Severe Memory Leak and AMD Driver Instability in skate. (PC)

OS: Windows 11 Pro (24H2)
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
Driver Version: Adrenalin 25.9.1 WHQL
CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X
RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz
Game Version: Latest live build as of September 2025

Issue Summary
The game skate. exhibits two critical technical issues on PC:

• A progressive memory leak that causes RAM usage to spike up to 20+ GB during extended gameplay sessions.
• Severe instability with AMD Adrenalin drivers, resulting in frequent crashes, black screens, and system hangs.

These issues combined make the game nearly unplayable and pose a serious risk to system stability.

Memory Leak Details
RAM usage increases linearly over time, with no signs of deallocation or garbage collection.
Working Set observed via Process Explorer climbs from ~6 GB at launch to over 20 GB after ~90 minutes.
No paging activity; memory is retained indefinitely.
Leak appears tied to:

• Replay Editor (possible frame buffer accumulation)
• Asset streaming (textures, meshes not released)
• Physics engine (persistent colliders or rigid bodies post-respawn)

Expected Behavior: Memory should be recycled or released when assets are no longer in use.

AMD Driver Instability
Frequent DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG and DEVICE_REMOVED exceptions.
Black screens during alt-tab or resolution changes.
Driver timeouts during shader compilation or heavy load.
System freezes requiring hard reset.

Suspected Cause:
The game’s DX12 renderer may be issuing unstable draw calls or shader permutations that AMD’s driver stack fails to handle gracefully. NVIDIA users report fewer issues, suggesting vendor-specific incompatibility.

Mitigation Attempts

• Disabled XESS, Enhanced Sync, Anti-Lag → no improvement.
• Rolled back to Adrenalin 23.7.2 → slightly more stable, memory leak persists.
• Windowed mode with focus shift → reduces black screen frequency.
• Launch flags (e.g., -dx11) not supported.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Launch skate. on a system with AMD GPU and Adrenalin 23.9.x.
2. Play continuously for 60–90 minutes.
3. Monitor RAM usage and GPU behavior.
4. Attempt alt-tab or interact with Replay Editor.
5. Observe memory spike and potential crash.

Logs & Diagnostics

• DXDiag attached
• Crash dumps available upon request
• Monitoring via MSI Afterburner, GPU-Z, Process Explorer

Impact

• Game becomes unstable after extended sessions.
• System performance degrades due to excessive RAM usage.
• Driver crashes can lead to full system hangs or reboots.
• Unacceptable behavior for a live service title.

Suggested Fixes

• Implement proper memory deallocation and heap cleanup.
• Refactor Replay Editor to flush unused frame data.
• Optimize shader pipeline for AMD compatibility.
• Coordinate with AMD to resolve DX12 driver conflicts.

Crash Dump Analysis
Two critical errors were captured:

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: INVALID_POINTER_WRITE_AVRF_c0000005_State.exe!Unknown
→ Indicates an access violation due to an invalid memory write.

E_OUTOFMEMORY_AVRF_8007000e_Skate.exe!Unknown
→ Indicates the game attempted to allocate memory when none was available.

These errors strongly suggest heap corruption and unhandled memory exhaustion.