Incorrect VRAM usage displayed in MSI Afterburner

[coyote]

Hi.
I have a Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X 8gb and ran the Shadow of Mordor Benchmark in Ultra which supposedly needs 6Gb VRAM to run properly. I ran the benchmark and my VRAM as displayed in MSI Afterburner displayed a maximum of about 4.3Gb VRAM and then dropped to about 358Mb VRAM. I know that it should have been using over 5Gb VRAM but did not display properly. I have adjusted the VRAM limit in Afterburner to read 8192 so I know this is not the cause. Latest drivers are installed, Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium. Any ideas why this is happening? Thanks heaps.

 

[eidairaman1]

Sounds like the game doesnt need more than 5GB

Hi.
I have a Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X 8gb and ran the Shadow of Mordor Benchmark in Ultra which supposedly needs 6Gb VRAM to run properly. I ran the benchmark and my VRAM as displayed in MSI Afterburner displayed a maximum of about 4.3Gb VRAM and then dropped to about 358Mb VRAM. I know that it should have been using over 5Gb VRAM but did not display properly. I have adjusted the VRAM limit in Afterburner to read 8192 so I know this is not the cause. Latest drivers are installed, Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium. Any ideas why this is happening? Thanks heaps.

 

[coyote]

Sounds like the game doesnt need more than 5GB

Thanks but I do not understand how this relates to my problem, I must be missing something..........

 

[eidairaman1]

Check gpuz if it shows 8192mb (8Gb)of ram then your card and drivers are fine.

You might want to checkout trixx

 

[coyote]

Check gpuz if it shows 8192mb (8Gb)of ram then your card and drivers are fine.

You might want to checkout trixx

Yep here is what GPUZ says:

 

[eidairaman1]

Sounds like a game problem or Msi Afterburner is goofed up.

 

[Octopuss]

If you think it might be a problem on Afterburner's side, go ahead and report it over at Guru3d forums. [Mod. Edit. **Post in a civil manner please**]

 

[MxPhenom 216]

The amount of vram used is dependent on a lot of factors, not just the "Ultra" settings. What screen resolution, other eye candy settings like AA and AF etc. They say 6gb because that's really the minimum you want to game at those settings decently. Doesn't really mean you'll see usage at 6gb all the time.

If you think it might be a problem on Afterburner's side, go ahead and report it over at Guru3d forums.

There's really nothing wrong with afterburner or gpuz

 

[erocker]

Try running GPU-Z and select the "sensors" tab. Run it in the background while the game is running. Then check the sensors tab.

Also, just because the game says it requires 6Gb's of VRAM, doesn't mean it's going to use it all the time or in the benchmark. There may be very few situations where it actually requires it. It is also dependent on the actual video card and GPU architecture, instructions, algorithms, features, etc.

 

[coyote]

Try running GPU-Z and select the "sensors" tab. Run it in the background while the game is running. Then check the sensors tab.

Also, just because the game says it requires 6Gb's of VRAM, doesn't mean it's going to use it all the time or in the benchmark. There may be very few situations where it actually requires it. It is also dependent on the actual video card and GPU architecture, instructions, algorithms, features, etc.

I am not speaking about the VRAM requirements for the game, only the fact that once the memory display exceeds about 4.3gb the display down down to about 358mb or so. I do believe the game uses a lot more than 4gb as some users with Titans have reported over 5gb usage. This is at 1080p, but this is not my issue.

I have ran GPUZ and MSI logs and the peak recorded VRAM usage is in agreement with the OSD.

 

[W1zzard]

Oh, so you are saying, once the memory usage goes beyond 4.3 GB, it will be displayed as ~350 MB ? Does this happen in GPU-Z as well? (second tab)

 

[coyote]

Oh, so you are saying, once the memory usage goes beyond 4.3 GB, it will be displayed as ~350 MB ? Does this happen in GPU-Z as well? (second tab)

Correct, and is happens in GPUZ as well according to the log file. See log file below. See how to only goes to 4.3gb and then drops to 252 which is not right.

 

[W1zzard]

I could imagine some bug where the variable wraps around at 4 GB, not sure why it is able to go slightly above that then.

My best guess is AMD driver bug (surprise!), because I've seen GPU-Z report more than 4 GB VRAM usage just fine on NVIDIA, and I think on AMD too (not 100% sure and don't have a card to test).

 

[OneMoar]

SOM: benchmark is fairly light real world usage in game will be about 30% to 40% more then the benchmark
there is nothing wrong here

 

[eidairaman1]

If the games run smoothly theres nothing to report.

-unsub-

 

[erocker]

I could imagine some bug where the variable wraps around at 4 GB, not sure why it is able to go slightly above that then.

My best guess is AMD driver bug (surprise!), because I've seen GPU-Z report more than 4 GB VRAM usage just fine on NVIDIA, and I think on AMD too (not 100% sure and don't have a card to test).

Here you go.. though my card only has 3gb of VRAM:

 

[W1zzard]

erocker, is that with the fixed build for vram monitoring under windows 8 ? (http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...sage-sensor-showing-0-mb-on-windows-8.204874/)

 

[erocker]

erocker, is that with the fixed build for vram monitoring under windows 8 ? (http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...sage-sensor-showing-0-mb-on-windows-8.204874/)

No, it's the "normal" version. I'll give the fixed build a try and see what happens.

Here's the fixed build. I can't get it to go over 3gb like with the previous build.

 

[Azalus]

Hello,

I registered just now because at last, I found that I was not alone anymore with this odd behavior...

I have a Sapphire 7970 6GB, and with Star Citizen I noticed the very same problem:

In the beginning I was wondering about a monitoring issue (which then would be a non issue), but as I remembered that with Watch Dogs, while I play with everything on Ultra+HDAO&TSAAx2 at a solid 30FPS VSync, when I set MSAAx8 I have a tremendous performance drop (compared to MSAAx4) while the VRAM usage drop from ~4GB to about 400-700MB (off the top of my head).
SC on the other hand seems to trash textures when reaching this limit, and I even remember seeing some FPS increase then (not systematical, thought).
As both GPU-Z and Process Explorer report the same VRAM consumption, but above all, as it has concrete consequences, it is definitely not a monitoring issue.

I once monitored the VRAM usage by launching multiple games to try and get a clue if it could be a per application dependency of whatever, (I went with WD, SC, SWTOR, LOTRO on multiple separate screen at the same time) and every time the global GPU cap was around ~4300MB.
So, I am also suspecting some kind of driver problem.
AFAIK, there is a 4GB VRAM resource limit for DX9 applications, but as we are talking about DX11 games, this should not be an issue; nevertheless I am wondering if a Mantle game could give a different result.

 

[EarthDog]

The amount of vram used is dependent on a lot of factors, not just the "Ultra" settings. What screen resolution, other eye candy settings like AA and AF etc. They say 6gb because that's really the minimum you want to game at those settings decently. Doesn't really mean you'll see usage at 6gb all the time.



There's really nothing wrong with afterburner or gpuz

QFT...

 

[URBAN303]

To use your 8GB vram, use multiple screens via Eyefinity
On my cfx euro truck simulator 2 (triple screens) 5760x1080 uses more 5700mb of vram + 700mb of dynamic memory

note : While technically I have 2x R9 280X Toxic ...

 

[coyote]

Actually COD Advanced Warfare seems to uses well over 4gb memory when using 4x SS and Shadow of Mordor also on ultra. The question I was asking though is the discrepancy with MSI Afterburner in displaying correct VRAM usage.

 

[URBAN303]

Actually COD Advanced Warfare seems to uses well over 4gb memory when using 4x SS and Shadow of Mordor also on ultra. The question I was asking though is the discrepancy with MSI Afterburner in displaying correct VRAM usage.

Trust GPU-Z software and use the log AIDA64 hardware monitoring. You will see the memory usage of your video card

edit : 5107 Mb dedicated memory + 551 Mb dynamic memory in this example with Assetto Corsa on 5760x1080 (triple screens). (2x R9 280X Toxic 3GB)

 

[coyote]

Thank you for that. How do I enable hardware monitoring in AIDA64? I have looked through but must be missing something!

 

[URBAN303]

Thank you for that. How do I enable hardware monitoring in AIDA64? I have looked through but must be missing something!

To activate Aida64 monitoring :

1°/ go to "Files" > "Preferences"
2°/ At the bottom of the column go to "In Connecting"
3°/ Check the values that you want to appear.
4°/ Check "Save sensors readings in an HTML file"

that's it all

* but i translate from french .... so see below :