DEBUNKED: MYTH Behind VRAM -- Real VRAM Usage in GAMES

hello performance loving graphics fanatics in today's video i'd like to talk about a very specific topic and more or less debunk a common myth behind our graphics card's vram it's video memory a lot of enthusiasts among us including myself in the past and even to this day from time to time complain about the vram capacity of specific gpu models but what if i'm about to tell you we've only been exaggerating making it a bigger deal than it really is with modern game titles actually using less vram than we initially expected due to what benchmark tools usually read out so in this video i'll quickly talk about what's done with the video memory how much vram we actually use in game compared to what we usually tend to read out slash monitor and of course i will also include a quick guide on how you too can read out and monitor your actual vram usage in your favorite game titles [Music] let's start at the very beginning a lot of you and even including myself a couple of years ago think that the vram usage monitored by popular tools such as the msi afterburner hardware info 64 and the like actually read out the amount the game requests and requires to even fully function properly however these numbers usually happen to be quite misleading and the users that believe what is being read out by such tools really are not to blame here because let's be honest when it says vram usage it would be safe to assume we're in fact dealing and looking at the real actual numbers there's really nothing wrong with the numbers most of us see it's just that they don't really represent the real usage we're only looking at the vram allocation but what does that mean in fact it's a bit of a complicated concept that even varies between games and game developers a lot of games load textures assets etc into the vram the video memory of our graphics card to access that data much quicker than from slower hdds or ssds that can cause fps drops or occasional stuttering more often than not more textures and assets than we actually need go into the video memory just in case we do happen to run into that one situation in which our graphics card needs exactly that set of graphics data it can simply access the loaded data from its vrm video memory and that very quickly that kind of buffering technique if you will can lead to a better smoother gaming experience with a lot fewer artifacts and graphics errors it needs to be said though that games do not necessarily need immense buffering to function properly and run smoothly that also somewhat depends on what graphics card you have installed and its amount of vram if you're driving a 6 or 8 gigabyte card specific game titles like filling up almost 6 or 8 gigabytes of your vram if you're on the other hand gaming with a 12 16 or 24 gigabyte graphics card there's a chance the game will also fill up the video memory of such cards we are talking of the allocated reserved memory which can be accessed extremely fast luckily there are a few options for us to monitor and read out our actual real vram usage without any noteworthy recurrence i for one like using the msi afterburner of course in combination with the riva tuner statistics server or rtss for short certain older versions may or may not support that other kind of video memory monitoring so your safest bet is to just get one of the latest versions of the software package then navigate into the msi afterburner settings then go to the tab monitoring and here we can read out a bunch of stuff also including our conventional method of reading out vram usage but that one doesn't cut it where it says active hardware monitoring graphs click on the three dots and we are being presented a whole new world now make sure to select gpu.dll and click on ok when we now scroll down we now get a few more monitoring options to work with what matters today is the dedicated memory usage of the gpu its process make sure to show it in the on-screen display feel free to name or rename it if you want to and finally save these settings now i'm about to show you the differences between these two different types of vram monitoring the dedicated readout represents our actual active usage how big of a difference we are about to experience depends on the game title the game engine and of course the game developer starting with shadow of the tomb raider we clearly see at max at 4k uhd with an rtx 3090 graphics card equipped with 24 gigabytes of vram about 8 gigabytes are loaded into the vram however in reality only roughly 6.5 gigabytes are being eaten in the title red dead redemption 2 at slightly optimized graphics settings at 4k uhd at max about 6 gigabytes are being loaded into the vram 4.3 gigabytes of which are only actively used in metro exodus there's a slightly higher demand for vram to be witnessed 6.2 gigabytes were loaded but the actual usage is down at only 4.5 gigabytes the following game horizon zero dawn leads to a very stark contrast though it almost appears as if the game's appetite for video memory hardly can be satisfied loaded into the vram 12 gigabytes at max and the actual usage shockingly doesn't differ too much at 11 gigabytes in this slightly older title going by the name of gta 5 we are seeing the other type of extreme case 6.2 gigabytes have been loaded but only about a mere 3 gigabytes are actually being used battlefield 5 also delivers interesting results 7.3 gigabytes loaded and in use are only 5.6 gigabytes very similar results we get to see in the game assassin's creed valhalla with 7.8 gigabytes loaded and actually used 5.6 or 5.7 gigabytes even the infamous problem child among aaa games namely cyberpunk 2077 at 4k uhd maxed out graphic settings doesn't allocate as much as we would have expected at max i managed to read out an allocation of 8.5 gigabytes with 6.4 or 6.5 gigabytes actual usage so as you can see with a few exceptions we aren't tied to the vram capacity as much as many of us thought with 8 gigabytes of vram in most games even at a resolution of 4k uhd we're still doing great but don't get me wrong that doesn't mean more capacity more headroom especially for the future wouldn't be better also with the remarks i made neither do i want to protect and justify nvidia's or aim this vram policy all i want to say is even with a not so well equipped high-end graphics card as far as vram is concerned we don't need to immediately fear the worst i hope i could successfully shed some light under this topic even though there surely have been others that have dealt with the same topic before me with that being said a huge thank you for watching and until next time

Channel: Nicolas11x12 English

Views: 32,353

Keywords: Nicolas11x12 English, VRAM Myth Graphics Card, VRAM Usage in Games, VRAM Usage Gaming, Real VRAM Usage in Games, Actual VRAM Usage in Games, Actual VRAM Usage Gaming, How to measure actual VRAM usage, How to measure real VRAM Usage, How to check real VRAM usage, How to display actual VRAM usage, Actual VRAM Usage Monitoring, Monitor actual VRAM Usage, Real VRAM Usage Monitoring, Monitor real VRAM Usage, Actual VRAM Usage, VRAM Allocation vs VRAM Usage, VRAM Allocation vs Usage

Id: mCi42hjc6lE

Length: 7min 38sec (458 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/heartbroken_nerd]

There is no 16GB vs 12GB debate, because the 12GB will also have a lot slower memory interface via lower bandwidth and likely less L2 cache as well.

[u/AnAttemptReason]

Now do high resolution VR.

Actually if I get the chance tonight I might give it a shot myself using his method.

[u/TaintedSquirrel]

The problem with 12 GB on the 4080 is the 192 bit bus. Really bad for memory bandwidth.

[u/hackenclaw]

I think people who talked about 12GB vs 16GB are talking about how they will perform in future, not now. There are gamers who buy high end card to play the latest games now, then they retired it into secondary machine to play at lower fps as their PC got older.

Lack of GPU speed games wont shutter, the game will just run at lower Fps. Lack of VRAM will make gaming experience horrible due to shuttering, sometimes the game might not work at all due to developer restriction etc..

12gb vs 16gb can be compared to 3GB vs 4GB now. Their problem wont matter now but in 5yrs they might.

[u/thrownawayzss]

Whoever was narrating this video needs to do some cardio or something. The amount of pausing for inhaling made this just unwatchable for me.

[u/Glorgor]

12gb is enough,8gb isn't

I don't think nobody is arguing that 12gb is not enough