Is enabling "Large Address Aware" ability for PC games actually beneficial?
I've come across a suggestion for custom-enabling "Large Address Aware" ability for game executables, which as far as I understand, essentially allows 32-bit games to access 64-bit memory space.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/
http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=199993
Would this suggestion actually benefit game performance, like for Starcraft 2, for example? Is there a way to determine beforehand which games this may or may not help?
Bonus:
And is there risk in doing this for games that multiplay online, as far as possibly getting banned for "cheating"?
Best Answer
Generally speaking, this will not improve the performance of most video games. Large Address Aware (LAA) is only useful in increasing the maximum limit of memory usage by a given application.
Generally speaking, a 32-bit application can use up to 2GB of memory. Most games won't run into this issue, and the ones that do are either already compiled as Large Address Aware (such as Skyrim) or have a 64-bit release.
Large Address Aware is only going to allow games to use more memory. So unless a game is running up to that limit, failing to allocate memory, then crashing, enabling LAA isn't going to help anything.
And is there risk in doing this for games that multiplay online, as far as possibly getting banned for "cheating"?
Well since you specifically mention Starcraft 2, let's look at a blue (official) post directly from Blizzard:
First off, we will not action accounts that are "caught" using a Large Address Aware modified executable.
LAA is only a flag in the executable. It is possible for an anti-cheat program to detect this as a change in the executable, however most anti-cheat software shouldn't mind. If you're concerned with it, I would advise you ask whoever makes the anti-cheat software before making any changes.
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What does large address aware do?
Large Address Aware (LAA) is a technique available in 64-bit Windows operating systems to allow 32-bit programs use all 4Gb (typically 2Gb user + 2Gb system space) of its potential memory space, rather than be limited by the default (typically 2Gb, but sometimes 3Gb if using special techniques).How do I enable large address aware?
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