How does VRAM work?

[Sadistic_Potato]

My friend and I had a debate, and I wanted to see what's right.

 

I posted a reddit link showing how much VRAM is used in popular AAA games. He disagreed with the fact that I said "VRAM used," as texture data is accumulated in the VRAM, so the "x" amount of VRAM used is "The amount of VRAM game actually needs + stored texture data from other things."

 

I think that VRAM stores whatever data needed for a frame, then overwrites that data for a new frame, so VRAM used is literally VRAM used in a particular application.

 

Who's right? That guy loves a fight so I want to get my facts straight.

[Jade]

VRAM works nearly the same as RAM... just for video. Frequently used files (textures), applications (frames), etc are in the VRAM and will stay there until they're no longer needed, then be marked to be freed / deleted from the VRAM when that space is needed again. The game only needs enough VRAM to store the frame buffer and textures. Higher resolution = bigger framesizes. Bigger framesizes = harder to generate (the purpose of a gpu), hence why higher res on same settings = lower fps.

[DimasRMDO]

VRAM is like RAM but it's Video-RAM, so it stores image data that the computer display. Like buffer between CPU and GPU, so the "image" is read by the CPU then worked by the VRAM then converted by RAMDAC (RAM Digital to Analog Converter).