Zygor guide's in-game memory usage

[Robert_S]

Hey there!
I'm just wondering, is there any way to lessen the memory usage Zygor guides use?
I have tried trimming the fat by deleting un-needed stuff in the folders but nothing seems to help much, it's using almost 50 MB of memory nowadays.

It bothers me a bit seeing as the second addon I have on my list after the guide only uses about 4 MB and I'm using quite a bit of addons all in all.

I realize things move forward, the guide viewer has been updated many times over time, but I remember back in the Lich King expansion the guide took only like 18-20 MB, so it's gone up quite a bit.

Anyway, if there are some tricks to it, I'd like to hear it, if not, then I'll just have to live with it.

[cabby]

The majority of that memory usage is the guide files themselves. Back in WotLK there were only Leveling and Dailies guides, now we have a ton more guides and that's where the increase is coming from. In order to allow the guides to be searched thru easily with the guide selection window they need to all be loaded. This is something we're looking at to see if we can optimize it any better but for now there's really nothing you can do short of removing the guides themselves.

[Robert_S]

Hi there cabby!

It's all good, all I really wanted to see is if it was something that was even thought about on your end, and if you are thinking a bit about it to see if something can be done.

What you are responding with, is in compliance with my general expecation in this matter, put in a weird and mildly humorous way (yes, please do laugh).

Jokes aside, I hope you guys figure something out, I simply prefer it when addons take the least amount of memory possible, even if it's an added side option to just keep one zone's guide loaded at a time, I'll take it!

Hope you guys come up with something, I appreciate the response!

[Zygor Dev 1]

Hope you guys come up with something, I appreciate the response!

Memory usage in itself isn't an important issue, and it shouldn't really be such a big concern for you - such usage is a mere fraction of what WoW itself uses, and it causes no FPS drops, no freezes or hiccups... Frankly, I think Blizzard's move to display addon memory usage right next to network latencies and display frame rates makes it look like more of a scarecrow than it really should be. If it were to go into 100 or 200 MB, well, THAT could be a bother.

What IS an issue, however, is the loading times - currently, all the guides are loaded entirely into memory, to be easily searchable and accessible for our guide suggestion mechanisms, and that takes a few seconds of precious "Loading........" screen time. If we end up optimizing this, it might have a side-effect in the form of memory savings.

[littlewierdo]

Memory usage is a concern for those running with 2-3 GB of ram.

Getting this out of the way, yes, you should be running a minimum of 4, if not 8 GB but some may not have that option.

Windows itself will consume 3 gig just by itself, add WoW (which is just shy of a gig, for me around 800 MB without addons), then addons (I run quite a few) that potentially can utilize several hundred meg themselves. At this point, we are forced to use a swap file which affects performance.

Now, there is an option to trim down the fat so to speak with windows and save yourself some memory by disabling services you dont use.

I personally use http://www.blackviper.com/ (on the menu bar, guides, service configurations, then click the link with your current version of windows). Not exactly for the feint of heart, you also need to read carefully, disabling something important could cause your windows installation to stop working. I use the 'Safe' configuration which disables things like your sd card reader, bluetooth, file indexing, remote editing of the registry, etc.

Trimming out windows services using the safe configuration mentioned above, my ram usage from Windows itself is about 750 MB less than before (and also a tad bit more secure).

Also, before you launch WoW, of all the things to make sure you close, any browser windows is the biggest memory concern. Doesnt matter which browser you use, Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, or Opera, they all use between 350 Mb to 1 GB of memory just being open. If you must have a browser open, try to close any tabs open utilizing flash or Java which can severely affect memory and video performance.

[Zygor Dev 1]

Memory usage is a concern for those running with 2-3 GB of ram.

Of course it is, I meant that addon memory usage isn't as much of a problem as people tend to make out of it. Windows applications tend to gobble up tens of megabytes without batting an eye, whereas the prominent display of addon memory usage in WoW tends to scare users into attributing a brief FPS drop to an addon claiming 5 or 10 MB more than usual. We do try to keep memory usage to a reasonable minimum, of course, but the new guides have to be stored somewhere