Is GPU-Z displaying my memory usage correctly?

[Black Panther]

I measured my in-game memory usage trying both ver. 0.5.5 and ver. 0.5.7

While running Skyrim, my Dedicated memory usage is 1742MB and my Dynamic memory usage is 108MB.

Now,

• Memory Usage (Dedicated): graphics memory pages occupying the GPU's memory (memory on the graphics card)
• Memory Usage (Dynamic): graphics memory pages occupying the system memory

How can the game be occupying 1742MB of my graphic memory if my 5970 only has 1024MB of memory usable?

 

[de.das.dude]

i think dynamic stands for both, dedicated and system combined.
thats what i know.

 

[W1zzard]

please check your vram usage using process monitor and report back. it uses the reference implementation for this

 

[Black Panther]

please check your vram usage using process monitor

You mean the process monitor by sysinternals?

 

[W1zzard]

yes

 

[Black Panther]

I need some time to figure out how to do it..




____________________


Is it this what you need?

 

[W1zzard]

no, there is an option for gpu memory monitoring

 

[white phantom]

does it not overspill in to main system memory? when i go on the websites checking for game compatibility i get told my aged 9600gt has 2.7gb of video memory when its only got 512mb

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah I have seen similar things and was wondering about this myself. It can and does use System memory but I would expect a much larger performance hit than I am seeing and also I think GPU-Z displays that separately but could be mistaken.

 

[W1zzard]

does it not overspill in to main system memory? when i go on the websites checking for game compatibility i get told my aged 9600gt has 2.7gb of video memory when its only got 512mb

yeah that happens when you ask directx or windows "how much memory on the vga card". some shitty software uses that method

but gpuz's philosophy is to only work with device memory when possible, because thats what people expect to see

 

[white phantom]

yeah that happens when you ask directx or windows "how much memory on the vga card". some shitty software uses that method

but gpuz's philosophy is to only work with device memory when possible, because thats what people expect to see

awrighty cool thanks was the online "can you run it" sites sorta thing telling me that lol

 

[Black Panther]

I'm guessing this is the graph you want?

The last tab reads "GPU" if I'm seeing it correctly..

I'm googling away but still haven't figured out how to get it though sorry W1zzard I am far less savvy than you

 

[W1zzard]

not gpu load. there is some kind of gpu memory readout, even per process

 

[Black Panther]

Sorry I'm totally lost now.

When I start the game a whole lot of processes start, the image below only shows a small bit.

Right-clicking I see no option for anything GPU-related.
I don't know on which one I should be choosing.

Neither did I see anything GPU-related in the File, Edit, Event etc... tabs at the top

 

[W1zzard]

ugh sorry i meant system monitor not process monitor

 

[Black Panther]

ugh sorry i meant system monitor not process monitor

I'd appreciate a link to download the correct utility, please

(Though that process monitor is really interesting, I'm not sorry for having downloaded it and learnt a bit how it works).

 

[W1zzard]

seriously ...

click where i marked

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

 

[Black Panther]

GPU-Z agrees with System Monitor. Here it says I'm using 1.7GB of memory:

But as I said in my OP, how can the game be occupying 1.7GB of my graphic memory if my 5970 only has 1024MB of memory usable?

So neither System Monitor nor GPU-Z here are showing the actual memory being used from the VGA device..

 

[W1zzard]

interesting. must be some windows bug then. not much i can do, that memory monitoring is part of windows device model and there is no documentation for it

 

[cadaveca]

interesting. must be some windows bug then. not much i can do, that memory monitoring is part of windows device model and there is no documentation for it

Yeah, it's wrong, on most ATI cards I have tested so far, from 2900XT and up. It's intereting to note that no matter the framebuffer size, readings seem and average 768MB too high, as My 6950 2GB cards read as about ~2800MB or so, and 1 GB cards appear as BlackPanther's do, but I'm not sure on 2-4 series GPUs.

I wonder, if you have time with 7970 and BF3, if you can check memory usage and see if it says ~3900MB. It might be reading VRAM + GART allocation per output on some cards, or some strange thing.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Damn. I was hoping there was a different and better answer than just "it's wrong". Though if we can, in fact, determine that it's always 768 or whatever above that's better than nothing.

Between this and AO in Skyrim nVidia is looking better and better to me.

 

[W1zzard]

figure out whats wrong with it. i can easily subtract 768 mb from the readings

 

[Anusha]

My 1GB 6950s in CFX shows like 17xx when running BF3 in ultra setting at 1080p

 

[turbine]

The 5970 has 2 GPUs, each with 1024MB memory - the GPU-Z information tab is only showing information on a single GPU.

 

[Black Panther]

The 5970 has 2 GPUs, each with 1024MB memory - the GPU-Z information tab is only showing information on a single GPU.

In crossfire only one set of memory is active.
The 5970 has 2 GPU's and 2048MB vram, (1024 per GPU) but only one x 1024MB is utilized during gaming.