Dragon Age Inquisition VRAM Issue

[Wlad83]

Hello!

I recently purchased DA Inquisition. After about an hour of gametime I began to notice graphic artifacts, the ones you get when your VRM overheats. I played Witcher 3 as reference, but I didn't see any problems there. I ran HWInfo and I noticed that the game was using up all my VRAM (2,9 GB) whereas Witcher 3 was only using 1,9 Gb. I play in 1080p with all settings maxed out except for MSAA which is truned off, but I read that the game should only use 1.7 - 2 Gb on that resolution. All in all I think this is some kind of "video memory leak". Anyone else had issues like that, and if so, how did you fix it?

VGA: Sapphire R9-280X Trix-X OC with Catalyst Omega 15.7
CPU: Intel Core i5 4570 @ 3,6 Ghz
Case: Corsair Carbide 300R

 

[JUICEhunter]

I also have a 3gb GPU, a 780ti and can actually go over on vram a little with no slow down, DA:I uses more vram for sure. I consider Witcher 3 one of the most optimized games for how good it looks and runs, DA:I is great also and I love both actually DA:I is more of the norm when it comes to VRAM and ultra settings.

I think I was @ 2.5gb on either 1080p ultra or 4k high no AA. It's mainly textures and AA that eat up vram so using 2x msaa over 4x should always keep you under 3gb.

 

[Wlad83]

I also have a 3gb GPU, a 780ti and can actually go over on vram a little with no slow down, DA:I uses more vram for sure. I consider Witcher 3 one of the most optimized games for how good it looks and runs, DA:I is great also and I love both actually DA:I is more of the norm when it comes to VRAM and ultra settings.

I think I was @ 2.5gb on either 1080p ultra or 4k high no AA. It's mainly textures and AA that eat up vram so using 2x msaa over 4x should always keep you under 3gb.

I wrote above that I have MSAA completely turned off. What about Fade-touched textures or tesselation? How do those impact vram usage? Or shall I maybe roll back to an older gpu driver or clock down the gpu since this is a factory OCed gpu. But I still find it strange that all those games I played (Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, WoW, Diablo 3, DMC, Batman Arkham Origins, Skyrim) never had such an issue. I find the cooling on this card to be really good as Witcher 3 heated it up to 74C on a 28C room temperature, summer was hot indeed

I had an Asus R9 280X before and to RMA it for the same reasons, but this one is more than a year old now and didn't have such problems ever.

 

[JUICEhunter]

Your GPU is fine, it's the ultra textures filling up vram, try some high settings in the mix.

New games like DA:I/GTA5/SOM can use all your vram with just a few change of settings so just be aware of all your settings before you turn almost everything on.

 

[Wlad83]

Your GPU is fine, it's the ultra textures filling up vram, try some high settings in the mix.

New games like DA:I/GTA5/SOM can use all your vram with just a few change of settings so just be aware of all your settings before you turn almost everything on.

Thanks I will try it when I get home. I'm a bit sad because I tought I could run the game on ultra as I read many articles and benchmarks. I don't even get low fps, it's usually 35-60 depending on the area I'm in. Also returning to Witcher 3: it's a game optimized for Nvidia gpus and I still can run it on ultra with turning only hairworks off and keeping foilage distance on high maybe.

 

[JUICEhunter]

Just remember there is always a setting you can turn on to kill your performance don't believe me try 4k DSR/VSR, people spend thousands to make sure they can have everything on but you'd be surprised how quickly you can raise your min and average fps with just a few minor tweaks.

Witcher 3 is more optimized in my opinion because it looks and runs better with higher min/avg fps with similar settings but it also has the advantage of being a new game by almost a year.

 

[JUICEhunter]

Don't be upset if you feel you can't ultra the most taxing games, even if tech sites say it's playable @ 30fps everyone knows 60hz-144hz is better and requires high fps.

Chances are those same folks who are ultra'ing a game and say the game is playable because the fps was always above 30 they probably at home have something faster or use lower settings to get the higher fps smoothness in less they flat out can't tell the difference which is an even worse offence.

 

[Wlad83]

Don't be upset if you feel you can't ultra the most taxing games, even if tech sites say it's playable @ 30fps everyone knows 60hz-144hz is better and requires high fps.

Chances are those same folks who are ultra'ing a game and say the game is playable because the fps was always above 30 they probably at home have something faster or use lower settings to get the higher fps smoothness in less they flat out can't tell the difference which is an even worse offence.

I put tessellation on medium and post processing quality on high and MSAA is still off. Monitored with MSI Afterburner in the past 2 and 1/2 hours and the VRAM usage was now around 2,5 GB and the artifacts are gone. Thanks for your help mate, selected your second comment as solution.

 

[JUICEhunter]

Nice! You may also be oc'ing the GPU too much if it's artifacting with higher settings but does not with slightly lower usually not a vram issue.

Try scaling back 5mhz at a time until artifacting stops with the ultra settings, the only thing that should happen visually is slower performance. Sorry to throw so much at you, I know was oc'ing too high until the artifacts went completly away. Glad it got fixed either way though.

 

[Wlad83]

Nice! You may also be oc'ing the GPU too much if it's artifacting with higher settings but does not with slightly lower usually not a vram issue.

Try scaling back 5mhz at a time until artifacting stops with the ultra settings, the only thing that should happen visually is slower performance. Sorry to throw so much at you, I know was oc'ing too high until the artifacts went completly away. Glad it got fixed either way though.

I didn't touch the factory settings, but the card is factory OCed at 1100 Mhz so it's pretty high and the memory is at 1500 Mhz which to my knowledge is the standard for the R9 280x. The only one higher was the Toxic version, but that was too expensive.

 

[JUICEhunter]

Clocks are fine for sure, next thing to look at is temps when you see the artifacting, are they lower when it's not happening?

I always increase fan speed to the loudest I can take and it's always higher than where auto goes which means lower temps/higher boost performance.

 

[Wlad83]

Clocks are fine for sure, next thing to look at is temps when you see the artifacting, are they lower when it's not happening?

I always increase fan speed to the loudest I can take and it's always higher than where auto goes which means lower temps/higher boost performance.

It's funny but the temperatures were never really a problem. Yesterday the highest was 65C at 21C room temperature and even when i saw the artifacts it was roughly the same that was one of the reasons I found the whole thing odd.

UPDATE: I read somewhere that The 'Fade-touched' texture option provides no viusal bonus, it is just a bigger cache for the game textures and Bioware recommends it only to cards with high vram. So maybe that was the culprit, I have to do some additional tweaking, it seems.

 

[Cioby]

I played it at maximum possible settings on a 780 stock GPU with 3 GB of VRAM. It wasn't 100% fluid and I probably had 30 fps most of the time but I didn't have any issues.

Try updating your driver if your GPU should handle the game at maximum settings.

 

[Wlad83]

I played it at maximum possible settings on a 780 stock GPU with 3 GB of VRAM. It wasn't 100% fluid and I probably had 30 fps most of the time but I didn't have any issues.

Try updating your driver if your GPU should handle the game at maximum settings.

My drivers are up-to-date, there is a new beta version but I don't think it's worth trying. I tought of one more thing. What if one of the vrm modules in the card is faulty and if the cards draws all the vram then artifacts happen because it uses all modules even the wrong one. I don't quite know how vrms work so I might be wrong here, just a theory.

 

[JUICEhunter]

I played it at maximum possible settings on a 780 stock GPU with 3 GB of VRAM. It wasn't 100% fluid and I probably had 30 fps most of the time but I didn't have any issues.

Try updating your driver if your GPU should handle the game at maximum settings.

My drivers are up-to-date, there is a new beta version but I don't think it's worth trying. I tought of one more thing. What if one of the vrm modules in the card is faulty and if the cards draws all the vram then artifacts happen because it uses all modules even the wrong one. I don't quite know how vrms work so I might be wrong here, just a theory.

True, especially if you can replicate it on another game when vram gets to 2.8 and up/super ultra settings.

 

[Wlad83]

I played it at maximum possible settings on a 780 stock GPU with 3 GB of VRAM. It wasn't 100% fluid and I probably had 30 fps most of the time but I didn't have any issues.

Try updating your driver if your GPU should handle the game at maximum settings.

My drivers are up-to-date, there is a new beta version but I don't think it's worth trying. I tought of one more thing. What if one of the vrm modules in the card is faulty and if the cards draws all the vram then artifacts happen because it uses all modules even the wrong one. I don't quite know how vrms work so I might be wrong here, just a theory.

True, especially if you can replicate it on another game when vram gets to 2.8 and up/super ultra settings.

I don't really have any other vram intensive games, Crysis 3 and AC4 are "too old" for this, maybe I'll try Furmark. Even if this is the case I don't think I will RMA it even though I could. The process is too long, might get a new one instead.

The other thing I tought about was that the card may not be getting enough power. I have an 550W FSP psu with single 12V rail and 42 amps on it. Other things in the rig are 2 HDDs (one regular 7200 rpm and one SSD) and 3 fans for cooling, no optical drive or card reader or whatsoever and the cpu I wrote above. I read a ton of reviews and used online calculators and according to them so much power should be enough for this gpu. The more I dig into this, the more problems seem to be possible. 🙁

EDIT: I also found this, but I don't dare to attempt it
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/solution-is-found-to-sapphire-vapor-x-r9-280x-vrm-over-heating-and-throttling-problem.196972/

 

[Wlad83]

So I ran MSI Kombustor's memory burn stress test. The maximum amount it used was 2884 MB and there weren't any problems. Bump.