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Battlefield 3 Video Memory Usage

1.56Gb is not enough for 1920x1080 anymore. I'm constantly coming to a VRAM bottleneck, especially with BF3, Max Payne 3 and Sleeping Dogs. No AA makes me sad.
It's ok with games like CS:GO but big open games with long draw distance and new games it just fails.

Disabled Aero?

Sleeping Dogs used like 1100-1200 for me even with Max AA so definitely not the case for that.
 
I used to disable Aero when i had my 6950's just to give me a bit more breathing room. Say bf3 uses 1.6-1.7 video memory at full ultra+4xaa @ 1080, aero uses 200mb, that doesn't leave you much to play with.
 
Aero is disabled via desktop composition on ALL games.

Cool. Well the Sleeping Dogs problem you're having I'd say I'm relatively certain it isn't VRAM as even with Aero enabled and stuff in the background I got the readings above.

I used to disable Aero when i had my 6950's just to give me a bit more breathing room. Say bf3 uses 1.6-1.7 video memory at full ultra+4xaa @ 1080, aero uses 200mb, that doesn't leave you much to play with.

If you're getting a reading of 1.6-1.7 with Aero enabled that's inclusive of Aero. There's no simple way to separate VRAM usage per application.

I also sit around that level with Aero enabled on 1080p full ultra. Disabled it's closed to 1500-1600.
 
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Ah ok didn't know that.

As a test im going to stop using auto page file and change it to 2048-4096. I used to get an out of video memory with my 2gb card before after a certain amount of time will see it it still happens now i have an extra 1.gb free
 
Ah ok didn't know that.

As a test im going to stop using auto page file and change it to 2048-4096. I used to get an out of video memory with my 2gb card before after a certain amount of time will see it it still happens now i have an extra 1.gb free

Simple solution - don't fiddle with the page file when there's no need to. Especially if it's causing the game to crash when otherwise it's OK. :D.

I think 2-4GB will be large enough and it won't crash. But as I say I don't know why you'd need to change it anyway unless you have one of those small 60GB SSD's??
 
Simple solution - don't fiddle with the page file when there's no need to. Especially if it's causing the game to crash when otherwise it's OK. :D.

I think 2-4GB will be large enough and it won't crash. But as I say I don't know why you'd need to change it anyway unless you have one of those small 60GB SSD's??

I do have a small 60gb ssd, and i have 16gb ram so i normally have a 16gb page file.

I have another ssd drive for games but if i can now get away with a smaller page file then its all good.

No crash so far, vram at 1.6gb so far after a few minutes. It will increase the longer i play and the more maps i play.
 
It can increase as much as it likes it won't become an issue by streaming data from the page-file :D. The crashes you had historically sound like a combination of the application / Windows spazzing out due to the page file settings you used.

Fair enough on the 16GB / 60GB SSD comment.

Sorry I'm a little lost - not being funny or anything (honest!) but what are you exactly trying to prove now? Or are you just testing to see if you can shrink the volume of your page file to save space?
 
It can increase as much as it likes it won't become an issue by streaming data from the page-file :D. The crashes you had historically sound like a combination of the application / Windows spazzing out due to the page file settings you used.

Fair enough on the 16GB / 60GB SSD comment.

Sorry I'm a little lost - not being funny or anything (honest!) but what are you exactly trying to prove now? Or are you just testing to see if you can shrink the volume of your page file to save space?

Seeing if i still get a running out of video memory error with a small page file.
 
Well Dawn of War, Company of Heroes are 2 games I know won't run unless you have it enabled and apps like photoshop make good use of it.
 
Also looks like BF3 can spaz out depending on the changes made to it as well.

Yup, no reason to have it disabled unless you really need the space. I just let windows manage it. Lowering it to a set value like 1gb can cause problems to.
 
Thanks for the info, don't use any of those titles or photoshop, so I'm fine.

Also looks like BF3 can spaz out depending on the changes made to it as well.

It doesn't for me, I've had page file disabled since before BF3 launched and never had the error yet.:)
 
The plot thickens.

No crash so far and surprisingly lower vram usage so far. 1.7 now, third map in.
 
I played Bf3 single player last night (and finished it at last) for around 4 hours. I had AB monitoring VRAM whilst I was playing and in those 4 hours, the max vram which was used was 2026MB in 3D and the max vram used in non 3D was 2012MB. This is full settings @ 5760*1080. I also turned off my page file to see if I could break my 2048 available but it didn't. I have my .exe set to disable aero in BF3 also.

So many forums I have read recently regarding vram issues and so many times people have been badly advised to buy 4GB Nvidia cards or 3GB AMD cards to play at 1080P with full settings, purely on the basis of answers to the question "Will I need 2/3 or 4GB cards to play BF3 at 1080P. Replies are "Full settings you will need 3GB minimum as my card uses 2.4GB" (do a google search to find many forums with those kind of answers). If somebody is staunch team Green, the 4GB cards are loads more than the 2GB cards and bad advice can cost the OP's lots of money for even worse performance.

Sorry to go off on one Matt but this is the one point of vram that angers me.

I do wish people would do some research sometimes.
 
I played Bf3 single player last night (and finished it at last) for around 4 hours. I had AB monitoring VRAM whilst I was playing and in those 4 hours, the max vram which was used was 2026MB in 3D and the max vram used in non 3D was 2012MB. This is full settings @ 5760*1080. I also turned off my page file to see if I could break my 2048 available but it didn't. I have my .exe set to disable aero in BF3 also.

So many forums I have read recently regarding vram issues and so many times people have been badly advised to buy 4GB Nvidia cards or 3GB AMD cards to play at 1080P with full settings, purely on the basis of answers to the question "Will I need 2/3 or 4GB cards to play BF3 at 1080P. Replies are "Full settings you will need 3GB minimum as my card uses 2.4GB" (do a google search to find many forums with those kind of answers). If somebody is staunch team Green, the 4GB cards are loads more than the 2GB cards and bad advice can cost the OP's lots of money for even worse performance.

Sorry to go off on one Matt but this is the one point of vram that angers me.

I do wish people would do some research sometimes.

You can go off on one if you like, its nothing to do with me. I just wanted to create a comparison thread with screenshots and setting detail for comparisons.

Is that using 4xaa?

Sounds about right for single player, i get less vram usage for that.

I'm only speaking from personal experience that 2Gb is fine, but it doesn't leave you with much to spare, and i used to get out of video memory crashes after a length session including alt tabbing as my vram usage approached 1900mb.

I'm not getting those crashes now, if thats because of a 3gb card or a change in the game code ive no idea. As long as it works im happy. :)
 
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