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How does VRAM usage really get calculated? (Afterburner/Rivatuner/Precision)

post #1 of 5
5/30/12 at 12:19pm
Thread Starter 
I don't think this is a question for Unwinder himself @ Guru 3D but rather a general question overall.

How does VRAM usage actually get calculated?

I recently had a GTX 580 SLI setup and alot of games were showing around 1300 - 1400 MB of RAM used up.
I started modding my Skyrim like crazy (over 4GB of mods!!), and my RAM was going up to 1523-1530MB of RAM and which point finally when I added a few more mods, my Skyrim was crashing, freezing and have some FPS Slowdowns, in which I realized ok my VRAM buffer has been used up.

But now I upgraded to the GTX 690, and my VRAM usage is at 1900MB to 1950MB, and even games that were showing 1400MB RAM before with my GTX 580 setup (games like Battlefield 3) are now showing 1800-1900MB of VRAM @ the exact same settings (2560X1600, Ultra Settings).

That being said, my Skyrim and Battlefield 3 are super solid with BF3 never going below 70 FPS usually hovering around 85 FPS! Skyrim is usually at a solid 60 FPS (Vsync is enabled) with occasional downfalls to 50 FPS in certain areas (which I believe is a Skyrim issue and not a performance issue).

Sorry for blabbering on. Thought it poised a good question.

Thanks.
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post #2 of 5
5/30/12 at 11:19pm
The underlying mechanic is that the driver exposes a vram 'usage' amount via an API, which is then read by a monitoring application like Afterburner and displayed.

However, vram 'usage' is really not 'usage' exactly, it's the amount of onboard vram that the driver is reserving for the application at hand.

The reason your vram usage has gone up w/the same settings is that the driver will only ever report vram usage UP TO the amount physically on the card. Before you were tapping out your card (as well as perhaps reserving some system memory, which the driver cannot report), and thus never seeing anything much above 1500MB.

Now that you have 2000MB of onboard vram that can be reserved, the driver is doing so and reporting it thusly to the monitoring app.
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post #3 of 5
5/31/12 at 12:55pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the reply.
It's what I thought, I guess the VRAM usage isn't much use then, as we don't know how much RAM is actually being used by the GPU on Afterburner or Precision.
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post #4 of 5
5/31/12 at 5:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by btdvox View Post

Thanks for the reply.
It's what I thought, I guess the VRAM usage isn't much use then, as we don't know how much RAM is actually being used by the GPU on Afterburner or Precision.

N/P.

It's not useless... it's just not totally optimal for all scenarios.

At least you know that if you're 'using' < your vram capacity, then you know with high certainty that vram usage isn't 'the problem'. Also, if you see you're tapped out at your vram capacity, there's some chance that it IS the problem ... if you're having a problem, of course.
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post #5 of 5
6/1/12 at 3:00pm
Thread Starter 
Well the thing is, I think Skyrim would be the only game that would ever tap me out of VRAM, because well I'm "only" using a 2560X1600 monitor, not a triple monitor setup.

I also believe 4GB of VRAM is absurd unless your triple monitor (and 3D vision @ that).
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