VRAM limit in Windows 7

I have Rx 480 graphic card which has 8GB of VRAM, and I am running 64bit Windows 7.
I haven't seen more than 4GB of VRAM allocated yet in any game I've played so far.
Is there any weird limit in Windows 7 or what's going on? Everytime usage hits roughly 4GB, it gets purged and starts from zero. I don't get it. Am I missing anything?

 

What are you using to monitor it?

 

And which games are you trying? Not every new title hits more than 4.

 

Process Explorer and GPU-Z.
GTA5 for example.
I tried running multiple games to get more VRAM usage, but no, at 4GB a limit of some sort is hit.

 

Mankind Divided, Mirrors Edge, TitanFall 2, will all uses over 7Gb at 1080p...Im playing The Division right now and it uses around 6Gb...If you want to try games that absolutely will use a ****load of Vram try these!

But of course like everyone said, Not every games uses high amounts of vram...GTA5 i dont believe is a known vram hog. (But i havent tried it either)

 

Try rise of the tomb raider.

 

Call of duty: Infinite warfare. 8gb of vram usage on 1440p. Should be close on fhd.

 

I don't think I want to spend tens of euros on a game I wouldn't want to play just to test it, lol.

 

+10 on this one.

At one time, I have seen this game ate over 10GB of VRAM!! @ 4k MAX w/ssaX2(Max is X4)

Actually closer to 9.6gb Vram because of the geforce experience video recorder, eats about 400mb at max bitrate + in-game resolution.

 

What version of GPUZ are you using? I remember a ways back it had some sort of bug where it would hit ~4096MB VRAM used and start back at zero, so 6GB VRAM used would look like 2GB + the 4GB you could no longer see according to GPUZ.

If that isn't the issue, you could try a different piece of software, like MSI Afterburner, or download the DOOM demo from Steam and try with OpenGL and Vulkan to see how your RX480 behaves regarding VRAM.

In my experience all games that have been ported over to Windows 10 from X1, or in other words released on the console first, report relatively odd and massive VRAM numbers compared to all other games. Maybe some sort of caching or X1 game code that they couldn't be bothered to change, but it doesn't make sense that something like Forza Apex @ low settings and 720p uses more VRAM than Witcher 3 @ 4k/Ultra. Maybe they combine more than one value to get the VRAM number or just request and fill but don't end up using the max number reported.

 

I always use the latest GPU-Z. I also have Afterburner running all the time. It's always the same - 4GB VRAM usage and boom, suddenly it goes down to 200ish MB and starts to fill again.
As far as I know, there's no artificial limit to VRAM usage in Dx11 and Windows 7, so I am really puzzled.