Windows showing wrong amount of dedicated memory

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by Zarwo, Sep 29, 2014.

  1. Zarwo

    Zarwo Guest

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    Hi all

    New to this forum. I was "redirected" here and was told that here was the true Experts of Graphics :)

    So my problem is the following:

    I have just bought the Asus Strix GTX780 6GB OC edition. I have installed it correctly and updated drivers. Now the GPU Tweak (program that I got with the Card) shows my Card has 6GB, but Windows 7 shows it only has 2GB and DxDiag shows the same unless I run a 64bit DXdiag, then it shows only 1,5GB
    So..... What is happening here? Am I doing something wrong? Anyone got an explanation?

    Greetings Zarwo
     
  2. jbmcmillan

    jbmcmillan Guest

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    In DXDiag is it under display tab that it shows under total memory?Mine shows 5780 MB and I have a 2 GB card so not sure how it reports this figure?
     
  3. Zarwo

    Zarwo Guest

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    Cant remember but it shows along with all the other info about my system. When I rightclick on my desktop and adjust screen resolution and then go advanced, thats where it also shows only 2GB dedicated memory. I just dont understand this.
     
  4. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

    Ignore Windows
     

  5. Zarwo

    Zarwo Guest

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    Okay I can do that, but would you at least tell me why I should do that. Is it a bug from Windows does this have an impact on my gaming?
     
  6. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    Because you know you have a 6GB card, dedicated GPU monitoring software tells you it has 6GB vRAM, if Windows is saying otherwise, it's wrong, simply ignore it ;)

    DXDIAG says I have 9958MB video memory on a 4096MB GPU

    No it won't impact your gaming
     
  7. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    what does nvidia control panel system info show you by dedicated video memory?

    [​IMG]
     
  8. Zarwo

    Zarwo Guest

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    Okay Guys thank you for your replies. I will ignore it :) and yes the Nvidia control panel also shows that I have 6GB dedicated memory. So I will go to Defcon 5

    Greetings Zarwo
     
  9. nhlkoho

    nhlkoho Guest

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    If I run 32bit dxdiag it says I have 4095MB dedicated mem. If I switch to 64bit it says I have 3740MB.
     
  10. Zarwo

    Zarwo Guest

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    I have the same problem. My DxDiag (64Bit) says that I have 1,5GB, but in fact I have 6GB. But ignore it my friend :)
     

  11. CPC_RedDawn

    CPC_RedDawn Ancient Guru

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    Windows is terrible at reporting hardware values properly.

    Just look what Task Manager says my 4770K is running at....

    [​IMG]

    Its running at 4.5GHz but I use balanced power plan and the CPU clocks up and down depending on load.

    If I switch to high performance profile... it shows this 5.72GHz
     
  12. Cain

    Cain Member

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    DxDiag is referencing all available memory from a virtual pool available for your GPU to use. I.e. a mix of VRAM, System RAM, and PageFile.
     
  13. nhlkoho

    nhlkoho Guest

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    That makes no sense when we are talking about dedicated video memory.
     
  14. Cain

    Cain Member

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    I didn't really say it made "sense." In its defense it says Approximately:
    [​IMG]

    Welcome to Windows API programming as well, half the fun for me has been trying to figure out what I have with managed code.

    Try having a look at what my program reports for your GPU on the GPU tab:
    http://www.bytemedev.com/wolf/

    That's what the OS is seeing at that given second (not usually from drivers.)
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2014
  15. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    ^
    That is right for igpu, it reserves some extra system memory for texture cache..

    Mine shows ~11.2gb in nvcpl or this in dxdiag
    [​IMG]


    by me is always reports ~40mhz lower, be it 4.5 or 4.6ghz lol

    This is @4.7ghz
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2014

  16. Shady757

    Shady757 Guest

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    Windows shoes my ram as DDR2. It's all screwed up, just ignore Windows.
     
  17. Cain

    Cain Member

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    That screenshot was just to illustrate the word approximately.

    Regardless of iGPU, all dedicated VRAM is an address member of a large shared pool of memory.

    The system will cache more total video memory than what is dedicated on your card, with some odd exceptions.

    The OS/CPU just sees it as one continuous memory pool. It is differentiatable, i.e. you can store things where you want, but applications and hardware primarily use driver calls. The memory table of Windows works like this (called MMIO) in most cases.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O
     
  18. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    ^
    If you look my nvcpl screenshot above @ post #7 it reserves 8192mb for system shared memory (Fermi can do max 4095mb regardless 8gb or 16gb system memory) which yes uses it as texture cache, same by igpus. :)
     
  19. Cain

    Cain Member

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    Screenshot seems to be missing for me in post 7.

    Are you saying it isn't working as I am describing? I assure you, it is. The number here (dxdiag) should not be used for determining total memory of VRAM on board a GPU and I explained why, which is what was asked.

    iGPUs, specifically, are a little of a special case, they can be set in BIOS to use x/y GB for Memory usually, at least on fancier motherboards. This then offsets the Share Memory Total so it isn't always the same across the board.

    I am not sure what you mean "Fermi can do max 4095mb" (which by the by appears to be a 32-bit address limit.) Are you saying no matter what a Fermi card will only use up to 4095 MB of shared memory (reported by OS)? In that case I would anticipate that is the recommendation given to the Kernel/CPU by the driver. The OS then arbitrarily assigns that value to total share video memory based off of your specific GPU family.

    All device memory, for the most part, is added to the same table of memory addresses. Again, MMIO.
     
  20. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    picture from post #7
    http://i.imgur.com/JaIw2yJ.png


    Yes igpu can set idk 512mb in bios then extra 1024 or even 2048mb for shared memory..

    And yes Fermi seems to be limited to max 4095mb, I saw that with 8gb & later with 16gb ram @ win8 x64, while Kepler can now use 8192mb.

    Anyhow im not disagreeing with you just confirming it and this extra memory won't make 3gb obsolete since OS actually sees them as "12gb gpu" in a way..
     

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