Dedicated VRAM is less than Half of the Total Available?

[desertdestroyer56]

I got a question about why the amount of Dedicated VRAM is only a fraction of what is actually available and begun digging myself. I went to the Display Adapter properties and found that my "Total Available Graphics Memory" is 14317 MB while my "Dedicated Video Memory" is only 6144 MB (shared system memory is 8173, which lines up to what I already expect to be there). As you all can probably do the math, that's less than half of what's available. The person which I got the question from had almost a tenth of Dedicated/Total. I can see that the 6 GB number is inline with the number on my 1060, however I want to know where the extra 8 GB of VRAM is coming from and how I can access it, if not already accessed.

MY Current system:
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Intel i5-6600K @ 3.5 GHz (OC'd to 4.1)
GTX 1060 6GB
GTX 950 2GB
8x2 GB DDR4

How I got to the Display Adapter Properties (Windows 10)
Settings->System->Display->Advanced Display Settings->Display Adapter Properties

Thanks in advanced!

 

[pete_101]

You don't want to access the system RAM for your graphics, it's slow. Your 1060 has 6GB (6144MB) of VRAM, this should be more than you'll ever need. However, if the card does somehow fully use it all, then the slower system RAM will also be used.