# How do i stop/fix a memory leak in games?



## Taryl

How do i stop/fix memory leaks in games like GTA 4. This game has got to be the leakiest game i've ever played. I used Memturbo to check my memory and after playing the game for less than 5 minutes, it's already consumed a whole 3GB of my RAM (I have 4GB of DDR3 RAM 1333MHz, XP uses some of it, leaving me w/ 3.32 something GB of which .32 GB was used in background processes, 3GB is free for gaming).

Memoturbo tries to recover from the memory leaks but it could only recover like 100MB every second, and each time it recovers the memory, the game locks up a bit. But when that measly bit of memory is recoever, it gets used immediately and the recovering process starts again, locking up the game.

How do I stop memory leaks? What programs do i use? Memturbo is useless pretty much. It doesn't recover much, and whenever it does, the computer locks up. It's bad.


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## gamerman4

Memory management programs in general are pretty useless. What they do is use up as much memory as they can so that Windows will put it into the paging file, which as soon as you go back to GTA4, will be taken right back out of the paging file. I recommend uninstalling GTA4 and just updating it to the latest patches. The game is a memory hog, can't do a whole lot about it. Think of how much RAM it takes to load a giant city. It uses all the RAM it can get.


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## Taryl

So what do i do? GTA 4 is flawed?


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## Bodaggit23

Stop running that silly program and just play the darn game.


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## Taryl

Bodaggit23 said:


> Stop running that silly program and just play the darn game.



Memory leaks cause stutters. The stutters prompted me to download memturbo. Running without memturbo still causes stutter/memory leak.


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## Bodaggit23

Taryl said:


> Memory leaks cause stutters. The stutters prompted me to download memturbo. Running without memturbo still causes stutter/memory leak.



My mistake. Apologies.


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## MouSe

Buy more RAM?

I have 6GB and no problems with GTA 4.


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## Taryl

MouSe said:


> Buy more RAM?
> 
> I have 6GB and no problems with GTA 4.



According to memturbo, the more memory you have, the longer it takes for the memory to completely fill up and start to stutter the game. You can have up to 50000GB of RAM, and it WILL eventually stutter. Unless you can have ∞GB of RAM, you're bound to stutter one second or another.


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## bomberboysk

Taryl said:


> According to memturbo, the more memory you have, the longer it takes for the memory to completely fill up and start to stutter the game. You can have up to 50000GB of RAM, and it WILL eventually stutter. Unless you can have ∞GB of RAM, you're bound to stutter one second or another.


Thats not how it works, the reason it "stutters" is that you either do not have enough memory to begin with, have a crappy graphics card, or a low end cpu. Id recommend running something like malwarebytes antimalware because i dont trust the looks of this "memturbo" program.


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## gamerman4

OK let me get this straight, you experience stutters. You download a program that "fixes" the stutters but in place of those, freezes the game every time it decides to free up memory.
Try lowering your texture settings, often texture settings that are too high will fill up your video RAM (the memory on your gfx card) and cause stutters when it loads new textures.

Try some of these steps as well:

- before you run your game, turn off your Antivirus programs
- lower your settings to the minimum and keep raising them until you experience your stutters, then back down (this requires patience but it is the most effective)
- remove memturbo, it's pretty useless, Windows does a great job of managing its own memory.
- make sure you have up-to-date drivers
- make sure the game is also up-to-date, patches tend to fix many problems.

Also, how about giving us the specs of your computer, that could help.


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