Dear Dev's,

I have registered on the forums specifically to start a discussion on the subject. At first I'd like to thank the developers for giving us another great Elder Scrolls game.

However, being a long term Elder Scrolls fan and having put endless hours into every ES game, I find it increasingly frustrating that I can't make the game playable with number of graphical mods at a chosen settings without constantly crashing to the desktop.

The summary of the issue is as follows:

I have only relatively small number of gameplay mods installed (about 40), however I am using most of the very high end texture replacers for most things in Skyrim - which ultimately gets me very easily above the "artificial" cap for Skyrim's memory usage which is around 3.1Gb, leading to a crash to desktop every few minutes.

Probably, as many other fans have painstakingly modded my instance of the game, removing many mod conflicts manually and resolving various errors. However after 3 trying to find the workaround for 32-bit memory usage issue I am on the brink of giving up.

I have tried many knows (and some unknown) tips and tricks to make the game a bit more playable but to no avail.

Those include all official and unofficial ini tweaks like:

ugridsToLoad - on vanilla game it's possible to play even with the value change to 9 - however, with any sort of HD replacers ANYTHING above 5 is an instanst crash because memory allocation spikes...
ExteriorCellBuffer - lowered it to lower-than-recommended value however it doesn't seem to help much (if at all)
iMaxMemoryAllocatedBytes / MaxPageSize etc - fiddled with various values but no effect....
PCB command in console - does seem to help a bit but you need to execute it manually every few minutes....which is ridiculous....

And many other things, which there is no point for me to list here, as those are well known by enthusiast folk, who in the end, have always been stonewalled by the mem usage "cap".

Therefore I would like to ask dev for a support of the higher end audience, maybe in a form of 64-bit exe (that would be a dream state and I know it's a tall order), maybe improved processes for memory management in terms of how the game handles cell buffers and how often they are being purged.

I am clutching at straws here, but I believe I speak for all enthusiast fans here who have the means to enjoy the game in higher quality than most. We would like to appreciate the beauty and immersion of your game even more and we have resources to do that, - but only if the game is allowed to use those resources. While I

Therefore while I appreciate I am speaking for relatively low % of fans with high end machines - Dear devs, I would like to bring this issue to your attention, and urge you to consider giving your fans an ability to enjoy Skyrim being bigger, better, and more beautiful then ever.

Kind regards
Paul

PS: Just to aleviate some doubts, I don't consider myself as an average user. With my PC config being (3770k @ 4.8g / 32 gb ram / 7970x2 6GB + ssd's) I know I'm on the higher end of the spectrum. The issue for me specifically (and I'm sure for lots of fold out there) is that while I can run the game at constant 60fps while using all texture replacers / ENBs etc etc.......I can't play it anymore.....because it crashes constantly when it even touches 3.2GB. Therefore after spending weeks to make my personal experience as perfect as possible, in the end I have 35Gb folder with the game that is actually gorgeous and plays great....for about 5 minutes at a time (takes about 4 to 6 cell changes before it crashes).

I also realise that devs are commited to support a game in it's vanilla state and we all know that you can't get Skyrim to use so much memory in normal circumstances. Then there is modding. With Creation Kit the doors have opened for an untold layer of customization and ability to make already great game......a perfect one - for each and single one of us.

So devs....please support us.....let us enjoy your game in it's greatest possible glory.

Kind regards

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1417671-64-bit-please

See there. That's just one of many threads we've got on this and everything has been covered as to why it's a 32-bit executable.

My Skyrim barely uses 1.5 gb of ram with settings somewhere between high and ultra and a ugridstoload=9; on the other hand it uses all the vram available: 1 gb, but I very rarely have crashes.

Like I said - 64-bit would be a dream. But actually could the dev's improve memory management / cell purging process to be more accomodating....i dont know...

Besides - It might be engine related of course, but the glaring example of how things might be improved is what Community Patch people have done Gothic 3. With the patch 1.74 / 1.75 of the Community Patch the users are able to crank the settings up to the point not previously possible.
With various ini settings the game is using between 5 and 6 GB of memory - and it's still not "native" 64-bit executable - the game still is and always has been 32-bit.