GPU-Z 0.3.7 - Shows gpu memory used

bigdogchris

bigdogchris

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GPU-Z 0.3.7 is now available for download http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1698/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.3.7.html

Best feature is that it shows how much memory your GPU is using. I felt my 512MB 8800GTS needed to be upgraded. I feel silly now seeing that Dragon Age is only using about 300MB of gpu memory @ 1440x900.

Check it out if your curious if you are using what you paid for. I think it's going to make some of those 2GB cards look just plane silly.
 
Not a new feature to utilities, but a nice one to have built-in to GPU-Z for sure.
 
I'll certainly be using it for testing, will help determine if memory is being tested well for overclocking and such.
 
OpStar said:
Sucks that the memory useage only works for nvidia cards.
Click to expand...
Oh I didn't know that.

Someone else mentioned it's been around in utilities for a while. I've never been able to find one. I heard riva tuner had memory usage but couldn't find the option.
 
I believe Everest could do it, as well as RivaTuner, not sure of others offhand.
 
nice feature.
I was surprised to see Left 4 Dead (both 1 and 2) max out my 512MB card.
TF2 climbs up to 450MB too after an hour of gameplay while Oblivion was 320~ and Mass Effect was low as 220~.
 
I'm interested to find out if the 768MB in my 9600GSO is worth it.
 
For a 9600, probably not all that much. Likely anything high engouh rez and detail to push the memory would already be overloading the card first.
 
The only way to get an accurate reading of memory usage is directly from the driver (NVAPI). Even the runtime only guesses at the size of allocations.. the driver implements things often more efficiently behind the scenes, so the runtime guess isn't even right a lot of the time.

The fact that it only works for NVIDIA is pretty much proof positive that they're using NVAPI for this. If it were some vendor neutral method 1. tools with this capability would've been out long ago in Vista and 2. it would work on ATI too.

This probably doesn't work the same way in Rivatuner.. I'm willing to bet the memory usage in Rivatuner works in XP but not Vista, since in XP there was a D3D9_GetAvailableTextureMem call which would return the live amount of free video memory. In Vista it doesn't give a live amount, it gives the total amount all the time, no matter how much is free.
 
Yeah, kinda disappointed that it doesn't work with ATI cards. I download and was searching for Mem Usage to no avail.

Oh well...
 
BlueStorm said:
The only way to get an accurate reading of memory usage is directly from the driver (NVAPI). Even the runtime only guesses at the size of allocations.. the driver implements things often more efficiently behind the scenes, so the runtime guess isn't even right a lot of the time.

The fact that it only works for NVIDIA is pretty much proof positive that they're using NVAPI for this. If it were some vendor neutral method 1. tools with this capability would've been out long ago in Vista and 2. it would work on ATI too.

This probably doesn't work the same way in Rivatuner.. I'm willing to bet the memory usage in Rivatuner works in XP but not Vista, since in XP there was a D3D9_GetAvailableTextureMem call which would return the live amount of free video memory. In Vista it doesn't give a live amount, it gives the total amount all the time, no matter how much is free.
Click to expand...

yup, exactly
 
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