Excessive RAM and Page File causing game to be unplayable

So this has alot of context here.

I'm decently versed in IT work, and this one is stumping me pretty hard.


This started yesterday and I was actually running the last 3.2.5 version. I noticed about halfway through the raid my PC was chugging very hard, and I've been using SPT for about a month with nary a performance issue. So I thought this was strange. I took a look at task manager and noticed my RAM usage was waaaaaaaay too high even for tarkov. I have 32 Gigs of RAM here and before it never crossed 20. I looked and it was using 99% and shoving a massive pagefile to one of my many Harddrives and maxing it's Read/Write which is causing the massive stuttering.


I know Tarkov has its issues with memory leakage and whatnot (even that is a debate to some people) so I thought, "ah i'll just reinstall SPT and that'll fix it hopefully."

Well turns out the installer I used for 3.2.5 is also able to somehow force you to download the latest version, so I now found myself upgrading to 3.3 which I really didn't want to do, but oh well. Maybe the new files would correct this issue.

Nope.

Half way through the raid and especially towards the end, my performance just absolutely tanks because for some reason SPT (Tarkov client itself) is progressively wanting more RAM (Increases 0.1 every 2-3 seconds) until it consumes my RAM then destroys my Harddrive with a pagefile it can't deal with.

So as for what I have tried and learned;

I thought I might have a bad harddrive, but after extensive testing (even doing a read/write load test) the harddrive never got above 80% usage which is what it is meant to be doing. The harddrive is fine as far as I have pushed it.

Next, I tested other games all morning (its now dinner time) and no game I tried ESO, Star Citizen, Heavily modded Skyrim to push the RAM and none of what I did made my RAM go above 70% usage. I found that interesting.

Next I went back to SPT and tested if maybe the maps I was playing on was the issue. I tested all the maps (aside from Labs and Lighthouse cuz I haven't learned them yet) and even on Factory my performance tanks halfway through and by the end of the raid it's lucky I can even extract (oh let me get there in a bit, this one is fun). Scoping in (even with a 1x Red Dot) will lock my PC for a solid second, but the server keeps on ticking, so I can die in-game and not be able to do anything about it. One frame I'm aiming, next frame is black screen waiting for the post mortem screen. For 5+ minutes. As I said, that's next.

Now lets talk about extracting and end of raid. When extracting, the process is fine, but the game is stuttery until you're actually extracted. Once the game detects you left, there happens the final straw of "I'm sick of this". The game will lock on a black screen for 30 seconds-2 minutes, THEN play the "you've extracted!" music byte, then hang up for another 1-3 minutes. Windows classifies Tarkov as "not responding" during this whole ordeal. Once I pass the black screen, I finally am back in the post-raid menu. I can click through and when done, the game tries to load the main menu. That will hitch for yet another 1-2 minutes before finally allowing me to use the game. Again, "not responding" according to windows. Lastly, during that ENTIRE SLOG, my RAM is maxed at 99% and my poor hard drive is slammed with 100% usage for that entire time.

To press this again; This only began yesterday. no updates for windows or drivers changed this. Suddenly issues. Still affects me today, and now I'm basically forced to speedrun a raid in 10 minutes or Tarkov becomes a RAM Black hole.

I've tried manually expanding the pagefile size but that didn't change. Obviously did a re-install of SPT (which forced me to 3.3, but this issue began on 3.2.5), And that changed nothing since I can still load up any map and struggle bus half-way through. I also tried a raid and not moving, seeing if interacting with the environment was causing this. Nope. I could spawn in an empty void in Tarkov and it would still lead to this issue.

As a final "is it the harddrive?" effort, I disconnected it and windows was forced to pagefile to other drives. It unfortunately chose and SSD but in the effort of science I allowed my SSD to take a bullet just for one raid. While it prolonged noticeable issues by about 5 minutes in-raid longer, Tarkov somehow still ate my RAM and Pagefile on the SSD to the point my PC locks, and Tarkov stutters as a result because the data bandwidth is maxed.

So that leads me back to; Something Tarkov is doing is effing me really hard here.

I don't know if it's my hoard I have in-game that finally broke it, or some other unknown hidden issue, but if I can't fix this... well... guess no tarkov and I really like playing SPT. Online players + Desync + Cheaters I just have no interest in dealing with. SPT is home, and I wish it wasn't kicking me out right now.

Sorry for the long novel, but this is all in effort to avoid the typical IT responses cuz I have already gone through the obvious check spots as I said in the post above.

I'd love to figure out why SPT suddenly decided to eat all my RAM and VRAM starting yesterday where an update to 3.3 didn't even fix it.


I Appreciate any and all help and the fantastic y'all do going into SPT.

Update 1;

Tried a fresh 3.3 profile and character, first raid had the same issue about half way through.


I just wanna play Tarkov, man.

Quote from Rad Roach

Hi MadCat,

my first question is how old is your computer? And second, do you have any background apps running that may or may not slow down your computer whilst you play?

Just from my own experience from playing SPT, 3.2.5 was running very good with/without mods and the initial lag/stutter you have is the AI being spawned in and throughout the raid but it does sound interesting that your RAM is hitting 99% and your HD at 100%, possible memory leak perhaps? 3.3.0 seems to be running the same with/without mods, the only thing is the airdrops can be weird (occasionally, but not a big issue).

I noticed my RAM usage fluctuates between 65%-96%, the higher point tends to be on Lighthouse and Interchange and when the AI are loading. It does this on Live Tarkov as well which can be annoying.

I'm not a tech wizard but it sounds like a memory leak or something not quite right with your setup, I hope someone else can help you better and you can continue playing!

Display More

My PC is 2 years old, well kept after. And no, for the sake of testing, I actually booted in safemode so it was only running what was needed. Normally, I have Tarkov and youtube up at most. As I said, I haven't had any performance issues with Tarkov until last Sunday.

AI Stutters happen, but I'm not talking about that, since it's a constant increase in RAM usage until 99/100%, then it creates a page file that consumes a 1.5TB Hard Drive on my system in its entirety, so people recommending a page file increase is asinine when Windows is giving Tarkov 1.5TB of page file to work with and it's STILL asking for more.

It definitely smells like memory leak, but beyond the fresh install of SPT as I mentioned I did, that should've been the best chances of fixing it.

I wish I could stress how smooth SPT ran before Sunday, my PC is working at a walking pace if everything is fine, but without reason (no updates to SPT, Windows, GPU, other drivers) SPT/Tarkov is a RAM Black Hole waaaaaaay more than normal. Even running Shoreline and Interchange was hardly making my PC spin up.

Quote from Kobrakon

I believe this might just be an issue with your setup, I remember having a similar issue when I had a much weaker PC because as more AI spawns and load more things into the map, it puts more strain on your CPU and HDD, so firstly, you should definitely keep SPT installed on an SSD, and then you should get at least a 16GB RAM kit if you don't already have such, though it's much better if you invest in a 32GB DDR4 kit cause tarkov is very prone to memory leaks.

I mentioned in my Original Post already that I have 32GB of RAM on my system. SPT is installed on it's own SSD that is brand new, fully functioning and ONLY has SPT/Tarkov on it at the moment.

Quote from Kobrakon

hmm, I'm not too entirely sure what's causing the issue then, I've never heard of this kind of issue before or have heard of it affecting anyone else, I guess maybe reinstall EFT in its entirety as maybe you got a bad download??

There's a post currently still active that is in the same vein here, and googling around showed me other people have had it, and the most common fix is the page file increase. But yeah, as I said before, even manually setting it smaller or larger than Windows doing its thing doesn't solve the problem for me. It's disappointing.

Though it has not occurred to me the genuine tarkov files might be borked. I'll test that out with a live client re-install, re-install SPT and check it again.

Crossing fingers!

Update 2:

Fresh Tarkov installation + Fresh SPT installation;

No dice. RAM reaches 100% usage and has to use page file about half way through the raid.


I don't know what else to do here. Did any of the logs show anything at all? Tech people that work on SPT seen this at all? I really need help.

Edit; Performance has gotten worse when reaching this point. My PC will lock for 10 seconds when trying to look even a bloody jacket. What hurts is it locks for 30 seconds when looting bodies.

Getting out of the raid, I'm waiting for the "raid end" sound for 6 minutes now, and getting to the main menu has doubled in time.

Quote from Kobrakon

All I saw was some item issues and a null reference in the logs, nothing that should cause such issues

Damnit... All my in-game settings are low. I ran the game with the only setting above low or off was texture and that was high. I tested medium and low textures (another recommended fix) and still am getting these RAM issues.


I just don't understand how I can boot up the game, run fine, two hours later I'm plagued with this inescapable problem that is very quickly making me realize that all I got and can get out of tarkov was one month of play, because for some reason the game stopped managing RAM.

Idk man, like what's even more weird is in-raid I can hit the ESC menu to look at options and such, and the RAM usage will finally relent. I thought to myself "oh, maybe if I just ESC screen every 5 minutes the game will be good!"

Nope. Even when doing that, my RAM can be 20 gigs in use, but the pagefile is still throttling my hard drive to 100%, and leaving the raid is a "This program is not responding" fest.

It's so jarring since that entire month I've had blissful performance. 60fps the entire time, loads were 20 seconds or less, and getting in and out of raid was lightning quick. Now doing any of that, I have time to cook a meal for 50 and still have to stare at a black screen before loading in.

All signs point to a memory leak, but I can't help but think something minor changed without me doing anything and I can't find it. Let alone i've done everything I can to correct said memory leak.

It's just frustrating and defeating.

Quote from Kobrakon

had any luck? if not what are your settings, i'd imagine you'd have the auto ram cleaner enabled but if not try it out, also try clearing the cache, and if none of that helps, maybe just try updating drivers, as I remember once when my GPU auto-downloaded a driver update that killed the game until a patch was released

also maybe check your system logs and see if it logs any memory issues that might help with troubleshooting

I had a IT person well above my level come in to investigate.

I had already been using auto ram cleaner in the game the entire time, had already cleared the caches, updated drivers and what not.

Even went as far as getting a 3rd party RAM Cleaner going and that didn't do anything.

I had all my hardware checked for integrity so it's not a RAM failure or anything else in my system.

Even tried replacing the hard drive that was getting throttled, but quickly found out the system will throttle any and all hard drives It can.


So I was left with resetting/reinstalling windows.


I'm currently getting my system back to working order here, hope to test out SPT again tonight. By the Stars I seriously hope the windows reinstall works because if not, there's something MASSIVELY wrong with SPT or Tarkov, and after running Live Tarkov, I'm leaning towards something borked on SPT's end. Cuz live Tarkov allowed me an offline raid on Reserve and my RAM didn't go past 9GB used (LOL yes it was that low).

Soooo maybe someone on the tech/dev side of SPT should be looking at this thread with a serious eye.

Update 3;

After all the above, a windows reset seems to have alleviate the obvious symptoms but not the issue.

The page file has resorted to using my boot drive (M.2) as the page file drive which is faster than SSD and HDD, so the hitching due to that is no more.

HOWEVER the RAM is still being throttled to maximum use, though now I've seen my RAM chill out during the raid whenever I hang out near extractions (why? idk, but if it helps, I ain't complaining). It also did max my M.2 drive on the second raid in a row but I was only waiting for extraction > main menu for a total of 10 seconds, which is what it used to be before these issues started.

I want to be clear that my issue is still unsolved but at least for the time being, I can play, barring the issue doesn't re-occur.

Alright to address the replies since my last;

I too find it highly weird when other people are able to run Tarkov (Lighthouse, Reserve) at less than 20gb used. I used to be among that number but something changed sporadically. I have got no idea why or how. Thankfully, the RAM is dumping itself at the end of raid back to near-idle levels (26% usage) going through the menus. True Idle (on desktop after a restart) is 12-16% so this is an improvement after the reset.

As I said in an above reply already, it's not a hardware issue because I had everything stress tested thoroughly and even gave my RAM the Memtest86 treatment. No errors, no faults, just pure hardware strength.

BIOS is up to date as well.

I didn't mention modless tests since I never had issues prior to last sunday with the few I had running. Did I test modless? Yes. Did it change anything? Of course not, if it did, I would have mentioned that.

Sorry, there's NO WAY in hell i'm disabling RAM Cleaner in Tarkov. In my efforts to figure out the solution, turning off the ram cleaner made my performance so bad I might as well have been playing of microsoft powerpoint. No, RAM Cleaner helps in this case. Perma-on.

Update 4;

Having not heard of these programs before (because I've not needed them), there's a difference between RAM Cleaner and RAM Trimmer.

RAM Trimmer seems to be working so far, though now my performance issues are strictly kept to micro-stutters which while annoying, is still playable. As in, the stutters happen when I'm not being shot at (yet), so i've avoided tech related deaths so far. While the RAM usage still goes pretty high (averaging 30-50% in-raid), it is no longer maxing out my RAM thanks to this program.


There's clearly a memory leak related specifically to SPT as i've made the following observations;

Running Live Client Tarkov does not replicate the memory leak.
I have no memory leak issues on other unity-based games (HBS Battletech for example).
Even Star Citizen doesn't push my RAM beyond 30% usage for how unoptimized that game is.

So i've isolated the issues with something that happened with SPT for the sole reason it's not happening on the true Tarkov client.

Any reasons this might be happening?

Beyond that, I'm able to play with micro stutters for the time being, but I do want my flawless performance back if possible.