Help with VRAM usage

[icebear]

I've noticed recently that applications are using a lot more VRAM than they used to. Obviously while gaming a lot of my VRAM is in use, but during everyday tasks it used to be at 0 percent most of the time, sometimes 1 percent. All of a sudden, firefox is using 1 GB of VRAM for god knows what, and with nothing running and GPU usage at 0-1 percent I'm still using 5 percent VRAM. Is this normal? Will the VRAM be cleared and reserved when I open a game?

 

My system:

r5 5600x

g.skill ripjaws 2x 8GB 3600 CL16

RTX 3070

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, icebear said:

I've noticed recently that applications are using a lot more VRAM than they used to. Obviously while gaming a lot of my VRAM is in use, but during everyday tasks it used to be at 0 percent most of the time, sometimes 1 percent. All of a sudden, firefox is using 1 GB of VRAM for god knows what, and with nothing running and GPU usage at 0-1 percent I'm still using 5 percent VRAM. Is this normal? Will the VRAM be cleared and reserved when I open a game?

 

My system:

r5 5600x

g.skill ripjaws 2x 8GB 3600 CL16

RTX 3070

Is the issue specific to Firefox or do other apps use similarly large amounts of vram too?
Is your firefox up to date?

Does the firefox vram usage increase with time?
If you close firefox and reopen it does it clear the vram usage and then it builds again?

[icebear]

1 minute ago, Shabba said:

Is the issue specific to Firefox or do other apps use similarly large amounts of vram too?
Is your firefox up to date?

Does the firefox vram usage increase with time?
If you close firefox and reopen it does it clear the vram usage and then it builds again?

Before today, my apps barely used any VRAM, except for games. My firefox is the most recent version as far as I know. The VRAM usage doesnt continuously go up, it stays pretty constant. When I close firefox, the VRAM decreases, but comes back when I open it. Even if firefox is the only program running, closing it doesnt release all my VRAM.

[Eigenvektor]

49 minutes ago, icebear said:

Before today, my apps barely used any VRAM, except for games. My firefox is the most recent version as far as I know. The VRAM usage doesnt continuously go up, it stays pretty constant. When I close firefox, the VRAM decreases, but comes back when I open it. Even if firefox is the only program running, closing it doesnt release all my VRAM.

Because modern browsers use hardware acceleration to render web pages. So they need VRAM. I would assume it gets released when a game is in exclusive foreground mode, but I don't know for certain.

 

~edit: The Windows desktop also uses hardware acceleration e.g. for transparency effects etc. so it also uses some VRAM.