COH, Wentworths, and memory leaks

I'm hearing a lot lately about Wentworths having a memory leak. So I decided to go and test it myself. Half an hour later, Here are the results.

Short version: What I'm seeing is simply an increased memory usage due to assets being loaded, and the Wentworths data cache never being cleared, not even between zoning. Clearing the Wentworths data cache on zoning would return about 65MB of memory, but then you'd have to wait for the Wentworths data to load the next time you go to the market. I personally hate the little "freeze" that happens there more than the extra memory usage.

Detailed test: First, I'm setting a base memory usage without Wentworths.

Login screen: 662MB
Character selection screen: 674MB
In game (just zoned in): 853MB

Note that this character zoned inside a Steel Canyon store due to the day job. So it didn't have to load any of the assets for the outdoor zone yet.

Ran around Steel Canyon once: 929MB
Ran around Steel Canyon again: 940MB
Ran around Steel Canyon a third time: 950MB

The memory usage goes up with every lap around the zone. I followed the same path each time. So why is it going up? Well, I'm not alone in the zone. Other players were around, and I had to load them as I went past them. Same with the NPCs.

Base transporter into my base: 762MB
Explored my entire base: 765MB
Ran around it for 2 minutes: 765MB

Going into my base clears all the Steel Canyon assets. With no new PCs or NPCs around, the memory usage inside my base never goes up.

Zoned to Steel Canyon: 880MB

Zoned outdoors this time. That's almost 40MB more.

Ran around Steel Canyon once: 927MB
Ran around Steel Canyon again: 936MB
Ran around Steel Canyon a third time: 939MB

After three laps, same path as before, memory usage is 10MB less than after my previous 3 laps. Different set of PCs and NPCs around, different assets. But this shows that the memory is not going up for nothing; it's just the assets being loaded that increases it.

Made my way to Wentworths: 945MB
Sat there 2 minutes: 945MB

No players were round, and the memory usage didn't go up.

Opened the market interface: 1031MB
Closed it: 1010MB
Opened it again: 1032MB
Closed it: 1010MB

Big jump as soon as I loaded the market interface, and it would seem that only 12MB of the 86MB are recovered. But that's just because the data is staying in memory for further use; the market interface opens a lot faster the following times, it's not eating more memory each time.

Base transporter into my base: 834MB
Explored it all over: 837MB

72MB more than before. That's the market data in memory.

Day Trader Teleporter to Wentworths: 972MB
Opened the market interface: 994MB
Closed it: 975MB
Opened it again: 994MB
Closed it: 975MB

Because the data is still in memory, we don't see another spike here. The 3MB that are being used there are because this time there were players around with various effects going on.

Opened, searched for Panacea: 997MB
Closed it: 992MB
Opened, searched for Chronoenhancer Device: 999MB
Closed it: 995MB

Ah ha, so searching for something does make the memory usage go up! Right? Not so fast. When you search for something, it loads a ton of images for enhancements and such in the right panel as they scroll by. Those enhancements are not pre-rendered, but are made of different parts (the border, the background, the image, the number) and so they're being cached.

Ran to my base portal: 988MB
Got in my base: 840MB

Of note that the memory usage actually went down as I made my way to the base portal. Memory usage when I got inside was 3MB larger than before, about the same increase as when I was searching for things before.

Zoned to Steel Canyon: 954MB
Ran to Wentworths: 998MB
Opened the market interface: 1018MB
Closed it: 1003MB

More memory usage than before, yes, but remember that before I had teleported straight into the Wentworths building. Now I had to run there, loading a lot of assets on the way.

Opened it again, searched for Panacea: 1020MB
Closed it: 1003MB
Opened it again, searched for Chronoenhancer Device: 1021MB
Closed it: 1004MB

At this point I got bored. Yes, the market does cause a jump in memory, and yes, the game memory usage goes up the more you explore around. However, in my test I'm not seeing a significant memory leak in Wentworths. If anyone has done a similar test and can show a way to increase the memory usage consistently by using the market, I'd like to see it. But no anecdotal evidence, please, I've heard a lot of that already.

Now try spending some time opening and closing storage items in your base and transferring stuff between your inventory, vault, WWs transaction slots and base storage. This is where the biggest memory leaks used to be. The only time I ever locked up was when I was reorganising my base storage or IOing a toon out from scratch and zoning in and out of my base and shifting stuff from one form of storage to another, getting salvage and crafting stuff etc.

The asset load still crashes me out about 5% of the time. Annoying, but not the 95% it used to be. Presumably that is "permanent" regardless of the character login, considering how you can visit the market on character A, login with character B, and look at all of character A's stuff.

This coincides with the observations about /unloadgfx I made in an earlier thread - the market doesn't unload correctly, and some increased memory usage I got after the market didn't all remove from memory, either.