Maximum PC

I'm wondering if this is really a problem, because this had happened to me (And I'm sure it's because of this issue).

I was playing Civilization V, the settings were 12 civs, on the Earth with an extra huge map. And I think something along the lines of 12 city states. As I'm playing along, the game suddenly freezes and refuses to unfreeze. So checking Task Manager, I notice the game has chewed up 2GB of memory. And to double check, I see it's a 32-bit program. So how is this correlated? Windows only allows 2GB of user space for 32-bit applications (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294418). Also when I load up my game, it's floating at 1.8GB. So I can't play it any further because it will hit the 2GB limit at some point.

I've also heard from a coworker who does SolidWorks stuff that IT goofed and installed a 32-bit version of the program on a 64-bit system. He jokes around that it's basically you use the program until it gets to the 2GB limit and crashes, before restarting again.

So now this leaves me concerned with recent PC games. If games like Civ 5 (I doubt the game has memory leaking issues, considering the scenario I'm playing) runs as a 32-bit program and can easily get up to 2GB of memory usage, then this needs to be addressed.

I see that as a sloppy CIV programming problem. They know the memory limitations they have to work with. They should be dealing with it as necessary to have it work.

I would open and play the game for a bit and then open task manager and click on the processes tab to look for any programs taking a lot of memory to run, including the game. You may have malware screwing things up.

Nasty

use CFF Explorer and tell CivV to use <2GB of space. It works. And yes, they were idiots for not making this a 64-bit game.

The game makers recommend 4 gigs of ram:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1110890p1.html

A 32 bit system will only see 3.3 gigs max. So if you had a 64 bit system you could install 6 gigs of ram and have plenty of headroom.

Nasty

Let me back up so you understand the picture.

• The computer is running Windows 7 Pro with 6GB of memory.
• The computer is my dedicated gaming computer. The only time it goes on the internet (usually) is for Steam. Sometimes the occasional Chrome, but I only visit sites I really need to visit for the computer. It's only on when I want to play a game and I'm running it as a standard user. Thus exposure to malware is pretty much zilch.
• I posted an article by Microsoft explicitly stating that an 32-bit program running in a 64-bit OS has 4GB allocated to it, but 2GB is for user space. And when the game crashed, it was using 2GB of memory, and it is a 32-bit program.

If it was using 2GB of RAM and it crashed, it was not crashing because it ran out of memory. It has 4GB available .. your last point confirms that.

2GB of user space is not the same as 'only 2GB available.'

I've only got 4GB of RAM in my system and I've seen Civ5 take up to 3GB .. it hasn't crashed on me yet.

I'm not saying that the game isn't buggy .. there are a lot of report of people having problems .. but I am saying that the problem is not necessarily a lack of RAM.

According to this statement taken from the link, you are only allocated 2 gigs of memory to run your programs (user) and the windows system gets the rest (2gigs). So where do you get the 4 gigs to run your programs? I run a 32 bit system and have 3.3 gigs available to run my programs and windows. Am I missing something or what?

Nasty