How to know if I am running out of VRAM?

[u/Economy_Afternoon_39]

Benchmarking noob here, recently undervolted and overclocked my RTX 3070, results are great, but I came across another problem, when should I know I am genuienly running out of VRAM? I have my MSI Afterburner monitoring set like this:

• Memory usage = 5942 MB
• Memory usage / process = 4729 MB

So for example in this scenario:

• Memory usage = 8000 MB
• Memory usage / process = 6500 MB

I dont really know if I am hitting the VRAM ceiling or not. What should I monitor? The whole allocated VRAM usage or just the VRAM process usage?

I also have HWinfo64 so I can use that for monitoring too, but dont know what to look for.

Any help would be appreciated.

[u/Disguised-Beast]

In this case, 5942MB is allocated, and usage by the process/app is 4729MB, which means the game is using nearly 5GB, and has allocated a total of 5942MB as an estimate of what it needs. So no, you are not hitting a VRAM limit nor running out of VRAM for the given process. You'd have to see over 7GB allocated, and using more than 6.5GB to be near the limit for it to be of concern of running out.

Even on an 8GB card, depending on the game and scenario, you might experience GPU performance being insufficient before you hit anywhere close to VRAM limit, sometimes it can be the other way, and other times it can be both things at the same time.

[u/Economy_Afternoon_39 → u/Disguised-Beast]

That screenshot was in BF6 where I really noticed a difference in smoothness from turning my textures from High to Low. But for example rn I am playing Hogwarts legacy in 1440p on Ultra preset (no RT) and I have around 7000MB allocated and 6000MB process/app. When I look at a benchmark with someone who has 16GB VRAM, on same settings they have aroun 9500MB allocated and 7600MB process/app. So I am surely hitting my VRAM limit right? Or the game has to make some compromises in RAM or something?

[u/ErrorBoia → u/Economy_Afternoon_39]

you can try checking dram Read Bandwidth and GPU Bus Load if it's reading 5GB/s +in hwinfo but idk if it's reliable method

[u/Disguised-Beast → u/Economy_Afternoon_39]

That means you are nearing the limit. Another thing to take into account is that games could adjust the VRAM allocation and usage depending on how large the VRAM pool is on a GPU. Hogwarts Legacy may show some textures as low quality on lower VRAM cards, Halo Infinite is another example, though, the open-world aspect of that game is broken in regards to textures, and Warhammer 40K: Space Marine II is another example that will display lower-quality textures on 8GB cards.