Is there anway to make use of unused VRAM?

[TheDeeGee]

Just get a GPU with 2GB then everything is filled up by Windows.

 

[Lei]

Just get a GPU with 2GB then everything is filled up by Windows.

I guess he wants to give the gpu to someone who's got less ram than vram and doesn't game.
I do have such a friend. Her 8gb ram is up to its neck and I have a gtx1070 to dust off

I was really thinking that I could maybe use one of my spare 1080ti's for my mother's computer (which only has 8 GiB of system RAM) and maybe throw the pagefile and TEMP directory onto the 1080ti.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Best use of extra vram imho

Stable Diffusion

me just messing around.

 

[80251]

Waste of power. And for others computers I really recommend keeping it at simple as possible.

Um, why? And who gets to decide what is a waste of power your majesty?

 

[unwind-protect]

I have concerns that the card will consume too much power with that RAMdisk loaded to make that a good option.

And whoever has 24 GB of VRAM probably has enough RAM to make such a RAMdisk there.

 

[Shrek]

I seem to recall that Mathematica could make use of the GPU for calculations, but I don't know if that is still the case.

Are there any other programs that can exploit the graphics card for tasks other than graphics?

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Are there any other programs that can exploit the graphics card for tasks other than graphics?

CUDA and OpenCL say Hi

Yep, most professional applications make some use of the GPU for general computation.

 

[Lei]

I seem to recall that Mathematica could make use of the GPU for calculations, but I don't know if that is still the case.

Are there any other programs that can exploit the graphics card for tasks other than graphics?

AI, pytorch, tensorflow. They're calculating gradient descent vector.
Not only the dataset of images loads into vram, but the calculations are also done with cuda cores way faster than cpu. The output is a machine learning model, not graphics nor an image/video.
Basically the output is lots of neural weights. Your visual cortex

And of course the damn bloody obnoxious imbecile retarded miners use gpu for other than digital art.

And whoever has 24 GB of VRAM probably has enough RAM to make such a RAMdisk there.

He's talking about 1080ti swapped to another machine with 8gb ram.
And imagine someone who plans to delay an upgrade from ddr4 to 5 may benefit from this solution at some point.

 

[Shrek]

Ah yes, the miners, how could I have forgotten.

 

[Wirko]

Ah yes, the miners, how could I have forgotten.

Or were you asking about applications that make use of gpu's memory, without needing (much of) its computing power?

 

[80251]

I have concerns that the card will consume too much power with that RAMdisk loaded to make that a good option.

And whoever has 24 GB of VRAM probably has enough RAM to make such a RAMdisk there.

Who said anything about 24 GB of VRAM? I was talking about a 1080ti. Stop moving the goalposts and sh!tposting.

The system in question has 8 GiB of DDR3 RAM, who wants to throw money away on DDR3 RAM now?

 

[A Computer Guy]

I have concerns that the card will consume too much power with that RAMdisk loaded to make that a good option.

I would be more concerned with data corruption. Typical VRAM doesn't come in an ECC flavor as far as I know.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

I would be more concerned with data corruption. Typical VRAM doesn't come in an ECC flavor as far as I know.

It does, on workstation cards.

But why would the VRAM corrupt data any more than standard DDR3?

Maybe you would have to reduce VRAM clocks if there is data corruption, but the beauty of VRAM is that it can clock dynamically.

 

[A Computer Guy]

It does, on workstation cards.

That's cool, I didn't know that!

But why would the VRAM corrupt data any more than standard DDR3?

I didn't mean to imply that it would but was just voicing a more general concern in particular with use as a RAM disk.

 

[80251]

It does, on workstation cards.

But why would the VRAM corrupt data any more than standard DDR3?

Maybe you would have to reduce VRAM clocks if there is data corruption, but the beauty of VRAM is that it can clock dynamically.

Strangely enough the 4090 does have ECC GDDR6x; the use of which can be toggled on/off.

I think all DDR flavours have had parity checks though.

 

[Frick]

Um, why? And who gets to decide what is a waste of power your majesty?

A 1080ti as a RAMdisk and nothing else is just wasteful.

The system in question has 8 GiB of DDR3 RAM, who wants to throw money away on DDR3 RAM now?

Using a 1080ti as a RAMdisk for what I assume is a light use machine is throwing performance away. Sell the GPU, or give it to someone who will use it, and find the cheapest used DDR3 stick you can. But honestly 8GB is fine. I was on a single 8GB stick over the winter and it was fine, even for games (OS on SSD of course). At work I have 8GB, and it's fine, even with several programs, 30 Chrome tabs, 5 PDFs, 3 2D DWGs, 4 notepads and 3 Excels open.

The only practical difference this will make to your mom is a higher power bill and a noisier computer. But sure, if you want to just for the sake of it, do it. No one can stop you, but I do think it's a really unnecessary thing to do. And again, for non techie relatives and friends it's best to keep it as simple as possible. They can't tell the difference anyway and they probably don't care even if they did, and that is fine.

 

[Ruru]

12GB here and every byte goes to usage as I play at 4K.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

my 6700 has i think 10?gb
and i dont think ive seen it more use then 6
just means its future proof.

 

[Toothless]

Who said anything about 24 GB of VRAM? I was talking about a 1080ti. Stop moving the goalposts and sh!tposting.

The system in question has 8 GiB of DDR3 RAM, who wants to throw money away on DDR3 RAM now?

You can get 16GB very, very cheaply now. Why add more variables and points of failure to something that's probably going to someone that isn't tech savvy?

I keep like, 40GB+ of DDR3 on the shelf in case someone needs a little bump in their desktop. All donated or used and replaced.

Waste of a 1080ti honestly.

 

[Mussels]

You can make VRAM RAM disks
Directstorage is going to make it more useful, but we cant do super much with it right now other than brag about having soooo much spare VRAM


Unused RAM doesnt user power, so it still benefits you when you arent using it - by having naptime

Who said anything about 24 GB of VRAM? I was talking about a 1080ti. Stop moving the goalposts and sh!tposting.

The system in question has 8 GiB of DDR3 RAM, who wants to throw money away on DDR3 RAM now?

16GB DDR3 from 1600 to 2000 made a 40% increase in 99% FPS on a system i just sold with a mere GTX970

Definitely get 16GB of dual channel ram, as it not only helps gaming performance and OS performance in general, but reduces the amount of writes to your C: drive - which either boosts performance yet again, or saves lifespan of an SSD.

I have concerns that the card will consume too much power with that RAMdisk loaded to make that a good option.

And whoever has 24 GB of VRAM probably has enough RAM to make such a RAMdisk there.

It's also much faster - VRAM ram drives don't exist in a high speed form yet, last time i tried was *slow*

prsyahmi/GpuRamDrive: RamDrive that is backed by GPU Memory (github.com)

The only practical difference this will make to your mom is a higher power bill and a noisier computer.

and both of these are easily avoidable - fan curves in a BIOS and undervolting can drastically change power consumption and noise, without harming performance

(I think i get a whole 10% boost going from undervolted 240W on my GPU to stock 375W, yaaaay so worth it)

 

[chrcoluk]

If you're at the desktop chances are you don't need 8GiB, 12GiB, 16GiB or 24GiB of VRAM. Is there anyway to put it to use for other purposes? Can firefox/chrome/edge use VRAM instead of system RAM for their purposes?

They already do by default.

Firefox consumes about 1-1.5gb VRAM when I fire it up in its default state, I actually turn the acceleration off as I only have a 10 gig GPU.

Same with Discord, Chrome, OBSS and anything else that can use GPU acceleration.

 

[Frick]

and both of these are easily avoidable - fan curves in a BIOS and undervolting can drastically change power consumption and noise, without harming performance

It's his mums desktop, and the GPU would be used as pagefile. There are zero benefits to this idea.

 

[Bomby569]

90% of the time my PC is turned on, i'm not using most of my CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM, even the full SSD's, the PSU, vrm phases on mobo and gpu, damn i'm not even occupying all the space in the case.

PC's are a waste

 

[A Computer Guy]

I look forward to people continuing to cry about hardware demands for every single game developed for current gen consoles... "shit code, poor optimization, 4gb vram and 4 cpu cores should be enough!!!!111"

It is too bad optimization and quality control often seem to fall down for PC ports in the rapid rush to market.

 

[Mussels]

It's his mums desktop, and the GPU would be used as pagefile. There are zero benefits to this idea.

Making the fans quieter and adjusting power settings are better ideas than his VRAM one.

Although i do appreciate the ingenuity of the question he asked.

90% of the time my PC is turned on, i'm not using most of my CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM, even the full SSD's, the PSU, vrm phases on mobo and gpu, damn i'm not even occupying all the space in the case.

PC's are a waste

90% of the time i'm awake i'm not using my brain, either.
It's a good thing PC's have power saving settings, to reduce their waste.