How do we best interpret Instruments VM Tracker for memory?

Unity Engine
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1

Our game is getting memory crashes, so I’m doing a memory study of each of our levels using Instruments (on an iPad 4). I read that you had to watch the Dirty Size. So here’s the problem: I load our level-select menu, it’s using 323MB. I then load a game level, it’s using 575MB. I return to the level-select menu, and Instruments now reports 550MB.

So, is this saying we’ve got a gigantic memory leak? Does the Dirty Size always stay at a certain size and never go down below a certain point once you’ve reached there?

2

It should go down if Application actually releases memory. You can compare snapshots at different stages of the game to investigate which virtual memory areas are getting these extra dirty pages.
Also Allocations Instrument can show similar information too especially under Anonymous VM allocations section.