Any acknowledgements from DICE they're looking into this? This is a problem for many users regardless of RAM size I believe.
I have the same issue with 4Gb RAM. I have a terrible experience with BF4 since release day in multiplayer with stuttering and choppiness at 2560x1600. Going from Win7 to Win8 today helped a LOT in smoothness but I still see the mentioned slow-downs/choppiness after playing for some time which I suspect is down to memory usage. The Commited bytes skyrocketed to 7.8Gbytes during gaming! This is far from normal. I'm not saying this is a memory leak but definitely something is wrong here how the game utlizes it's virtual address space and paging. (Nevertheless, the crashes still happening on Win8 as well.) I also believe that the same issue exists on Win7 and users who have their page file on SSD having a less obvious/drastic impact.
Win7 and Win8.1 (fresh install with all updates)
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
i5 3570K
4Gbyte RAM, page file set by OS (3.5 Gb)
GTX770 with 331.65
no SSD
EDIT:
11/6 - Ok, I found the post in this flood where EA replied they're looking into this. Cool!
Today I did some more comprehensive testing on Lancang Dam map with 64 players. I was not able to test longer to see if there is any leak during longer gameplay throughout map changes. The conclusion for now is that I couldn't find any memory leaking but the 4Gb RAM as minimum requirement is a joke and in my case the massive slowdowns and hickups are caused by the system paging to HDD. While in theory a 32-bit process can only address/commit 2Gigs of virtual space (virtual = physical+page file in this context) this is enough to max out a system and leave very small physical memory headroom. A 64-bit process can address 8 Terabytes, so you can get rid of this limitation. However, nothing is infinite and while you can go above 2 Gigs with x64 you should still make sure that you free up the allocated resources you've done using by optmizing the code.
With 4Gig of RAM my page file was set by the Win8 OS automatically to 3.5 Gig. So, you have 7.5 in total available and this is the max can be (should be) commited by the system (all processes). This settings was the worst since the game was hitting that 7.5 and forced Windows to enlarge the page file further. My total committed memory hit 8Gigs and beyond on this map. So, the first thing I tried is to reconfigure the page file and manually set it to 4Gigs minimum. Interestingly, this helped reducing the total committed amount to 6.1-6.3Gig but still, paging was inevitable - you can see the purple spikes on the IO graph in the screenshots.
You would think that using the x86 binary of BF4 is the solution due to it's lower memory footprint. It SHOULD be the solution IF Dice had the time to optimize the game for Win7 medium spec machines, not just for Win8 high spec. But clearly, it's not optimized for Win7, nor to systems with 4Gb RAM.
Firing up the x86 version of the game reserves the maximum possible RAM for the bf4 process - 2Ggigs (not all committed though, private bytes are 1.7Gig). No wonder that the system gets starved after a few minutes the same way as with x64 because the difference in the total committed memory. is only 200 Megs. As for comparison, I did included screenshots about BF3 as well, where the game was perfectly running fine and system only used 2.7 of physical RAM with 5Gig of total committed. No heavy paging, no 2Gigs of allocation. BF3 was happy allocating only 1.6.
Here are the numbers and screenshots below:
With 4Gb RAM (BF3 - BF4 x86 - BF x64)
Max physical memory committed: 2.7Gb - 3.5Gb - 3.5 Gb
Total committed by system: 5.0Gb - 6.1 Gb - 6.3 Gb
Allocated (but not all committed) by BF: 1.6Gb - 2Gb - 4.4Gb (!!!)
Peak private bytes of BF: 1.4Gb - 1.8Gb - 2.2 Gb
With 12Gb RAM (BF4 x64)
Max physical memory committed: 4.7 Gb (!!!)
Total committed by system: 6.9 Gb (!!!)
Allocated (but not all committed) by BF: 4.4Gb (!!!)
Peak private bytes of BF: 2.2 Gb
Basically, BF4 x64 allocates the same amount of virtual space on both 4Gb and 12Gb RAM machines. Zero optimization, in other words.
Screenshots of memory and IO usage are here for comparison
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/inpol529lo2ptfo/2lgCXp5cIL?lst
(The BF3 IO graph contains a red bar since the map has changed prior to that line). BF3 map was Caspian 64 players. You can see that the IO/disk graph is much more relaxed after expanding the physical RAM.
Now I understand why DICE first said that BF4 will be 64-bit only and then added support for 32-bit later... big mistake without proper optimization! But I guess this is just another selling point again, just -like lowering the minimum system specs not to scare people away that they might not have the proper rig for it. I also have to agree with the makers of COD Ghost where is that game simply doesn't start if you don't have 6 gigs at least and notifies you. Now you probably know the reason. Same should have been applied to BF4 specs.
Again, I haven't seen the memory leaking since the Private/pooled/nonpooled bytes never started to increase endlessly for me. Will try to test with a longer gameplay later which will include map changes. See you on the Battlefield!
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Win8.1 (fresh install with all updates)
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
i5 3570K
4Gbyte RAM, page file set by OS (3.5 Gb), 12 Gbyte RAM (2.5Gb page file)
GTX770 with 331.65
no SSD
Fix your game DICE...
