Nvidia GPU not using all its memory

[Mixmaster5]

Hi there,

 

I have a GTX 770 4GB from Gigabyte. I just downloaded GPU-Z to see ist activity. The highest number I got at "memory used" was 1300MB - that is not even half: i was playing 4 x 4K Videos (RAW) at Full Resolution. Then I downloaded Furmark and also didn't get above 1300 MB.

 

What is wrong? Why isn't my GPU using ist 4GB? How can I change it?

 

Thanks you for your help.

 

Cheers

[oskarha]

1 minute ago, Mixmaster5 said:

Hi there,

 

I have a GTX 770 4GB from Gigabyte. I just downloaded GPU-Z to see ist activity. The highest number I got at "memory used" was 1300MB - that is not even half: i was playing 4 x 4K Videos (RAW) at Full Resolution. Then I downloaded Furmark and also didn't get above 1300 MB.

 

What is wrong? Why isn't my GPU using ist 4GB? How can I change it?

 

Thanks you for your help.

 

Cheers

Its not using 4GB because it doesn't need to.

Everything is fine, no need to worry

[Mixmaster5]

How come? Sometimes I don't get smooth playback in Premiere / Resolve - I was guessing this is because of the lack of memory.

 

Why do I have a 4GB then? At least at a stress test it should use all it's memory, right?

 

Cheers

[MrKickkiller]

3 minutes ago, Mixmaster5 said:

Hi there,

 

I have a GTX 770 4GB from Gigabyte. I just downloaded GPU-Z to see ist activity. The highest number I got at "memory used" was 1300MB - that is not even half: i was playing 4 x 4K Videos (RAW) at Full Resolution. Then I downloaded Furmark and also didn't get above 1300 MB.

 

What is wrong? Why isn't my GPU using ist 4GB? How can I change it?

 

Thanks you for your help.

 

Cheers

You don't floor your car all the time do you? If it doesn't need more VRAM, it won't use it. Also. Vram is for temporarily storing the rendered output. A gpu does not load videos from HDD/SSD into VRAM to play them for you.

[MrKickkiller]

1 minute ago, Mixmaster5 said:

How come? Sometimes I don't get smooth playback in Premiere / Resolve - I was guessing this is because of the lack of memory.

 

Why do I have a 4GB then? At least at a stress test it should use all it's memory, right?

 

Cheers

To store the rendered frames that would go to your monitor. If you only have a 1080p monitor, it's only gonna use the amount it needs for the eg 1080p screen + some game textures / editor textures etc.

[Mixmaster5]

1 minute ago, MrKickkiller said:

You don't floor your car all the time do you? If it doesn't need more VRAM, it won't use it. Also. Vram is for temporarily storing the rendered output. A gpu does not load videos from HDD/SSD into VRAM to play them for you.

No, but at the right time it should use ist power. Why are there 6GB and 8GB Cards now? I wouldn't make sense to have them if they just stay at 1.2 GB! I know that the GPU doens't load stuff from the HDD/SSD.

 

But a stress test is here to bring the Card to ist boundaries and that should be arounf 3.5 / 4 GB...

[zMeul]

that's not how video cards work

[Mixmaster5]

2 minutes ago, MrKickkiller said:

To store the rendered frames that would go to your monitor. If you only have a 1080p monitor, it's only gonna use the amount it needs for the eg 1080p screen + some game textures / editor textures etc.

I used the Furmark in 4K with antialiasing...that sould go above 1.2 GB, right?

[agent_x007]

Stress test is usually GPU focus, and you REALLY don't need a 3GB VRAM usage to flat out a GTX 770.

Try running Crysis (1) with 4k resolution (DSR from 1080), and MSAA 8xQ/16xQ on top of that - it should make the around VRAM usage number you are hoping for (with Frames in single digit numbers, but you wanted - you get it).

[MrKickkiller]

1 minute ago, Mixmaster5 said:

No, but at the right time it should use ist power. Why are there 6GB and 8GB Cards now? I wouldn't make sense to have them if they just stay at 1.2 GB! I know that the GPU doens't load stuff from the HDD/SSD.

 

But a stress test is here to bring the Card to ist boundaries and that should be arounf 3.5 / 4 GB...

If you want to, someone smart could quickly write you an application that will fill your vram with 0's, but that doesn't help you. Does it?

To benchmark something like memory you only need a small portion of the available capacity. Eg: A 2GB file transfer completed in 1 minutes gives me enough data about the data rate. I don't need to check with a 2TB file. (Imagine speedtest using a 2TB file to get fully accurate speed results)

 

For processing equipment (GPU, CPU) yes, it runs as fast it can.

 

Also, loading textures etc is something a developer has to code to use. There is no command to tell your pc: "Load everything in memory. Perhaps we'll use it later". No, the developer chooses what textures and bitmaps he wants to load into (v)ram. He then also keeps a reference to those textures, in order to have the gpu use em later.

[agent_x007]

4 minutes ago, MrKickkiller said:

Also, loading textures etc is something a developer has to code to use. There is no command to tell your pc: "Load everything in memory. Perhaps we'll use it later". No, the developer chooses what textures and bitmaps he wants to load into (v)ram. He then also keeps a reference to those textures, in order to have the gpu use em later.

Isn't new Call of Duty games using max VRAM for textures because... they can (Cache Spot Shadows/Cache Sun Shadows options) ?

[typographie]

14 minutes ago, Mixmaster5 said:

How come? Sometimes I don't get smooth playback in Premiere / Resolve - I was guessing this is because of the lack of memory.

 

Why do I have a 4GB then? At least at a stress test it should use all it's memory, right?

 

Cheers

Not necessarily. Stress tests usually stress shader performance, which is heavier on the GPU cores than the video memory subsystem. VRAM comes into play when you have to move a lot of pixels constantly. Games with extremely large and detailed textures, high levels of MSAA/SSAA, or just higher render resolutions tend to stress memory… but even then, it doesn't necessarily mean there's more data to store. If the program doesn't have 3–4 GB of stuff it needs to store and recall constantly, it won't fill up your VRAM.

 

It's become somewhat common for very new games to use up to 3–6 GB of VRAM, but not all will. And until a year or two ago, having more than 2 GB was almost an extravagance.

[manikyath]

VRAM is used for framebuffer (which is megabytes at most), textures, and some other voodoo. it essentially stores the data you have to work with, if all the data is stored, there's nothing to use the rest of that vram for.

 

look at it like this: your job is to transport important documents between a company's main office, and its vareous stores. for this they gave you a binder that can hold 4000 documents. if they need you to transport 4000 documents you can put them all in your folder, if you need to transport 8000 documents you'll have to make two runs.

 

if they need you to transport 1300 documents, more than half of your binder will be empty that run. if there's nothing to put in the rest of that binder, you just leave it empty, because those documents wont be magically transported faster if you put padding in the binder to make it completely full.