I know this may seem like a dumb question, but its something I've been wondering for a long time now...why not just make the larger than 2GB awareness an official option for those of us that can use it?

I mean if I wanted to play at console quality I would have bought the Xbox version and not paid $199 for my PC collectors edition so I can play it beyond ultra on my beastly rig. Besides most computers these days have at least 4GB or more, even 32bit systems and notebooks etc. Just doesn't make sense to me not to make this an option when so many customers want it.

~Peace

It is an option:
Go to the data folders, and unpack the BSAs. BAM! Bigger game size!

Large address awareness has nothing to do with unpacking the BSAs so it takes up more room on the hard drive, its an option in the file header of the .exe. Please refrain from making false claims, poeple who don't know better may read this and actually believe you O.o

Why not make 4GB an 'Official' option?

Isn't it obvious? Because they want everyone to buy the game for the 360. :whisper:

@ YES I MAD

That doesn't make any sense. They get all kinds of good ideas, content and publicity from all the awesome mods that fans make for the PC versions which they can use in later games if they want, even if PC game sales are down and don't match consoles. The only reason I bought Oblivion was because I saw screenshots and videos of modded PC versions, I would never play the unmodded version. Its also the same reason I bought Skyrim, because of all the great mods I know are going to be made for the PC version. Although I must admit vanilla Skyrim has alot of the best ideas that were modded into Oblivion, so its already pretty awesome without mods XD

Are you sure you posted this in the right thread?

The http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=202 at: http://www.skyrimnexus.com Allows Skyrim to use more than 2GB of memory. It also helps for crashes and freezes, I ‘am using it now and have no problems any more.

He knows this, the question is WHY do we have to do this ourself, surely Bethesda must have realised that 64bit is the coming thing

rofl

Oops sorry my bad but it is there now for the people that does not know of it.

Ummm I seen somebody talking about "4GB" earlier. Can somebody shed some light as to what in oblivions name are u guys referring

A 32 bit EXE can only address 2GB of memory.

The LAA program makes skyrim.exe capable of addressing more than 2GB of RAM.

I have 16 GB in my system... so this is nice, because Skyrim can eat up as much as it wants. Stability improved, potential for graphics enhancements improved.

The .exe file for Skyrim is written in such a way that it will only use up 2GB worth of RAM memory. It doesn't matter if you have 2 or 200 GB of RAM, Skyrim will only use 2. "Large Address Awareness" is usually the term people use for making .exe files aware that there is more than 2G worth of RAM on a machine, so that it can use more.

Okay thanks guys I see. So my 6GB of ram is at this point just sitting around bored. Or rather 4GB of it is. That's just horrible. Why would Beth do that?

Bethesda dont want to be blamed for any possible instability problems which may crop up with it.

Its either develop for 32bit or 64bit, Bethesda are still living in the dark ages, end of discussion.

To be a bit more specific, as I understand it, a 32bit system can only handle up to 4GB of RAM. 2GB can be applied to the .exe and 2GB are reserved for the system. A 64bit OS can handle a lot more RAM. Something like 16GB, maybe more. When you make the .exe large address aware, you remove that restriction, allowing it to utilize the full 4GB. It only really does you any good if you have a 64bit OS and while it's not as good as an actual 64bit .exe (which could utilize more than 4GB), it's the next best thing.

A 32Bit system can ONLY access 4GB of memory. This includes RAM and VRAM. And the system automatically reserves about 800MB of the 4GB for itself and system only tasks. If you were to enable LAA on a 32bit application in a 32bit environment, you are opening up the game to steal that system reserved memory, causing the entire computer to potentially crash.

And because BethesdaGS can't know what kind of hardware your computer has, they can not include such an option. And because, under normal circumstances, the game should never run into memory cap problems (Consoles only have 512MB of memory) they have no obligation to spend time working on implementing such a feature.

Thank u for the only answer that makes sense to me.

Why is it then that a lot of other games and programs come with a 32 and a 64 bit exe, and manage to detect if you can run the 64 version?

There are issues to deal with regarding 64-bit ports. It's not merely recompiling the program with a 64-bit option. I mean, if the code is well-written by someone aware of the issues, it is. But does anyone think Skyrim is 100% new code? Was anyone talking 64-bit when Morrowind was in development? Some of the code in Skyrim probably hasn't been touched more than necessary in that long. Switching to 64-bit could, for example, necessitate heavy modifications to the BSA loading code.

That said, Skyrim should be the last BGS game EVER that ships as 32-bit only, and possibly the last to ship 32-bit PC versions at all...

They just reworked their pet engine for skyrim, I don't think they're going to start redesigning it from the ground up again after a single game that uses it.

A 32 bit address space is 2**32 bytes in size = 4,294,967,296 = 4 gigabytes

A 64 bit address space is 2**64 bytes in size = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 = 16 exabytes

Granted, it is not yet possible to actually cram this much memory into a computer so it's purely theoretical. Room for expansion, and all that. IIRC Vista/Win7 will only use a maximum of 128 gigs for now.

Thanks man..

Regards

Wolf :celebration:

I would just be surprised if they didn't HAVE to do the 64-bit work (and it's nothing on the scale of what they did since Fallout 3) in the relatively near future. Microsoft won't include 32-bit emulation forever. 2 games from BGS is 6 years-ish. Microsoft will, by then, have a drop-dead date for 32-bit support, if they continue to act as they have in the past.

To be fair this isn't a "problem" just with bethesda - the gaming industry in general make very few true 64-bit games at the moment.
Why I don't know but this is the current state of things...