Arch Linux

sitwano

Member

Registered: 2017-07-07

Posts: 83

Team fortress frequently crashes due to high memory usage

I have an intel i5 5200 cpu with intel HD 5500 graphics. Furthermore, I have 8GB of RAM. I'm struggling to come to terms with why team fortress keeps crashing randomly throwing out errors to do with not enough memory for textures and what not.  I never had this problem a month ago. Furthermore I'm not able to play the game with medium settings as it almost instantly crashes when loading the map. On low settings the game crashes mostly during the character selection screen.

Anyone else having this problem? TF2 seems to take up a lot memory and I find this abnormal. It uses about 3GB of RAM just on game startup, before I even get to play! I get the following error shown in the image below.

http://imgur.com/a/ffFYI

Last edited by sitwano (2017-08-31 13:55:32)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,707

Re: Team fortress frequently crashes due to high memory usage

Intel graphics do not have dedicated video memory, they will use a portion of your RAM so that observation does not surprise me in the least. There are a number of possibilites on why this might have surfaced only now:

• A change in kernel behaviour: Try e.g. linux-lts to see if you are able to reproduce.

• A regression in mesa: That's going to be a bit more annoying to debug/downgrade and test

• Updated requirements for TF2, if that's the case you are likely SoL or will have to wait for an update from them

That said to really be of any help you might want to post some more details regarding the installed versions of all software that might be relevant (mesa,DE,Xorg driver etcetc) as well as the output you get in console before the crash, info from dmesg/journal during that timeframe and if a coredump is generated maybe a stacktrace from that.

sitwano

Member

Registered: 2017-07-07

Posts: 83

Re: Team fortress frequently crashes due to high memory usage

I don't have xf86-video-intel installed. Which means I'm using modesetting I think. Using latest Mesa 17.1.7-2. The linux kernel is 4.9.45-1-lts. Using Gnome on wayland.

I've tried running the game with xf86-video-intel but the same crashes happen. I seem to be using the latest version of TF2 assuming that there aren't any new updates. I'm going to try run the game under the latest linux kernel to see if it makes any difference. Furthermore, I'll downgrade my mesa version and try again.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,707

Re: Team fortress frequently crashes due to high memory usage

You might not have to bother, it seems to be quite widespread and a known issue, apparantly (see linked comment) deleting sound cache files might help this issue at the cost of stutters, but apparently there's not much to done directly short of TF2 being updated to the new source engine. Make sure to read through the rest of that thread, it contains some additional info and interesting pointers: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source … -288856916

sitwano

Member

Registered: 2017-07-07

Posts: 83

Re: Team fortress frequently crashes due to high memory usage

Does anyone know of a way to clear all cache files and what not to return the steam game files to a state where it is the exact same as a newly installed game?