Potential memory leak in D2:R

Technical Support
1

I feel like there is a memory leak in this game. I often do lots of programming on C# and Python and run large tasks on multiple threads, so I know my system specs aren’t a problem. I recently started playing and finding my frames were dropping dramatically out of the blue. I figured maybe it was HD textures, but managed to replicate this issue in the vintage graphics. As much as enjoy this game, it does become rather unbearable, so I quit out.

I play games like space engineers, desperados 3, new world and Satisfactory without frame issue. But, never have I seen such an old game hog my actual physical memory.

D2:
CPU: 13.9%
Memory: 6085.9 MB
Vintage graphics mode.

Windows 10
16GB Memory
1060 6GB GTX
I5-6600K
M.2 256GB

2 Likes
2

Is that just Diablo or the total usage including Windows and other background apps?

3

There is definitely a video memory issue somewhere. I have GTX1070 with 8Gb video memory and on the low graphics options game is using 6.6Gb of it. On medium and higher it uses all 8Gb of video RAM, which is crazy. I hope devs know that even RTX3070 has only 8Gb of RAM.
I suppose the game does this to load locations fast but as it can’t hold all assets in memory it needs to unload some that are not used and this is where crash happens - probably something is not unloaded correctly and new data can’t be loaded properly because memory is full.

4

I agree something is going on with GPUs. Not only are they unusually running hot at 7-10% usage, but the VRAM usage is out of control. Why does this game need over 7 gigs of VRAM on a 2d game single monitor? On lowered settings? Why? This game really stresses out my card and I cant figure out why.

Something is differently off. This game should not be using this much power, generating this much heat, and using this much VRAM. The whole thing is just off and disproportionate…

2 Likes
5

In some cases a game will see you have x GB of video memory and try to preemptively make use of it. Something like loading textures you might see shortly, but aren’t currently needed. If this is what is happening though it should also be managing that correctly so who knows if a caching scheme like that is being used or is working correctly.

6

It wouldn’t be shocking… I saw something similar in the newest SimCity several years ago when it was released. Memory utilized kept creeping up even while idling in game until it finally hit 100%.

7

i’ve been keeping tabs on how the game exe does its thing over the last few days;

doesn’t matter if i’m idle or playing, it’s going to crash, and usually in the same way.

vram usage doesn’t seem to climb, but actual ram does, sort of. it doesn’t use up all of my 64gb of ram, but it does general kill itself after hitting an overall size.

on absolute start (first black screen, and then the first video, it’s using 1.14GB.

2.74GB at press any key screen.

~2.3GB at char select.

~3GB at idle first entering a game.

but no, the interesting part is that with d2r closed my browser windows with tabs of game info and whatever doesn’t tend to expand memory much. with d2r open, the ram usage they utilize steadily climbs.

i can observe this with multiple browsers. including just opening a single ~30kb text file in a single window in one browser.

while they are steady in memory usage prior to the game launching, ram usage spikes and then climbs. closing the game doesn’t seem to stop this new behavior.

palemoon can be restarted and open the same pages i’ve always opened and i can wait until resource usage stabilizes. i can wait, it might flux a few dozen kb, but its not going to spike hundreds of mb and then keep rising.

the second i click the play button in the bnet client, memory usage starts it new oddness. i went from 2.14GB of ram with palemoon steady and idle to now 2.24GB and its climbing even now. all i did was launch and go into a game, then close d2r.

all active chrome and vivaldi pids are seeing a similar pattern of memory usage. stable after relaunch and waiting for idle, memory usage fluxing the usual small amount, but nothing special. launch d2r… everything starts rising.

i’m now at 2.26GB for palemoon just during the time i’ve written this part. and still climbing. 2.27.

reallllllly starting to wonder what the heck.

1 Like
8

2.4GB as of the start of this post. watched the threads in the processes of palemoon. 0 activity generated with d2r closed and no interaction with any palemoon tabs/windows.

start d2r and the activity spikes, get cycling threads where there were none.

w.t.f.

closing d2r while watching thread lists also results in a spike in activity. a massive one.

after a time everything goes back to full idle.

anyone with some debug tools willing to explore what this thing is doing in memory?

2.61GB.

i’ve left this stuff open for weeks before and never cracked 2.25gb.

the only new variable is d2r.

1 Like
9

anyone find a solution to this? I can run most games on ultra i have 1080TI and 16GB DDR4

I am sitting at title screen and am getting a 70% memory usage lmao.

Something is amiss and the spikes simply make the game unplayable. I dont believe it has always been like this either could it be a new update?

I am pretty sure i would have noticed it being this bad before but recently it has gotten unbearable!

10

I noticed this problem as well. If I have D2R running for a long period of time, the memory continually expands. The other day I noticed the browser in my second monitor was extremely laggy and couldn’t load pages. It turns out that the reason why was because Diablo 2 was using 10,000 MB of memory. I quit and restarted and it fixed the problem, but this memory bloat happens basically every time I play, increasing slowly but surely.

I have to wonder if this also has something to do with why it often takes forever for the process to terminate after quitting the game, as many people have reported. We might be waiting for all this memory to be released.

11

Still experiencing this issue to this day. D2R was using 10GB of ram when I noticed everything getting sluggish

12

Reduce VFX quality and VFX lightning quality to medium or low, these two are busted xd