Civ V running out of virtual memory on new high specced mac

I recently upgraded from an old 2009 iMac with 4GB Ram running Mavericks to a late 2013 quad core with the top of the line 780GT graphics card, 1TB SSD and 32GB Ram, when playing CIV on the highest resolution but with default settings (almost everything on medium or even low), I get an error message after 10-15m that the game is running out or low of virtual memory and that I should quit the game.

This seems weird, as I could run the game on the same settings on my 4 year old machine, of course, the system slowed a bit over time but it worked.

So I am a bit irritated how to approach this. When looking at the activity monitor, I see that the 32GB ram are doubled by 32GB Virtual Memory, that the Memory pressure is low, but that the Memory used seems to be rather high at 26ish GB, with only Steam and Safari running.

As I do not find any useful Google threads (most is linked to Windows) I wonder if you have any good ideas?

No idea - I've never heard of OS X "running low on virtual memory." I'm still on Mountain Lion; could be a Mavericks thing, I hear that Mavericks plays some clever memory tricks to increase laptop battery life... maybe it's being too clever?

It could also be a hardware problem - you could have just gotten a bum SSD or RAM, something like that.

I would leave Civ5/Steam out of the search terms, just google "Mavericks" plus the precise quoted error message you're getting.

Civ V is a 32-bit application. 32-bit applications can only access 4GB of memory regardless of the amount of memory present on you computer. So those 32GB won't do you any good when playing Civ, unfortunately.

My guess is that Civ V actually did run out of memory as it hit that 4GB ceiling. Aspyr could probably help you with this.

Yup, happened to me as well during a long gaming session. I just rebooted and problem solved.

I've seen memory usage balloon over a period of a few days and have come to the conclusion that Safari's to blame, even though the error messages refer to some other program. This is particularly noticeable when it's left running while the Mac's put to sleep a few times.

I know it's only a work-around and not a solution, but try quitting Safari before putting your Mac to sleep. It works for me.

I've been encountering this issue as well, only recently since I've gone a little crazy with the mods on my Civ V

I'll try the trick with Safari, and good to know re: 4Gb RAM many thanks for the replies so far.

Any updates/patches anyone recommend ensuring are on my machine? I'm running a MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16Gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 Mb RAM 750Gb SSD HDD with 100Gb spare.

Just FYI, I do still get the issue without having run Safari after a boot.

I also reduced the amount of mods (well, Civs) that I have selected - in the past I've been able to run pretty much all of them without issue.

I *have* been playing with a new kind of mod - the Ethnic Units mod. Tonight when I try I will disable that and let you know how it goes. It is the only non-new Civ mod that I have been running, and the problem appeared when I started using it

Wish me luck

OK, I have tested by starting two new games one after the other, with a range of Civ mods added, but the first with the Ethnic Units mod, the second without the Ethnic Units mod.

Within about 10 turns on the game with the Ethnic Units mod I was getting the OOM error.

The game without this mod, I have played to turn 133 so far and not encountered the issue.

So in my instance, at least, I have found that my copy of the Ethnic Units mod causes the issue.

Anyone else tested this yet?

PS sorry I've taken a while to get back on this one...

i have found reducing the number of mods makes a difference

Bump, but important for people who might have the problem in the future:

It's caused by the Ethnic Civs mod. Uncheck that in your mods list, load up the same game and you can keep going without seeing that problem again.

I am using a Mini (late 2112) with the quad core i7 and 16 GB. I almost always play with four civs on a small or tiny map.
I have never used the Ethnic Units mod but all attempts to use the R.E.D. mod ends with and out-of-memory error within five or six turns. I am tempted to install Windows 10 via bootcamp to see if my performance increases.