Microsoft is fixing Skyrim's memory problem with Windows10 and DX9

[prinyo]

I have no idea how reliable this info is.  But according to this post Microsoft have fixed the hard memory limit for DX9 applications in Windows 10 and the fix will be released in the next few months. 

 

In my experience looking at the posts here and elsewhere about crashes with Skyrim almost all of them are related to this problem. Hopefully soon the people will stop associating the game with crashes and problems.

 

Edit 22-10-2017 - Updated the title to prevent confusion

[prinyo]

Update:

 

Here is a post from an actual Microsoft developer on the Skyrim mods subreddit about the problem.

[spoonsinger]

I suppose what you can summarize from that is the people who write the DX API's, (and underlying functionality therein), for games don't actually play games, (or have any connectivity to people who play games, or actually have heard of the internet).

[27X]

The API people haven't given a shit about games for a very long time, except when they're forced to under the latest "games for windows" marketing push every three years or so, eg the full on clusterfuckfest that is the current Windows Store.

 

Hell they're currently in a push to abolish user Domain and Policy controls for Enterprise, which is literally pants on face retarded if you know anything about commercial intra and inter-domain management.

 

Insulation is a hell of a drug.

[pinky6225]

I suppose what you can summarize from that is the people who write the DX API's, (and underlying functionality therein), for games don't actually play games, (or have any connectivity to people who play games, or actually have heard of the internet).

 

Dunno perhaps they just didn't think people would be able to get that sort of memory and still use DX9, from the reddit

 

 

For what it's worth, the reason it broke and the reason it's not simply trivial to fix is because there's an API available in D3D9 which is completely broken if we allow more than 4GB to be used.

 

Admittedly i'm not an expert but i seem to recall directx9 was about during win xp days and then win xp couldn't address that much memory

 

Edit: After a quick google it seems directx9 has been about for like forever so perhaps the question should be why it was used for skyrim at all

[Tripleekz]

Well like most things DX9 related the graphics card makers especially Nvidia threaten not to support anything above or pull their support all together. at that time anyway. remember Assassins Creed originally came with DX10 but Nvidia threw a hissy fit and they had to put out a patch so it would support DX9 which pissed off a hell of a lot of gamers and in some cases made the game unplayable even on Nvidia cards. It isn't always the developer that makes these decisions except to keep card support.

[prinyo]

 

Admittedly i'm not an expert but i seem to recall directx9 was about during win xp days and then win xp couldn't address that much memory

Edit: After a quick google it seems directx9 has been about for like forever so perhaps the question should be why it was used for skyrim at all

 

 

Reading old forum threads we can see that the decision to go with DX9 was a bit controversial even at that time. For example: 

 

I honestly think that pc gaming has already surpassed consoles by two api, like DX10 and DX11 and since consoles are where all the money is, they don't even want to use DX11 at all. They don't get anymore money out of it and they don't care which will only alienate more pc gamers.

 

and

 

DX9 was released in 2002. I think moving on is long overdue. Look at what DICE have done with DX11 in BF:BC2 and what we've seen of BF3 so far.

If people get up in arms, it's probably because they have hardware and very little that can actually make use of it's potential.

 

 

Also - the vanilla Skyrim or Oblivion or whatever DX9 game  will never experience problems with this limit. So it is not about been a gamer, but been a "modding gamer".

 

For me the benefit of this fix - if/when it is released, will be that it will consolidate the Skyrim players and modding community around Oldrim again. And will pretty much end the "war" between Oldrim and SSE.

[Guest]

OMG is this why my Skyrims not working now

[ghostwalkr]

Well this is definitely good news.. 

My Win 7 configuration is starting to show its age and not looking forward to do a fresh install (even with backups and a WinPE imagine) and if this truly fixes the DX9 issue, then I may move my modded Skyrim over to Win10.

 

Thank you sharing this bit of news.. 

[pinky6225]

OMG is this why my Skyrims not working now

 

Depends, if you happen to have upgraded to windows 10 and are using an ENB and have a lot of RAM/GPU with a lot of RAM that meant you had set VideoMemorySizeMb above 4064 (when i had win 7 i seem to recall having something like 7000 in there) in enblocal.ini then yes potentially and until they fix you should set it back down

 

There are more details on it at http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI/Memory under the VideoMemorySizeMb heading

 

[Guest]

Thank you

[27X]

 

 

Admittedly i'm not an expert but i seem to recall directx9 was about during win xp days and then win xp couldn't address that much memory

Edit: After a quick google it seems directx9 has been about for like forever so perhaps the question should be why it was used for skyrim at all

 

 

Reading old forum threads we can see that the decision to go with DX9 was a bit controversial even at that time. For example: 

 

I honestly think that pc gaming has already surpassed consoles by two api, like DX10 and DX11 and since consoles are where all the money is, they don't even want to use DX11 at all. They don't get anymore money out of it and they don't care which will only alienate more pc gamers.

 

and

 

DX9 was released in 2002. I think moving on is long overdue. Look at what DICE have done with DX11 in BF:BC2 and what we've seen of BF3 so far.

If people get up in arms, it's probably because they have hardware and very little that can actually make use of it's potential.

 

 

Also - the vanilla Skyrim or Oblivion or whatever DX9 game  will never experience problems with this limit. So it is not about been a gamer, but been a "modding gamer".

 

For me the benefit of this fix - if/when it is released, will be that it will consolidate the Skyrim players and modding community around Oldrim again. And will pretty much end the "war" between Oldrim and SSE.

 

 

Not really.

 

64 is inherently more stable, 32 looks and performs better, nothing about that is going to change.

[peculiaris]

 

 

 

Admittedly i'm not an expert but i seem to recall directx9 was about during win xp days and then win xp couldn't address that much memory

Edit: After a quick google it seems directx9 has been about for like forever so perhaps the question should be why it was used for skyrim at all

 

 

Reading old forum threads we can see that the decision to go with DX9 was a bit controversial even at that time. For example: 

 

I honestly think that pc gaming has already surpassed consoles by two api, like DX10 and DX11 and since consoles are where all the money is, they don't even want to use DX11 at all. They don't get anymore money out of it and they don't care which will only alienate more pc gamers.

 

and

 

DX9 was released in 2002. I think moving on is long overdue. Look at what DICE have done with DX11 in BF:BC2 and what we've seen of BF3 so far.

If people get up in arms, it's probably because they have hardware and very little that can actually make use of it's potential.

 

 

Also - the vanilla Skyrim or Oblivion or whatever DX9 game  will never experience problems with this limit. So it is not about been a gamer, but been a "modding gamer".

 

For me the benefit of this fix - if/when it is released, will be that it will consolidate the Skyrim players and modding community around Oldrim again. And will pretty much end the "war" between Oldrim and SSE.

 

 

Not really.

 

64 is inherently more stable, 32 looks and performs better, nothing about that is going to change.

 

 

whuuuut...?

 

You know that SSE performs better then Oldrim right?

[27X]

Not in this universe it doesn't, if you don't know how to set your ini, again has nothing to with the base platform, and that's without SKSE running all the billions of scripts and injeted code, when they finally get SKSE done, it'll perform even worse than it does now, because people will just cram every mod they can without even bothering to check how well they're coded in due to the increased papyrus stability.

 

SSE also uses FO4's broken ass occlusion culling and pseudo-baked rendering, so those aren't ever going to get faster either due to being inaccessible to modders.

 

 

[Whizkid]

Not in this universe it doesn't, if you don't know how to set your ini, again has nothing to with the base platform, and that's without SKSE running all the billions of scripts and injeted code, when they finally get SKSE done, it'll perform even worse than it does now, because people will just cram every mod they can without even bothering to check how well they're coded in due to the increased papyrus stability.

 

SSE also uses FO4's broken ass occlusion culling and pseudo-baked rendering, so those aren't ever going to get faster either due to being inaccessible to modders.

really my fallout 4 enb and reshade preset looks and performs better than oldskyrim most of my fallout4 textures are 4k and its so goddam realistic looking..

 

until we get skse 64 and modded the same as oldskyrim i refrain from passing such judgements:p

[D_ManXX2]

Microsoft and fixing ?? you guys trully believe they will fix it ?? they probenly try to fix it and then suddenly 100 of new bugs occurs..

[Kaz Aanh]

Microsoft and fixing ?? you guys trully believe they will fix it ?? they probenly try to fix it and then suddenly 100 of new bugs occurs..

 

Shhh its okay, easy there.

 

 

Calm your tits. Microsoft is not that bad at all in the end, gave me a reason to move onto wi10 in year or two.

[junkacc]

They'll probably fix it and make it only available to games linked to their store.

[27X]

 

Not in this universe it doesn't, if you don't know how to set your ini, again has nothing to with the base platform, and that's without SKSE running all the billions of scripts and injeted code, when they finally get SKSE done, it'll perform even worse than it does now, because people will just cram every mod they can without even bothering to check how well they're coded in due to the increased papyrus stability.

 

SSE also uses FO4's broken ass occlusion culling and pseudo-baked rendering, so those aren't ever going to get faster either due to being inaccessible to modders.

 

My anecdotal evidence is totally legit guys, my uncle works for bethesda

 

 

I don't deal in opinions.

 

I deal in facts, and the facts are  DX11 implementation has better frametimes which mechanically allows for more responsive controls apples-to-apples IF you can lock your framerate to a constant output that's higher than your monitor's refresh rate and a more stable loading and resident memory architecture and that's it, and NEITHER of those things is inherent to Bethesda's build, they're aftereffects of using a different rendering and allocation platform.

 

And it's great that your 4K is all 4Ked and everything, meanwhile I'm running Skyrim with 8K NPCs and 4K environments at 60 flat@ 4096x2160 with an ENB that uses an actual external lighting model complete with SSS, indirect AO and indirect ambient illumination because I can actually inject shaders without the engine coughing up a lung, which you can't do in Fallout or SSE, period, and them's is simple facts, not opinions.

 

64 is never going to look as good as 32, and as long as you're on win7 and not under a win10 vm it's going to be more smoother on script resolves because you're not running anything through an interpolation layer, so as long as you can update the screen fast enough, it's going to be a smooth and clean experience.

[xscottr]

lol. all the microsoft haters and Windows 10 conspiracy theorists..... Let me guess you are still using Linux and think it's going to take over the world soon? Well let me give you a clue. I have been in the IT world for the last 30 years. I remember when linux came onto the scene, I was working in a shared Microsoft/mainframe environment. They said Linux was going to be the next best greatest thing. Truth is Linux use in the corporate world has proven to be the worst money sink and headache in IT history. Yes Linux use among small business and single users has remained relatively steady in terms of users but Apple has stolen your thunder. Even Godaddy that tried to switch entirely over to Linux servers back in 2010 has begged me to go back to the new Windows server platform due to the shitty scalability of linux. 

 

Now I am sure that some of you have a nice little stable linux platform at home you like to swear by and that is good. But that is something you have had the time to sit down with and tweak to your heart's content until it worked. An action that you can completely copy in any windows environment (ok maybe not 98 or ME). But you would have never tolerated this sort of attention sink with Windows. In the real world you cannot do this (more than once or twice) before management pulls the plug. This is why Microsoft and to some extent Apple have been so successful (what we call Opaque IT). The business world wants to make money not spend it and Microsoft's Monopoly strategy gets that (They learned it from two old dogs in the business IBM and Sun Microsystems). 

 

My point is... Microsoft is not going anywhere in the sense of going away, and Linux is going to remain right where it is. I am not hating on Linux, I am just saying it will never get any bigger than it already is and is already falling to the wayside.

 

Good luck.

[D_ManXX2]

keep dreaming microsoft is going to make itself bankrupt. it just a matter of time for a full major hack occur again when most buisnesses are concerend and companies will be sueing microsoft for his final penny. 

[mangalo]

How would a VRAM increase improve Skyrims performance ?  Isn't the CPU the bottleneck in most cases ?  Just curious, honestly.

 

Let's not move on to the Linux vs Windows debate here, there's a thread for that.

[Nazzzgul666]

How would a VRAM increase improve Skyrims performance ?  Isn't the CPU the bottleneck in most cases ?  Just curious, honestly.

 

Let's not move on to the Linux vs Windows debate here, there's a thread for that.

Depends on the mods you're using. For me that MS fix won't make any difference any time soon, i don't have any plans to get more than 4Gb VRAM. And the option to use RAM instead... it's still slower, i'll just see that i don't need more than those 4GB. Nevertheless i think it's nice that this guy is fixing it, it's always good to have the option even if i won't use it.

[27X]

How would a VRAM increase improve Skyrims performance ?  Isn't the CPU the bottleneck in most cases ?  Just curious, honestly.

 

Let's not move on to the Linux vs Windows debate here, there's a thread for that.

 

Nope. Frametime is largest bottleneck in Bethesda games, and Gamebryo frametime is directly dependent on what the CPU has been called to load into frame to begin with, you can't draw anything until it's in RAM at which time the GPU is directed to render and postprocess what's present in scene. The faster your RAM, the faster the geometry is defined and tabled, and the faster the GPU is directed to throw stuff on the screen.

 

The other side of that is how the GPU is directed to render, for an example Diamond City at the entrance has about 30000 draw calls going on, which is Ubi$oft level bad, which is why Diamond City lags like ass compared a lot of other sections of the game, and why  Beth ended up culling a bunch of shadows in their first patch.

 

Normally I wouldn't be caught dead posting a Eurogamer article on anything, but this covers the essentials:

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-the-best-pc-hardware-for-fallout-4-4023

[I'm The Wabbit]

Could someone explain this to me? Does this mean you can fully use your PC resources with oldrim or something?