I'm experiencing this exact same thing! I've posted in another thread so I'll paste it here below.

I'm in a very strange case and I want to share it. It does relate to the extreme memory usage.

So I preordered the deluxe edition and got advanced access, for the whole time it went really really smoothly. Sure a bit of lag here and there but nothing big. But after like just under a week of playing I've finished the story twice and on a 3rd playthrough. Then yesterday I attempted to launch the game like usual, memory spikes up to 100% and froze my pc.

It's either freezing my whole PC or really, really stuttery in game play. I've checked my memory usage prior and it would be around AC8 alone would use 4-5 GB during gameplay and around 7GB when loading in. Now it's sitting like 7GB during gameplay with a ton of stuttering and 10+ during loading if I somehow managed to get through opening the game.

What I'm really not sure about is why did it start now after almost a week of very smooth experience? I want to play more but I can't do that with my game acting like this. At least I finished the story though...

Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor - RAM: 16 GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - VRAM: 8 GB

Besides my OS, my specs are all at or above minimum and my GPU sitting on the recommended.

Also adding I played with graphics set to medium with balanced upscaling. Played on borderless. Sometimes I have firefox opened in the background but no issues until now whether it's opened or not.

Try upgrading your rig. Particularly to Intel CPU. AMD has known issues with the game

Originally posted by Stoners Knight:

Try upgrading your rig. Particularly to Intel CPU. AMD has known issues with the game

Not sure that explains running perfectly fine yesterday though.

Originally posted by Helljumper Do$h:

I'm experiencing this exact same thing! I've posted in another thread so I'll paste it here below.

I'm in a very strange case and I want to share it. It does relate to the extreme memory usage.

So I preordered the deluxe edition and got advanced access, for the whole time it went really really smoothly. Sure a bit of lag here and there but nothing big. But after like just under a week of playing I've finished the story twice and on a 3rd playthrough. Then yesterday I attempted to launch the game like usual, memory spikes up to 100% and froze my pc.

It's either freezing my whole PC or really, really stuttery in game play. I've checked my memory usage prior and it would be around AC8 alone would use 4-5 GB during gameplay and around 7GB when loading in. Now it's sitting like 7GB during gameplay with a ton of stuttering and 10+ during loading if I somehow managed to get through opening the game.

What I'm really not sure about is why did it start now after almost a week of very smooth experience? I want to play more but I can't do that with my game acting like this. At least I finished the story though...

Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor - RAM: 16 GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - VRAM: 8 GB

Besides my OS, my specs are all at or above minimum and my GPU sitting on the recommended.

Also adding I played with graphics set to medium with balanced upscaling. Played on borderless. Sometimes I have firefox opened in the background but no issues until now whether it's opened or not.

Its crazy, there were no updates I can think of so no idea whats going on, good to know I'm not crazy though. Thinking I might try a re-install overnight and try again tomorrow.

Originally posted by RadialRelic77:

Its crazy, there were no updates I can think of so no idea whats going on, good to know I'm not crazy though. Thinking I might try a re-install overnight and try again tomorrow.

Yeahhhhh I tried reinstalling it just yesterday. No luck on my end :/ If it doesn't freeze trying to even launch and somehow gets to the menu, game just stutters like there's no tomorrow.

i think the issue is the external disk. i moved mine to internal storage and all the issues were instantaneously gone

Originally posted by Blacky Watchy:

i think the issue is the external disk. i moved mine to internal storage and all the issues were instantaneously gone

Hmmm unfortunately that isn't the case for me. But its good your game is fine again!

I cant even get the game to load now, it borderline crashes my PC trying to. Worked perfectly fine yesterday, same as you guys. Came back from work and now its destroying my PC. Wtf?

Was there even an update in the interim time? Why would this be happening? So bizarre, first time I've had something like this with a game where it ran perfect and then just stopped working the next day.

At least I'm not alone but why does it seem like so few people are having this problem?

Originally posted by WalrusMan:

I cant even get the game to load now, it borderline crashes my PC trying to. Worked perfectly fine yesterday, same as you guys. Came back from work and now its destroying my PC. Wtf?

Was there even an update in the interim time? Why would this be happening? So bizarre, first time I've had something like this with a game where it ran perfect and then just stopped working the next day.

At least I'm not alone but why does it seem like so few people are having this problem?

From what I gather, experience for AC is all over the place.

For us, I could imagine its something to do with denuvo or EAC or a combination of both but I really can't say for sure as this is not my field of expertise...

Have you tried checking your pagefile or do that fix since I heard it's related to slow loading times? It's possible your pagefile size changed to be smaller that Ace Combat 8 took all of it.

Originally posted by Parmethyst:

Have you tried checking your pagefile or do that fix since I heard it's related to slow loading times? It's possible your pagefile size changed to be smaller that Ace Combat 8 took all of it.

I've heard a few responses that say this but I've also heard that this can hurt the SSD. I'm honestly kinda hesitant to try it.

I've also thought of upgrading but almost of the RAM sold in my usual tech store is DDR5, while my motherboard is made for DDR4 (PC was built around late 2020).

This is strange as hell lmao, I just restarted my PC for the first time since the preload was available (I have long uptimes recently) and now my game is running like total ass with freezing and hitching. You'd think its the other way around, super weird. Intel CPU and 3080Ti that was running fine before

Oh yeah I guess I should add I have 32gb of ram, I dont think i was using much before? But now its using 20

Same here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2288340/discussions/0/592943200279314861/

If any of you are on the latest nvidia drivers I recommend not using those at all. It's a known meme that games beg you to use the latest drivers even though they are bug filled garbage. I was happily enjoying the game on six month old drivers (595.97) and after the game begging with that "your drivers have known issues" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I tried it out to see if it was any better.

It was far worse, and introduced new bugs, the best of which: controller disconnecting will crash the game almost every time. So I went happily back to my old drivers without issues again. Only have a 4060ti and I run the game smooth medium on 2k/60fps with medium, DLSS balanced, models and clouds on high.

I also had the issue on latest drivers with the game launching to a black screen repeatedly and thus I went back to my old drivers without issue.

Known issue: UE5 input handling and window's timeout detection and recovery (TDR) discrepancy where the system lag caused by controller disconnect instead of giving the program time to recover (TDR) instantly cuts the GPU connection which kills the game.