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Vram used on current games

no_1_dave said:
Aero uses approx 60MB of Vram.
Non aero uses approx 60MB also, so when you enable aero usage goes to 120MB ish
Click to expand...
How do i know if Aero is on or off

I right clicked on the desktop to go to Personalization and i don't see anywhere that says if aero is enabled or disabled :confused:
It only says "My Theme (1)"
 
kilohawk said:
GTX 560ti, 1440x900 res. (99% gpu utilisation, why not 100%?)
BF3 all settings as high as they go, i get an almost solid 60 fps (v-sync on) and use 1007 Mb in total.
Which is quite worrying really, as im not using a very high res monitor :(
oh, and I use afterburner for the above.

For RAM, im using ~5.2GB with only iTunes open.
(The scene was the opening one, in the car park)
Click to expand...

If using v-sync then it often wont need 100%. It maybe able to do 60fps with lower utilisation...

chaparral said:
How do i know if Aero is on or off

I right clicked on the desktop to go to Personalization and i don't see anywhere that says if aero is enabled or disabled :confused:
It only says "My Theme (1)"
Click to expand...

Aero looks good. Non aero looks like old windows, nothing see through, no windows animations when minimizing etc.
 
The vram useage becomes huge once you go to 8xaa or higher at 2560x1600...around 4xaa at that res max is ideal for cf 7970/sli 680s even but no higher unless it's an old game.
 
Your vram will be showing double due to crossfire.

Bear in mind there is a big difference between the amount of VRAM a card will naturally use due to caching and the amount of vram at which point a material impact is had.

Cards will cache as much data as they can, this doesn't mean having less vram would cause a performance issue.
 
straxusii said:
Bear in mind there is a big difference between the amount of VRAM a card will naturally use due to caching and the amount of vram at which point a material impact is had.

Cards will cache as much data as they can, this doesn't mean having less vram would cause a performance issue.
Click to expand...

I was just about to post exactly this.

The readout of say, the Afterburner monitor, is just the amount of VRAM being used at the time, not how much that is required.

With that said, is there any utility out there that will display how much VRAM is required for rendering in real time?
 
chaparral said:
How do i know if Aero is on or off

I right clicked on the desktop to go to Personalization and i don't see anywhere that says if aero is enabled or disabled :confused:
It only says "My Theme (1)"
Click to expand...

Disable desktop composition on your games and the Windows 7 theme should change to basic when it's running.

BF3.jpg
 
Resolution - 3620x1920 Portrait Surround (Eyefinity)
HD7970 @ 1125/6600 & GTX680 2GB @ +100/+400 (1185/6800)

BF3 - Ultra settings with 4xAA

HD7970 - 2.4-2.8GB
GTX680 - Game crash with out of memory error (hard locked system).

BF3 - Ultra Settings with 2xAA

HD7970 - 2.2-2.6GB
GTX680 - 1.6-1.9GB

Framerates were in a margin of error on both cards. Interestingly the GTX680 actually felt a little smoother despite its relative shortcomings.

Despite the HD7970 technically running 4xAA, we are talking 32fps average. This is more of an academic win as your are out of GPU grunt at any setting that actually requires more than 2GB of VRAM. HD7970 CF would obviously have an advantage over 2GB GTX680's though.

Crysis 2 - Extreme Settings* with DX11 & High res textures

*Post Process / Effects on Very high and motion blur set to "off"

HD7970 - 2.0-2.4GB
GTX680 - 1.95-2.02GB

The 680 is right on the borderline here although the game remains perfectly playable at round 40fps. As with BF3 on a single card, you will run out of GPU grunt before VRAM becomes a major problem.

Crysis 1 - Very High Settings (No Motion blur)

GTX680 - 1.2-1.4GB

Crysis 1 - Very High Settings 2xAA (No Motion blur)

GTX680 - 1.7-1.9GB

Memory usage seems relatively low in Crysis right up to the point AA is applied then it sky rockets. At 2xAA a single GTX680 manages around 30-35fps which is suprisingly playable. I didn't try 4xAA or higher due to a lack of time, no doubt VRAM would become an issue.

Just Cause 2 - Max in game settings with 4xAA

HD7970 - 0.8-1.2GB
GTX680 - 0.8-1.2GB

Nothing much to say here. Just Cause 2's engine is well optimized as the game looks great and maintains a solid framerate despite the settings (40-60fps depending on location).


I have only run 4 games so far and no longer have the HD7970 but I can say that on a single card at least, you will run out of GPU grunt before VRAM in the vast majority of cases.
 
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tommybhoy said:
The vram isn't storing the data for nothing:
Click to expand...

No indeed, it stores as much loaded data as it possibly can in case it is used in the future, this is sensible and any modern OS will do the same with file cache.

The critical vram limit is hit when a card can't store enough data to render the scene in which case it has to swap out textures and data into physical memory at which point you see single digit frame rates.

What isn't clear is at what vram limit with a particular game does a material difference in framerate occur.


Game X may use 3GB of vram, it doesn't mean if you only had 2GB you would notice a material difference in frame rate, also doesn't mean the 2GB card wouldn't tank.
 
straxusii said:
What isn't clear is at what vram limit with a particular game does a material difference in framerate occur.
Click to expand...

From the data provided by Techreport, it's obvious to me what's happening in that game.

Yes the 570 has apparent higher fps, but there is a trade off.

I'm no genius but imo, the only way the 69**'s(in that particular scenario of gpu's tested) don't have the long frametimes again, imo, is because of the stored data on card.

Techreport is the only site so far I have noticed giving any info on frametime results, Sweclockers, HardwareCanucks have all shown there is a performance difference between same brand gpu's going from 1Gb to 2Gb in that game.

If it didn't matter, the 680 would have been released on the same memory bus as the 580 with both 1.5Gb and 3Gb of vram available.

The absolute minimum I would recommend to anyone wanting to play at those types of settings@1080p for that particular title is 1.5Gb.
 
I have seen and been involved in so many VRAM arguments lately and being honest, this now seems to be an issue with multi monitor setups. I know this is not your everyday setup but it is good we have had these discussions because now anybody thinking of going multi monitor would hopefully realise that 3-4GB would be recommended.

So in short, single monitor gaming 2GB or less.

Multi monitor gaming 3GB or more.

This will help with future proofing of happy gaming :)
 
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