16 replies to this topic

[dario03]

Just curious since I've been trying out different settings and then checking my vram usage and noticed something strange (or at least I think its strange). I have a Q6600 @ 3GHZ, 4GB ram, and a AMD 4870 512MB video card, which used to be a decent card and can still run all games though I have to turn the settings down now a days. However the one thing thats always been poor is my 512MB of vram. So in a attempt to get this game to run better I changed my windows 7 theme from aero to Windows 7 basic which saved me 70MB of Vram and it helped quite a bit (especially with the big frame drops). So to take it a little further I started checking my vram usage for the game and saw that it was between 480MB and 502MB at medium settings and 1600x1200 resolution. I figured that I could still be running out of vram since there are some background programs that use it (8-10MB with most stuff turned off) so I tried lowering my settings. However after trying various mixes of low-mid and flat out low at 1280x960 I found that even though performance did increase a bit I was still using 480-502MB Vram though the average dropped all of 5MB.

So basically I'm wondering how much Vram are you guys using? Does this game just flat out require more than 512MB and the readings are the same because of that (and my performance increase was due to less strain on the cpu/gpu)? Does Vram usage just show up as all being used even if its not exactly unavailable (like Vista sorta did).

For those that don't know you can use http://technet.micro...s/bb896653.aspx to check Vram usage. Theres other programs to (like rivatuner) but thats the only one I know of that works for my generation of AMD cards.

Edited by dario03, 28 November 2012 - 10:29 AM.

[Ghogiel]

Just tested on caustic in 1080 all settings at low.

GPU ram usage, starts off at about 600meg, then as the match progresses it gets to over 900mb. peaked at 979mb.

Edited by Ghogiel, 28 November 2012 - 10:30 AM.

[dario03]

Wow thats higher than I thought. What program did you use to monitor it and how much Vram does your card have? And whats the rest of your system specs?

[Draxtier]

I have a baseline of ~325 Mb of vram used on my system looking at the Windows desktop with MWO's front end open and usual background processes.

First match in Frozen City used a pretty flat 1111 Mb of vram. That's at 1920x1080 16x AF set at driver level. Medium effects, high object detail, medium particles, low post processing, low shading, low shadows, high texturing, medium environment, Anti-Aliasing off. My system should be capable better options, but MWO doesn't run well, so things get turned down.

With all options at very high, and again on Frozen City, vram used hit 1100 mb even. So it seems safe to assume that texture quality determines vram use and effects have very little to do with it. I'll check on the other maps and see if they use much more or less.

Tested with MSI Afterburner on Windows 7 64 bit
MSI GTX 660 OC @ 1033 (factory OC only) /w 2gb GDDR5 vram
AMD Phenom II X4 910 @2.6ghz /w 8gb DDR3 system ram

[dario03]

Yeah that sounds about right, I think the MWO menu runs around 220MB for me and Win7 Aero theme took about 70MB (lot more than I thought it would) some windows service takes about 10MB, and oddly enough my browser with 10 tabs uses about 120MB. And when I turned down enviroment and textures in game is when my average vram usage dropped. Looks like I need to try and get a card with 1.5-2GB of Vram if I want to run this game better.

I'm going to try out some other games and see what I get on those.

[StainlessSR]

I load in at ~250mb vram usage in match goes to ~990mb, come out of at ~380mb and gain ~100 mb each match after that till it fills up vram, I usually restart client when I am at 850-900 mb in mechlab because the next match I will suffer the 4fps bug stutter due to not having enough memory to load the whole map in vram (hd6770 1gb vram). Supposedly this is a known bug.

[Ghogiel]

dario03, on 28 November 2012 - 01:10 PM, said:

Wow thats higher than I thought. What program did you use to monitor it and how much Vram does your card have? And whats the rest of your system specs?

I used the program you posted in the OP.

X4 3.2
4gb DDR3
5830 1gb

[dario03]

Ghogiel our computers should perform some what similar with yours having the advantage of 1GB Vram. How does the game run for you? What kind of FPS do you get on low settings and is it stable or does it jump around a lot?

StainlessSR, on 28 November 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

I load in at ~250mb vram usage in match goes to ~990mb, come out of at ~380mb and gain ~100 mb each match after that till it fills up vram, I usually restart client when I am at 850-900 mb in mechlab because the next match I will suffer the 4fps bug stutter due to not having enough memory to load the whole map in vram (hd6770 1gb vram). Supposedly this is a known bug.

Thats interesting, what settings are you running in game? I was unaware of the game having a Vram leak, have only heard of regular memory leak. I haven't seen that happen since I started monitoring it but I also haven't had the 4fps bug while monitoring. But maybe that is what happens to me when the 4fps does hit since I never noticed myself running out of regular ram.

Edited by dario03, 28 November 2012 - 03:42 PM.

[Ghogiel]

dario03, on 28 November 2012 - 03:38 PM, said:

Ghogiel our computers should perform some what similar with yours having the advantage of 1GB Vram. How does the game run for you? What kind of FPS do you get on low settings and is it stable or does it jump around a lot?

Jumps around a lot. The problem isn't so much max fps. Some maps I have 45fps fairly steady, or 35fps on otheres. but it'll dip to 20fps and lower. So while playable it certainly isn't good.

Also since the vram is completely filled it seems, you may have noticed those little hangs the games does every so often, I think it's trying to page to the system ram which causes those 0.2 sec micro stutters every 20secs or so. or not.

Either way 1GB is barely enough it seems right now. I would feel much better with a 2gb card.

Edited by Ghogiel, 28 November 2012 - 04:10 PM.

[dario03]

Yep thats exactly what my game does as well. Will sit around 45 fairly often but will start dipping and jumping from 20 to 45fps. I've noticed those micro stutters to but wasn't sure if that was lag or the computer.

Also I guess I was wrong and I also have the mechlab Vram leak. Opened the game and was only using 140MB, played around in mechlab and got up to 225MB, played a game and got back to my 480-500MB, then dropped down to 190MB when I got back to mechlab, played around in mechlab for longer and got up to 330MB. Don't have time to keep checking right now but I'm going to keep doing that and see how it goes for me later.

Edited by dario03, 28 November 2012 - 04:35 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

Anywhere from 500 to 1000.

[Draxtier]

@dario03, I doubt if increasing your vram will get you the results you want. MWO has some pretty serious issues in terms of its graphics right now, such that systems which should run it at a solid 60fps with everything maxed or near-to maxed out are instead turning the effects down quite a bit and still seeing only 20-30 fps in game, with moments when it drops to 10-15 fps.

[Leetskeet]

Hardly anything.

It's all unoptimized CPU nonsense around here.

[dario03]

So I just tried that vram leak out a little bit. I played a few games and inbetween each i would jump around the mechlab. I found that I could get the mechlab to take up any where from 116MB all the way up to 490MB. At 490MB the mechlab would start having some visual glitches but would keep running. Also I would run into walls with the vram usage and the only way to get it to go up was by clicking out of the game and clicking on other programs and then back into the game. However everytime that I would play a match the game would still run fine and take 480MB to 500MB and when I got back to Mechlab it would be at ~190MB.

Draxtier, on 28 November 2012 - 08:21 PM, said:

@dario03, I doubt if increasing your vram will get you the results you want. MWO has some pretty serious issues in terms of its graphics right now, such that systems which should run it at a solid 60fps with everything maxed or near-to maxed out are instead turning the effects down quite a bit and still seeing only 20-30 fps in game, with moments when it drops to 10-15 fps.

Yeah I know but I've been planning on buying a new card for a while anyways. And I'm going to try to get higher vram since like I said thats what held me back on this card (not just this game). I always regretted not getting the 1GB model but when I got this card there was a really good sale and all the 1GB were gone. Plus it seems like a lot of games aren't optimized all that well anymore and are just thrown toegether or are console ports. Personally I have not been impressed with graphic development over the last 5 years. I mean look at the best looking game of 2002 and compare it to Crysis from 2007 the difference is huge but todays games are still lucky if they look as good as Crysis 1.

[Dukarriope]

I think I see an average of 800MB.

[dario03]

So I just got the 4fps bug or really the 1fps bug. I didn't have my vram graphs running but I alt tabbed out and turned them on. I found that the game was actually using less vram when it has the bug (or at least in this case). It showed ~280MB but quickly ramped up to 460MB-480MB and sat around that.

[Hatachi]

This game is exceedingly CPU reliant atm, so that matters much more than VRAM. I have a Q6600 and a 6970 lightning 2gb for my GPU. I chug at 2.7 overclock, but I'm as smooth as butter at 3.2.