Python, 32Bit, Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 (integrated graphics) - considering laptop upgrade

[voarsh]

Hi.

I'm playing a custom game.

It's written in Python and the version of Python is 2.7. Because of technical reasons the Python interpreter must be 32Bit to work with the game.

I face a few issues when playing the game:

• My current laptop has the Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 - 128 MB of Dedicated Video Memory but the system has a total of 5980 MBs of available video memory, 5852 MB Shared System Memory. 12 GBs RAM in total.
• Python 32Bit has a limitation of 2(?) GBs of RAM that can be allocated to it? (need some confirmation.)
• The game crashes when the program exceeds about 1.3 GBs of RAM (taskmgr confirms 1.3 GBs before crashing) with OUT OF MEMORY errors. I cannot be completely sure if it's the Python element or my video card.

I guess my question is, is it worth buying a laptop with 4 GBs of Dedicated Video Memory (GDDR5) with say the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics card?

Obviously, I'd not ONLY play this particular game but would be nice to have it open for more than 10/20 minutes without it crashing.
If perhaps the game developers made the game easier on the RAM things would be OK (if I upgraded). It is hard to tell if the memory error(s) are to do with the video card or the RAM. Or both?

FYI: I played a similar-ish game in the past with lower specs than the laptop I am using but it used DirectX instead of OpenGL (for the current game I'm playing) and would not crash with memory issues so quickly...

Any thoughts would be appreciated on my issue.

Thanks.

 

[Cromewell]

Python usually prints a stack trace when it bombs out. Can you post it here?

Python 32Bit has a limitation of 2(?) GBs of RAM that can be allocated to it? (need some confirmation.)

Yes, most 32 bit applications are limited this way, unless they have the large address aware flag set.

Because of technical reasons the Python interpreter must be 32Bit to work with the game.

Odd. For an interpreted language like python this shouldn't matter much.

What game is this? Is there a website where I can check it out to try and give you a better answer?

 

[voarsh]

Hi Cromwell.

The types of memory errors can be different. It isn't very helpful.

This is a "light" memory error: display:gsg:glgsg(error): GL error 0x505 : out of memory
-
The client doesn't usually crash straight away but if I move to a new area it tries to use more memory and then crashes.

Then there's the generic Python "Out of memory allocating 54000008 bytes". There is no stack trace.
The client crashes completely.

The website is at: https://piratesonline.us/play.php (the requirements might be the only useful part for you).

But still... if they were to use 64bit and I had 4 GB video memory and 12-16 GBs of RAM, would you say it would greatly improve this kind of situation?
(or even still if they don't change from the 32bit for a while...?)

 

[Cromewell]

The generic python error suggests it's out of virtual address space, the open GL error could be either system or video ram. It sounds like something that would be solved by switching to the 64 bit interpreter. They seem to be using Panda3D which definitely supports 64 bit builds, maybe the underlying code they have is what doesn't.

Since I'm not entirely sure how shared video memory behaves on the opengl side of things, I would expect that it looks the same, just slower, I'm not confident enough to say that getting a laptop with a better video card will definitely help. This is probably something you'll need to go to the developers for. They seem to have a support forum https://piratesforums.com/, you might be able to get a response from them that will clear it up better.

 

[voarsh]

The generic python error suggests it's out of virtual address space, the open GL error could be either system or video ram. It sounds like something that would be solved by switching to the 64 bit interpreter. They seem to be using Panda3D which definitely supports 64 bit builds, maybe the underlying code they have is what doesn't.

Since I'm not entirely sure how shared video memory behaves on the opengl side of things, I would expect that it looks the same, just slower, I'm not confident enough to say that getting a laptop with a better video card will definitely help. This is probably something you'll need to go to the developers for. They seem to have a support forum https://piratesforums.com/, you might be able to get a response from them that will clear it up better.

Yes, I am not sure how OpenGL manages memory, especially shared memory.

Not sure if it's helpful but the generic Python memory error I mentioned in my previous post was for approximately 54 MBs. It's such a small amount which makes me think it is probably related to the 128 MB Video Memory (excluding shared memory).

I have someone who has a 2 GB VRAM and a nice graphics card who is going to give it a try and let me know how the game behaves this his computer... it should be interesting.

 

[Cromewell]

Not sure if it's helpful but the generic Python memory error I mentioned in my previous post was for approximately 54 MBs. It's such a small amount which makes me think it is probably related to the 128 MB Video Memory (excluding shared memory).

You could run out of your ~2GB of virtual memory allocating any amount of space. If the game tried to get a ton of memory in small blocks eventually you'd hit one that fails. It could be 5B or 5GB. The size of the allocation doesn't really help you narrow down where it's coming from. If there was a bit more output we might have been able to figure out which but unfortunately we're out of luck on that front.

The test with someone else's machine is a good idea. It should confirm if it's a game issue or a system issue.

 

[lincsman]

The only thing I can suggest from here is add page file memory. This uses the hard drive as added RAM. For example, the wonderfully made (sarcasm) Call of Duty Black ops 3 game, requires 8GB of RAM, but usually if you have 8 GB of RAM then you have to increase the page file size to have the game run properly because essentially it requires more like 9 GB of RAM. This makes it run, by adding a sort of RAM from the hard drive. https://www.maketecheasier.com/change-pagefile-size-location-windows/