More video memory = more memory usage?

[Dutch Guy]

Last night I was using Rivatuner to log when playing Fallout 3 and I was amazed to see the memoryusage spike to 955MB which is still fine as I have a GTX280 with 1024MB but I can remember the memoryusage being much lower when I had a 8800GTS with 640MB

So is it true that the more video memory is available the more memory is being used by a game?

 

[matt_fsr]

From what I know of Windows processes - then yes, you're correct - your system RAM will be getting swapped out with more and more chunks of RAM data from the Video card, back and forth - especially with a game like Fallout 3, with a lot of large textures.

Wouldn't worry - thats what the RAM's there for

 

[Biffa]

Only in Vista

 

[Dutch Guy]

From what I know of Windows processes - then yes, you're correct - your system RAM will be getting swapped out with more and more chunks of RAM data from the Video card, back and forth - especially with a game like Fallout 3, with a lot of large textures.

Wouldn't worry - thats what the RAM's there for

But I am talking about video memory usage, not system memory, the game is using up to 955MB of videocard memory.

I guess the game and system see that there is more memory free and decide to use it, I was testing some better texture packs for Megaton and Rivet City but found that Rivet City with 2048x2048 textures was a bit too much, even for an overclocked GTX280

 

[Ch3m1c4L]

youa re right, the more available the more it will use, up to a point. It will try to laod everything into the fastest accesible place, so as such will put all the textures there. It will do this, then it will use system ram to store stuff, then when that runs out itll use page file etc.

It is more comlpicated since it "chooses" what to put where etc, i just wish vista would let me install something like BF2 into my RAM

 

[silversurfer]

But I am talking about video memory usage, not system memory, the game is using up to 955MB of videocard memory.

I guess the game and system see that there is more memory free and decide to use it, I was testing some better texture packs for Megaton and Rivet City but found that Rivet City with 2048x2048 textures was a bit too much, even for an overclocked GTX280

The guy above me got it about right. The memory usage will not change, the textures havent changed in size nor your requirement for memory in whatever place the machine can access.

Games arent this clever, as you can see many games are massively bloated. All the clever tricks those 8 bit games used to pull to work in 64k is a distant memory, now everything is totally inefficient and people just want more as quickly as possible


If your video memory was not enough, the system memory is used. The total used will be the same
This is shown in an increased program size on win xp, not sure about vista. The program size is the same but windows adds texture memory aka paged video memory onto its size



You can run bf2 from a ram drive afaik. It'll be there through a reboot even. This may not work on vista due to DRM



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