Need to release memory from unused images (Dispose?)

Evgenie Tivaniuk

9y964

Hello,

I am making a game, and want to unload images when they aren't needed.

For now I am just setting their sources to null:

imgExample.Source = null;

But this isn't enough.

I already tried Freezing, but it doesn't seem to help much.

I read that their is such thing like "Dispose()" that seem to unload all the memory, in such cases, but I don't know how to use it.

I tried:

imgExample.Dispose();

But it didn't work, it seems I am missing either some kind of variable, or a using directive.

What can be done in this situation?

4 Replies

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Amresh S9y ago
Accepted answer
Hi Evgenie,

You need to call the GC's finalizer to get the unrefreed-symbols from the cahe and this actually does the process to free the memoy. Refer the below code snippet:
public class YourClass : IDisposable
{
    private bool disposed = false;

    protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (!disposed)
        {
            if (disposing)
            {
// Set Null values to your unused variables here
            }
            disposed = true;
        }
    }

    public void Dispose() // Implement IDisposable
    {
        Dispose(true);
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Amresh S.
Evgenie Tivaniuk9y ago
@Amresh S

My many thanks, that worked perfectly! This reduced about 200M of RAM. God bless you!
Amresh S9y ago
Hi @Evgenie,

Yes, thats enough to clear-up the memory used up. Also, you can specify the null vaues to any kind of return type variables in that part

//-set null vaues here.

Regards,
Amresh S.
Evgenie Tivaniuk9y ago
I need to test it at home, but have a question for now.

About this line:
GC.SuppressFinalize(this);

I am using GC.Collect in my code, can those two garbage collectors both work when used together?

And to make sure:
I can use any kind of objects here, right? Except images I also have MediaElements. I guess that also works on them? So, all things I want to dispose, I need to put inside this? I can put them all here, together?

Sorry if my questions are silly.
if (disposing)
{
// Set Null values to your unused variables here
}

Need to release memory from unused images (Dispose?)

@Amresh S