GPU 8gb VRAM, Afterburner shows 499mb

[Mr Fallout 4]

So I just received my MSI GT72 2QE today, and when i started benchmarking using MSI Afterburner, I realized that my memory usage would only go up to 499. Before it was only using 4gb, now it doesn't even read that. Do you think this could be an issue with Afterburner? Or is it my gpu?

980m 8GB

 

[Mr Fallout 4]

Here is GPU-Z.
I'm starting to believe that Afterburner is having some issues with this.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

GPU-Z like every other such application can not accurately measure memory usage. You will need to look at the sensors tab to see what the game is allocating....which will always be more than it actually needs or will use.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/213069-is-4gb-of-vram-enough-amds-fury-x-faces-off-with-nvidias-gtx-980-ti-titan-x

 

[Mr Fallout 4]

GPU-Z like every other such application can not accurately measure memory usage. You will need to look at the sensors tab to see what the game is allocating....which will always be more than it actually needs or will use.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/213069-is-4gb-of-vram-enough-amds-fury-x-faces-off-with-nvidias-gtx-980-ti-titan-x

It turns out for some reason that it was only showing active memory. I guess my tests weren't putting enough stress, but under full load on 2x dsr with 2x MSAA on Far Cry 3, memory usage shot past the previous 4gb I had thought before. Thanks for the input!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Again, that's not actual "memory usage" . From the above link.

GPU-Z claims to report how much VRAM the GPU actually uses, but there’s a significant caveat to this metric. GPU-Z doesn’t actually report how much VRAM the GPU is actually using — instead, it reports the amount of VRAM that a game has requested. We spoke to Nvidia’s Brandon Bell on this topic, who told us the following: “None of the GPU tools on the market report memory usage correctly, whether it’s GPU-Z, Afterburner, Precision, etc. They all report the amount of memory requested by the GPU, not the actual memory usage. Cards will larger memory will request more memory, but that doesn’t mean that they actually use it. They simply request it because the memory is available.”

When the GPU / Driver sees that 8 is available....it says.... I think I'll allocate half for myself, regardless of whether it actually uses it.