As far as memory leaks go, if it's due to the hardware, then that would entail that some function being called upon by the game in reference to your graphics adapter is somehow flawed, not the game itself. Or that the game is designed with one version in mind that may have a slightly different reaction than previous versions. But a lot of people here utilize new technology and the latest drivers and still suffer the same crashes. Also, most of us have run programs that are much more sophisticated graphically speaking than EWOM.
My Out of Memory crashes always happen at the click of a button. Whether it's ending a turn (The most common) or sometimes when I'm saving (I save every turn now to avoid OOM's). On larger maps I average three turns between crashes. I've perservered into games as high as 190 turns. I pre-ordered the limited edition because I wanted to play the game, and I will play it even if I reload it every few minutes.
Anyway, the memory leaks seem to be related to the map itself, as in how much is going on with the map. The later in the game the faster it crashes. I ran a few experiment games where I didn't research anything that would cause the map to populate with new monsters or notable locations, and got much further in before crashing.
I'm thinking the crashes have something to do with the game loading everything on the map, and not unloading things from memory as they change. So if you kill twelve monsters and twelve more spawn, your memory has twenty four loaded. The fact that smaller maps support less monsters and other map/game-related loads would seem to contribute to that theory a little.
I've not skimmed through most of the forums regarding these items, and I post here because it gets frustrating that I'm still suffering OOM's constantly and without fail, even though I paid for the completed game.
I do understand how much of a pain debugging and such are. I work a lot in database administration and previously had a CEO that liked to log in behind my back and delete things he thought were 'not really needed'. Tables, fields, and even random bits of SQL. So I don't fault SD for having problems, and I appreciate the attempts at correcting them, but I won't praise them for fixing issues that should have been solved. The beta went through four phases, and technically, as far as terminology goes, the current release is beta.
The way program development (As far as I've seen it in the industry) goes, the Alpha stage is where the game itself would be hammered out. Features, graphics, and in the case of games, most of the balancing. Once the program is in a completed state, as in all features are fully fleshed out, the beta stage begins. Typically the beta is where all known bugs are found and removed prior to final production.
Now there have been many games in the past that have suffered game-ending bugs after release. These were typically obscure and fairly rare among users meaning it took time to patch them out. I remember purchasing Neverwinter Nights 2 and playing all the way till the last battle, and then there was a game ending bug in one of the triggers. My auto save had already triggered and I hadn't saved for six hours. I played through again and the bug was still there. Even after the patch I couldn't bring myself to do it again. Similarly with Mass Effect on XBox 360 (I've since obtained ME2 on PC), got to the very end, and boom, crash, after eight-nine ours of strait playing.
But this is the first game I've ever run across that has so many users, people who have paid money to this company, suffering from bugs. I saw the game at Best Buy and some Wal-Marts today as I ran errands. What happens to the casual gamer that may never actually check the forums? They'll buy the game, see it for what it is, toss it aside and in a lot of cases not even bother trying to patch it. Since most retailers don't allow for refunds of open games, anyone who follows this path may likely never purchase from SD again, hurting not only SD but their affiliates and potential future business for SD.
I think I've completely lost my point somewhere in there. But in the end, no matter what may be said, this game is still in beta, and the fact that features are still being added and the game is still being fleshed out as far as the actual game itself goes, a lot of it feels like it may not even be beta.
Edit: Upon a read-through after posting, I want to insinuate that this is in no way criticizing SD or their business practices, as I am still an adamant fan of the company. Basically Elemental itself was a let down, after viewing all the documentation videos and gameplay videos and reading all about the publishing company working with them on content, I was expecting a lot more. I'm still expecting it to play out, but at the moment I feel that the initial EWOM isn't worth as much as my copy of SINS pre-expansion. I got a lot more enjoyment out of SINS and only paid $20 originally (Sure, I paid $40 in the end so I'd have the expansions, but still). The fact is I paid almost twice as much as the full SINS cost right now and so I expect twice the game out of EWOM. 
SD. </3 EWOM
