What happens when you go over your VRAM usage?

[aviangamer]

I have a gtx 970 and there are plenty of games I can go well over my VRAM usage in and still get solid performance, sometimes over 60fps. I'm just wondering how this is possible, how is the game still working properly?

[Mark Kaine]

Depends. 

Frame drops. 

Graphical glitches. 

Bad frame times. 

Crashes. 

 

As I understand it, if you go over the limit games will use system ram instead, which is slower and can cause interrupts.

 

Also sometimes the VRAM usage the game tells you is incorrect or dynamically adjusted depending on your actually available VRAM (and as such not accurate) 

 

So If you're fine playing like that and don't notice any issues there's really no reason to be concerned about it. 

 

Me? I like playing at 60FPS,  not 59, not 58, not 46, not 62, etc.   I do notice 1FPS drop immediately and it's an issue for the games I'm playing (death by framedrop) 

 

So yeah, it doesn't seem to be an issue for you?  I think you'll be fine. 

 

And I should probably buy a g-sync monitor   (but I'm unsure that'd really help,  a drop is a drop, even if I may not notice)  

[aviangamer]

14 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Depends. 

Frame drops. 

Graphical glitches. 

Bad frame times. 

Crashes. 

 

As I understand it, if you go over the limit games will use system ram instead, which is slower and can cause interrupts.

 

Also sometimes the VRAM usage the game tells you is incorrect or dynamically adjusted depending on your actually available VRAM (and as such not accurate) 

 

So If you're fine playing like that and don't notice any issues there's really no reason to be concerned about it. 

 

Me? I like playing at 60FPS,  not 59, not 58, not 46, not 62, etc.   I do notice 1FPS drop immediately and it's an issue for the games I'm playing (death by framedrop) 

 

So yeah, it doesn't seem to be an issue for you?  I think you'll be fine. 

 

And I should probably buy a g-sync monitor   (but I'm unsure that'd really help,  a drop is a drop, even if I may not notice)  

Ah, that's fair. For most single player games I don't mind dropping as low as 50fps in populated areas or something, I prefer having increased settings to a 100% stable 60fps at that point. That being said, I can still get 100% stable 60fps while using over 4gb of VRAM according to settings sometimes, GTAV is an example of that I believe. I've never used a gsync monitor, they say it stops tearing but honestly I've never even noticed tearing before.

For competitive games it's another story, I'm the same as you except I look for a stable 144fps.