# Is GPU-Z displaying my memory usage correctly?



## Black Panther (Dec 22, 2011)

I measured my in-game memory usage trying both ver. 0.5.5 and ver. 0.5.7

While running Skyrim, my Dedicated memory usage is 1742MB and my Dynamic memory usage is 108MB.

Now, 



btarunr said:


> Memory Usage (Dedicated): graphics memory pages occupying the GPU's memory (memory on the graphics card)
> Memory Usage (Dynamic): graphics memory pages occupying the system memory



How can the game be occupying 1742MB of my graphic memory if my 5970 only has 1024MB of memory usable?


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## de.das.dude (Dec 22, 2011)

i think dynamic stands for both, dedicated and system combined.
thats what i know.


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

please check your vram usage using process monitor and report back. it uses the reference implementation for this


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## Black Panther (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> please check your vram usage using process monitor



You mean the process monitor by sysinternals?


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

yes


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## Black Panther (Dec 22, 2011)

I need some time to figure out how to do it.. 




____________________


Is it this what you need?


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

no, there is an option for gpu memory monitoring


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## white phantom (Dec 22, 2011)

does it not overspill in to main system memory? when i go on the websites checking for game compatibility i get told my aged 9600gt has 2.7gb of video memory when its only got 512mb


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## Wrigleyvillain (Dec 22, 2011)

Yeah I have seen similar things and was wondering about this myself. It can and does use System memory but I would expect a much larger performance hit than I am seeing and also I think GPU-Z displays that separately but could be mistaken.


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

white phantom said:


> does it not overspill in to main system memory? when i go on the websites checking for game compatibility i get told my aged 9600gt has 2.7gb of video memory when its only got 512mb



yeah that happens when you ask directx or windows "how much memory on the vga card". some shitty software uses that method

but gpuz's philosophy is to only work with device memory when possible, because thats what people expect to see


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## white phantom (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> yeah that happens when you ask directx or windows "how much memory on the vga card". some shitty software uses that method
> 
> but gpuz's philosophy is to only work with device memory when possible, because thats what people expect to see



awrighty cool thanks  was the online "can you run it" sites sorta thing telling me that lol


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## Black Panther (Dec 22, 2011)

I'm guessing this is the graph you want? 






The last tab reads "GPU" if I'm seeing it correctly..

I'm googling away but still haven't figured out how to get it though  sorry W1zzard I am _far less_ savvy than you


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

not gpu load. there is some kind of gpu memory readout, even per process


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## Black Panther (Dec 22, 2011)

Sorry I'm totally lost now.

When I start the game a whole lot of processes start, the image below only shows a small bit.

Right-clicking I see no option for anything GPU-related.
I don't know on which one I should be choosing.

Neither did I see anything GPU-related in the File, Edit, Event etc... tabs at the top


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

ugh sorry i meant system monitor not process monitor


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## Black Panther (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> ugh sorry i meant system monitor not process monitor



I'd appreciate a link to download the correct utility, please 

(Though that process monitor is really interesting, I'm not sorry for having downloaded it and learnt a bit how it works).


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

seriously ... 





click where i marked

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653


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## Black Panther (Dec 22, 2011)

GPU-Z agrees with System Monitor. Here it says I'm using 1.7GB of memory:






But as I said in my OP, how can the game be occupying 1.7GB of my graphic memory if my 5970 only has 1024MB of memory _usable_?






So neither System Monitor nor GPU-Z here are showing the actual memory being used from the VGA device..


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

interesting. must be some windows bug then. not much i can do, that memory monitoring is part of windows device model and there is no documentation for it


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## cadaveca (Dec 22, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> interesting. must be some windows bug then. not much i can do, that memory monitoring is part of windows device model and there is no documentation for it



Yeah, it's wrong, on most ATI cards I have tested so far, from 2900XT and up. It's intereting to note that no matter the framebuffer size, readings seem and average 768MB too high, as My 6950 2GB cards read as about ~2800MB or so, and 1 GB cards appear as BlackPanther's do, but I'm not sure on 2-4 series GPUs.

I wonder, if you have time with 7970 and BF3, if you can check memory usage and see if it says ~3900MB. It might be reading VRAM + GART allocation per output on some cards, or some strange thing.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Dec 22, 2011)

Damn. I was hoping there was a different and better answer than just "it's wrong". Though if we can, in fact, determine that it's always 768 or whatever above that's better than nothing.

Between this and AO in Skyrim nVidia is looking better and better to me.


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## W1zzard (Dec 22, 2011)

figure out whats wrong with it. i can easily subtract 768 mb from the readings


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## Anusha (Dec 23, 2011)

My 1GB 6950s in CFX shows like 17xx when running BF3 in ultra setting at 1080p


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## turbine (Dec 23, 2011)

The 5970 has 2 GPUs, each with 1024MB memory - the GPU-Z information tab is only showing information on a single GPU.


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## Black Panther (Dec 23, 2011)

turbine said:


> The 5970 has 2 GPUs, each with 1024MB memory - the GPU-Z information tab is only showing information on a single GPU.



In crossfire only one set of memory is active. 
The 5970 has 2 GPU's and 2048MB vram, (1024 per GPU) but only one x 1024MB is utilized during gaming.


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## cadaveca (Dec 23, 2011)

Both sets of ram are active..just they get the exact same data one them - it's not used as one large continuous 2 GB framebuffer.


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## Black Panther (Dec 23, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Both sets of ram are active..just they get the exact same data one them - it's not used as one large continuous 2 GB framebuffer.



Hmm, could it be then that my game is using 870MB from vram, and since you say it's also mirrored on the other set, then system monitor and gpu-z are counting them hence saying that I'm using 1.74GB of memory in-game?


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## cadaveca (Dec 23, 2011)

Nah. Becuase of how crossfire works, each GPU needs access to the same data, so the data is mirrored exactly. The only part that isn't mirrored is the one area that the rendered frames are output to to be sent to the main GPU. This area might be 128MB, but definitely not ~700MB.

Also, as i mentioned on the last page, my 2 GB cards and 1GB cards also seem about ~700MB too high. I have a couple ideas of what this might be, but lack the proper understanding to figure out which is which. Hardware..yeah, makes sense to me..software...not so much.


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## turbine (Dec 24, 2011)

Black Panther said:


> Hmm, could it be then that my game is using 870MB from vram, and since you say it's also mirrored on the other set, then system monitor and gpu-z are counting them hence saying that I'm using 1.74GB of memory in-game?



This is what I was thinking. But it wouldn't explain why it happens with single-GPU cards.


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## Black Panther (Dec 24, 2011)

turbine said:


> This is what I was thinking. But it wouldn't explain why it happens with single-GPU cards.



It does? On which single-GPU card does this happen?


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## cadaveca (Dec 24, 2011)

Black Panther said:


> It does? On which single-GPU card does this happen?



Basically all ATI cards.


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