What do you do when your application starts to run out of memory?

I have a C++ graphics app that does heavy computations on models. There is a leak or two which I've traced to CG and/or my ATI graphics card (I'm 100% SURE!!). The machi开发者_如何学运维ne I have has 16 GB ram, and when I've used 4.49 GB RAM (TOTAL system usage, with app only using ~1.9GB), vector.resize() starts returning 0 new elements and not being able to resize an array. Why so soon?

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(Windows Assumed)

A 32-bit Windows application is limited to about 2.0 GB of user-mode memory (or 3.0 GB if certain boot-time parameters are set). When your application used up 1.9 GB of memory, the well ran dry.

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx#memory_limits

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I changed the build configuration to x64 and the application works fine

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Throw an exception! Best to find and stamp on the leak, of course, but when you run out of memory: exception! To be extra cool restart your own application in response.