In consoles games, often the following is found - big double-stack - predefined buffer, that takes most of the memory. Memory is allocated by bumping a pointer,

In consoles games, often the following is found - big double-stack - predefined buffer, that takes most of the memory. Memory is allocated by bumping a pointer, for example data for levels loaded increases left -> right (up->down), and temporary data (characters, temp scene, etc.) right->left (down->up). When level unloads (or several of it's associated files), memory is put back before (left or right). But there are always other heaps (that might or might not work like the stack above, or have say dmalloc's mspace api used there for other uses), and some space should be left to CRT itself, nowadays even more with lambda's in C++11 and for other library functions. For Tools I started to not care, simply because it does not matter that much. Just make sure _NO_DEBUG_HEAP=1 is set when you run through the Visual Studio debugger :)