# GPU memory sensor shows unreal memory usage



## ku4eto (May 7, 2018)

Hello.
Using the latest GPU-Z 2.9.0, i noticed something interesting.

The GPU is Power Color Red Dragon RX580 4GB (Samsung).

As seen from the screenshot, its using... 290GB of video memory. Under load with Ethash miner, it goes to 720GB usage.
I tried another sensor reader (HWinfo64), and also shows the same wrong memory usage.


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## W1zzard (May 7, 2018)

Can you check if 2.7.0 works correctly? and 2.8.0 shows the same wrong values?


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## ku4eto (May 7, 2018)

Well... who knew... Turns out, the issue was caused by the stupid Windows 10 1709. After clean install, the user on which i tested this crapped out, i had to create new user. The issue is not present right now. No idea how did this happen.


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## W1zzard (May 7, 2018)

I don't think that's it. I have had (very few) reports of this before and it seems random somehow and doesnt persist through reboot.

Please keep monitoring the situation, if you get it again, compare with 2.7.0 and 2.8.0


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## Enz_Compat (Sep 13, 2018)

I've encountered this issue on some of our systems here, and we've resorted to using GPU-Z 2.7.0, since we didn't see this problem on this version.

I'll pour through my data archives to see if i still have some logs where this happened. I'll also try to reproduce it on my end and send you whatever info i can gather.

What I can confirm right away is that I've only seen this with AMD cards so far starting with version 2.8.0 and newer (not sure if it's happened with 2.10.0 yet).


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## W1zzard (Sep 13, 2018)

This will be fixed in next release.

When AMD added ReLive overlay with memory monitoring, they added an API function get memory stats. Which doesn't work correctly and gives those wrong numbers, so I'll just revert to the previous method.


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## John Naylor (Sep 13, 2018)

Doeasn't address your issue and Wiz has already done that but AFAIK, no utility is capable of reporting actual VRAM memory usage, what they do is report memory allocation.  Knowing the allocation is a good piece of data; it's just that most folks don't realize that there's a difference.  As long as you don't assume that because GPUz reads 4.5 GB on an 8 GB card, that 4 GB is somehow NG, you're fine.  Switch to a 4 GB card on the same system / settings / resolution and you will see a lower reading.

The best analogy I have heard is akin to a credit card.   You have a $5,000 credit limit and $2,000 charged on your credid card.  You then files for a car loan and when the bank runs  acredit check, it sees $5,000 as a liability not $2,000 because you may only have spent $2k, but you have been "allocated" $5k.

Here's a technical explanation, perhaps Wizard can give  a better one.....

Such Utilities do not _"actually report how much VRAM the GPU is actually using — instead, it reports the amount of VRAM that a game has requested. We spoke to Nvidia’s Brandon Bell on this topic, who told us the following: “None of the GPU tools on the market report memory usage correctly, whether it’s GPU-Z, Afterburner, Precision, etc. They all report the amount of memory requested by the GPU, not the actual memory usage. Cards will larger memory will request more memory, but that doesn’t mean that they actually use it. They simply request it because the memory is available.”_ 

You can see this in dozens of examples using cards offered in two VRAM configurations.  Whether the 770, 960, 1060 testing shows many instances with the larger version of the card reports using an amount greater than the smaller version has.  And yet when you switch cards, the numbers change ... there's also no significant difference between the fps, image quality between the two cards.  Yes, if you go to a big enough resolution (2160p) and the highest possible settings you will see a difference between the cards in the more demanding games.  But when you do this, the game is unplayable in either case.   Yes the card with the larger VRAM might deliver a 44% improvement in fps, but when that improvement is from 13 fps to 19 fps, the game is still unplayabale regardless of VRAM on baord.   I have seen some exceptions, like poor console ports and I have seen the youtube videos where peeps have **created** an issue with significant effort (was a popular past time with the 970) but test sites were never able to duplicate these problems under "normal usage".


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