Since we have 8,000 new threads on video ram today

[Ferzerp]

Unless you know how a specific card/driver combination is handling memory management, you can't gather any useful information from any measure you make of utilized memory.

You don't know if it's cache.

You don't know if it's memory that has yet to be freed, but can be on demand.

You only know the number that one specific counter is giving you.

Imagine the confusing state of memory usage that you would have, if, on a windows 7 system you could not see how much memory is functioning as cache. The values would be nearly useless.

Until AMD and NV start publishing their memory management techniques, we really have very little clue what using a specific amount of memory on one of their cards means. We can relatively compare on the same card and the same driver revision that activity X creates a memory utilized amount of Y, and that activity A creates a memory utilized value of B, but we cannot extrapolate what that actually means functionally for other situations nearly as much as people seem to be trying to do.

 

[moonbogg]

I'm pretty sure EVGA Precision is all anyone needs to become a master at understanding Vram usage in a game. If your game uses close to your Vram amount, precision should have a built in alarm that lets you know its time to panic and upgrade ASAP.

 

[Lean L]

I'm pretty sure EVGA Precision is all anyone needs to become a master at understanding Vram usage in a game. If your game uses close to your Vram amount, precision should have a built in alarm that lets you know its time to panic and upgrade ASAP.

I feel like you missed the point here. On the other hand, I never read into how either manufacturer manages memory so idk if the OP is right or if it's speculation.

 

[f1sherman]

I lol hard when seeing forum stickies listing game VRAM consumption, and everyone :thumbsup:ing OP

 

[chimaxi83]

I lol hard when seeing forum stickies listing game VRAM consumption, and everyone :thumbsup:ing OP

Thanks for letting us know whatever your sentence means. We appreciate it

 

[f1sherman]

wow you're such a credit to the team

great thread contribution too!

 

[Ferzerp]

Thanks for letting us know whatever your sentence means. We appreciate it

I believe that the individual in question meant that he laughs when he sees VRAM measures.



What I will say though, is that the massive performance drop if you *do* run out is obvious, and those are the cases we should be looking out for. Not just "Oh no, I'm using 80% of my VRAM!" because we don't really know what that means. It's more an issue of enough, or not enough with nothing in between, and you can't extrapolate much about enough by going by any used memory counter.

 

[ShintaiDK]

WDDM drivers made it even worse to count memory. Since the card can now page out memory to main memory.

But ye, VRAM suage is perhaps starting to be the biggest forum joke around

 

[Ferzerp]

WDDM drivers made it even worse to count memory. Sicne the card can now page out memory to main memory.

But it's pretty obvious if it's doing so with a negative impact as the performance will show it.

 

[Annisman*]

I just sprung for 4GB of VRAM on each of my cards, so now I rarely look at memory usage.