Call of Duty: Ghosts: Arbitrary memory limitations

[LDK 9]

Call of Duty: Ghost launched today and oh boy it isn't pretty launch for PC version. Steam Community Discussions are full of very angry players unable to run the game at all because of this (and few other problems) lovely error message: Your system memory (RAM) does not meet minimum specification for running Call of Duty: Ghosts.Update: Patch released on 19th of November lowers RAM restriction to 4GB.

 

Original text:

Minimum requirements clearly states, that the game needs 6 GB of RAM. These requirements are usually only recommendations and players got used to not follow them literary. CoD: Ghosts is taking completely different approach: it checks your system, and if you don't have 6 GB RAM or more - no game for you.

 

Someone would say it is one of the first titles for next gen consoles, so of course it needs a lot of memory. But is it really true? I tested the game and on my system it never got above 2.1 GB and pretty much stayed always at 2.1 GB regardless of video settings.

 

Download attachment: cod_memory.png

 

Here you can see, how main process uses system resources in time. Green graph follows CPU usage, yellow graph memory allocation and blue tracks HDD access. Graph captures the game from the start, level load (first rise to 2.1 GB) and loading new level (valley and second rise). As you can see, memory allocation is far from 6GB and even if OS and running applications overhead is taken into account, there is no way needs 6 GB.

 

This limit can be disabled by using cracked replacement executable file. It works only for singleplayer version and using it will probably get you VAC banned. Google RamFIX and the game name if you are brave enough.

 

Now, why would Infinity Ward implement and test this hard limitation when they got hands full with finishing four different versions to other platforms? And from ours and external observations there was no need for it at all?

 

Let me put on tin-foil hat and say that one reason could be to make next gen consoles more appealing: my last year gaming laptop won't even launch this game, but next gen is running it perfectly! Given that IW was given preferential treatment by Microsoft and Sony I would not be very surprised if that would be true.

 

More about CoD: Ghost hopefully in a few days in our Port Report or check fixes and guides for a few issues in our wiki article.

 

Click here to view the article

[Suicide machine 53]

This is just pathetic. I may be like one of the few PC Gamers, that actually preferred COD over Battlefield/Medal of Honor... but Infinity Ward yet again proves they not only don't have what it takes to develop new and interesting ideas. They also can't create good PC ports. So it looks like, this year's shooter of a year is going to be Payday 2... at least for me. And I'm faster going to buy 2 more copies of it, than buy Ghosts, if this is the way they're playing their cards.

[Dzsono 5]

Seems like an arbitrary limitation to prevent people from loading the game with less than 6gb RAM. All other games just let you start the game and have crappy performance.

[Garrett 215]

Ghosts also has a CPU check that blocks access in the same way. It really is quite odd since it actually took much more effort to implement these checks and then test them. These artificial limitations are certain to cause needless compatibility problems at some point in the future, just like how some '90s game installers refuse to run if Windows NT is detected.

[Faalagorn 5]

Kinda offtopic question, but what is this program attached in the screenshot? I can't find it and it seems nice.

[LDK 9]

Process Explorer from Sysinternal. Very useful utility for monitoring almost everything about processes, basically heavily upgraded Task Manager. Be sure to check out other Sysinternal utilities.