not intended to be able to accomplish.

 

IF you are a gamer that plays lots of games rather than settles into a very small selection of games well SLI makes absolutely no sense at all because most games dont need or support it and therefore its always better to select a single powerful card.  SLI makes most sense in the case that a gamer that loves MMO would likely play an MMO for a number of years, so WOW SLI but who needs modern g-card to play WOW, honestly only game that might be worth it would likely be Star Citizen not to be mistaken with Bethesada game.

 

It is very easy to get excited about the idea of multi-graphics cards, they sure look cool, and even an extra 50% performance is more enticing than it is not, heck I might argue 30% more is amazing which would bewilder some internet trolls for sure...The issue is this, there are in reality a minority of games that should have been made SLI/Nvlink/crossfire compatible.  Most games work with just integrated graphics, next largest group of games will work with single era correct graphics card that is not flagship, and the most demanding games are already a minority of games that might need/use a flagship card it is in that minority that one would think the developers would apply SLI, but most do not.

Under all those circumstances the only game currently available that might create a situation where a gamer might say its a good idea is Star Citizen atm due to it being a Massive Muliplayer Online game a gamer might realistically put in enough hours to make such a set up worthwhile since one expects to play MMO for years putting in lots of hours not just play it for 35 hours and then put the game down from then on.  Other than that I hear Flight Simulator offers SLI, but Im not a pilot that needs such a simulator for practice during off time.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Gameplayer

[Tinman2u]

Quote

STEAM is eating your RAM, solution here

https://www.loverslab.com/topic/191606-steam-is-eating-your-memory-here-is-a-fix/

This wonderful Steam hack worked exactly as advertised UNTIL, just recently.  The last Steam update I got must have fragged this work around because now ALL those nasty programs are back again, even though I'm using the mini UI.  Any ideas?

Edited February 6, 2023 by Tinman2u
Added screenshot

[rubber_duck]

This is amazing, thank you for sharing and writing this guide! It'll surely come handy!

 

That being said, I do have one question. Would I get better FO4 experience with Radeon or GeForce GPU? At the moment, my GTX1060 can run the game just fine. Surely, there are some stutters here and there, but for the most part it's smooth and stable (considering I have nearly 500 GB of mods installed). I've been thinking about switching to RX7800 as, at the time of replying, it seems like the best option for me (+ I can get some discounts on it).

 

Take care!

[Gameplayer]

On 2/6/2023 at 6:50 AM, rubber_duck said:

This is amazing, thank you for sharing and writing this guide! It'll surely come handy!

 

That being said, I do have one question. Would I get better FO4 experience with Radeon or GeForce GPU? At the moment, my GTX1060 can run the game just fine. Surely, there are some stutters here and there, but for the most part it's smooth and stable (considering I have nearly 500 GB of mods installed). I've been thinking about switching to RX7800 as, at the time of replying, it seems like the best option for me (+ I can get some discounts on it).

 

Take care!

Thank you,

 

I have personal experience upgrading the GPU from the 1060.

1st I upgraded to the 1080 card which was quite good, the game however was still not perfect Fps, so I upgraded the RAM.

At 32 gigs Ram, fo4 worked really well in 1440 p.  

After that I put 2080ti in there omg, perfect 60 plus fps in 1440p almost all my games.  No stutter not a chance ran bounce effects perfectly no errors.

 

So I lost my PC to the flood caused by hurricane Ian, building my new PC this week.  Point is I have looked at PC parts pricing recently, over on second hand market you can buy a 2080ti all the best cards of that model for about 200 to 300 dollars right now that is a great value, hard to beat at the moment.  Of course you can buy newer cards but you pay a lot more. Maybe have a look at those 4070 cards those are new and about 700 dollars, would not do a current AMD at the moment for this round,maybe go look at the last round of cards for that.

New cards are of course powerful but you need newer hardware on the higher end to get your best use out of the new cards.  I got away with using DDR3 Ram with a 2080ti but would not chance a higher series card than that on my last PC which I would still be using if not for flood.

The high end 4080/90 card really needs a 12/13th gen CPU and DDR 5 ram to not have bottlenecking, you could still use them on older gear but why?  Lose to much for what you paid for.  AMD is not where it's at right now CPU wise in this last year so I did not hunt that down for my new build.

[katrina.balanchuk]

I noticed the other day when I set my computer up in a no internet spot the games ( modded Fallout 4) ran so much better.

So I guess the steam background procsses were imnimized and so was my anti virus.

[Vidust]

On 2/6/2023 at 12:17 AM, Tinman2u said:

This wonderful Steam hack worked exactly as advertised UNTIL, just recently.  The last Steam update I got must have fragged this work around because now ALL those nasty programs are back again, even though I'm using the mini UI.  Any ideas?

Yeah like this person said, I don't think this works anymore. Made the shortcut, it opens a mini window with only my games, but if you check Task Manager all the web client tasks are still active, memory usage is the same.