» Wed May 16, 2012 9:09 am
To those who say there's no problem with Steam. there is a problem with starting in offline mode. They say you have to log in once to start in offline mode, but what they don't say is that they mean once every time you restart your computer. That completely defeats the purpose of offline mode because if your internet is down and your PC has to be rebooted for any reason at all, then you can't use the products you paid for. If they fix this then there is no problem with Steam. As for using more memory, they could easily make it an option in the launcher that is disabled by default, and it would probably be easier than making this patch was, so I don't know what the problem is there.
For some reason, Bethesda is going to great lengths to make sure their game doesn't perform as well as it can on some systems. That's both surprising and disappointing. I can't think of any reason whatsoever that this can't be a toggled option except that they may know of some horrible game breaking or system-eating memory leak that happens when too much can be addressed. It's never in a developer's interest to prevent the better performance of their product, and they would never do it just to be out to get you. This also has nothing whatsoever to do with stopping piracy -- it's a performance issue, not a DRM or distribution issue. A developer does, however, have incentive to make sure their product is safe and stable, so this makes me wonder about their memory management.
Systems have limits, so when new ground is broke or boundaries pushed in what an engine can do, in the absence of major hardware advances, it happens because a little trick was discovered. There's memory footprint, execution time, and executable size. These three are balanced along with stability, performance, and capability. When one is pushed, compromises are made in others. More memory means a bigger executable to manage it, and more execution time. So, their memory management may be hard-coded to deal with 2 GB or less. In that case, setting up your executable to use more memory sets your operating system to allow it to be addressed, but then the application doesn't free up all the memory it addresses. Little by little, memory remains in use when it's not, which in turn can cause a whole mess of problems.
Have those who have used / are using the patch to address more memory noticed instability in long play sessions, or hung systems upon exiting? It's worth pointing out that if I'm right then over a long enough period of time, you could actually damage your system. The first sign that I'm right, however, would be the exact same problem that allowing a greater address range is supposed to prevent: out of memory runtime errors. Only here's the catch about it: You may even see a smooth exit from Skyrim, and then get out of memory errors and crashes in other programs. Not every little trick for performance sake is kosher. Much as with overclocking, you're taking a risk.
