GTX 780 Not Using Memory

[dageek]

Hi! Wow, Tom's Hardware is not unfamiliar at all, but this is the first time in ten years I couldn't find the solution I was looking for.

I recently Purchased a GTX 780 for my gaming computer as an upgrade. Since I've had it, I primarily use it to play DayZ. I was extremely dissapointed in the performance increase (probably because it's so terribly optimized). So I did some looking around. Thought my CPU was bottle-necking it - nope (though there was a performance increase when I unparked them). Long story short, I downloaded GPUz and saw that my card is only using 700mb of it's memory (at most). This is with other games as well. Is this a dead card or am I missing some setting? Surely the memory increase would help. After testing this on my buddies computer, I saw that with his R9-280X his memory fluctuates as needed by the game.Is there a way to allocate (or force) more memory to be used from the card?

Thanks!


ROG Crosshair III
12 GB Corshair DDR3
Nvidia GTX 780 GIgabyte
1 HD 500 GB Caviar Green WD
1 HD 1 TB Seagate Green
AMD Phenom II x 4 965 Black edition @3.8Ghz
And a big ass psu who's name or version I can't remember

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

You've got to try a more benchmarkable game like crysis, battlefield 3-4 or say tomb raider. These games are used as benchmarkers for a reason because they are pc optimized games for the most part and are better at showing if there is a problem with the card rather than a problem with the game you are playing

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

It really depends on what games you are playing. dayz will only need that much memory, as well as most other non-mainstream games.

Memory usage only goes to what the game is actually using. Are you using any games that even take over 700mb of memory? this would be a helpful bit of information.

If you ARE, then you have a faulty card with bad memory modules and just need to return it.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

Also try msi afterburner, as this will let you monitor memory usage in-game

 

[dageek]

Yeah in game, I'm still only getting around 600mb usage at most. And DayZ should be pulling more. Even the "very high" memory setting is 1GB. Of course mine is on "default" to use what the card has. So it should be pulling more. Also seeing on other GPU's it's pulling more.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

Try a more intensive game to be sure. Dayz is still in either alpha or beta, and cannot be expected to use your system properly. Don't you have any more mainstream games like metro, crysis, bioshock, dirt, grid? starcraft? any game that has been fully completed basically

 

[dageek]

Yes. I have tried Starcraft II and Borderlands II. Same result.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

Ok, then you have some bunk memory modules on your graphics card and it needs to be replaced, I can think of no other reason why you would be limited in gpu memory usage other than hardware failure based on your description of the problem

 

[dageek]

Okay. IF that's the case I'll return it. Damn. It just did make sense to me. I thought it was CPU parking but I guess not. Is there any way to manually assign higher memory or request it from the card to test?

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

This would be doing something like a gpu stress test. (unigine is a pretty decent one) and running msi afterburner OSD (on screen display) showing your vram usage. If you don't get over your 600 or so that you are limited to, then it is 100% your gpu, as this program is a gpu dependant test that does not have much influence from the cpu

 

[Kratos47]

What is the resolution you're playing at? Try to lower your resolution and see if the performance increases or not - just for testing. And try to boot a game like skyrim which is VRAM hungry, even default skyrim without mods can eat 1GB of VRAM easily.

 

[dageek]

No performance increase at lower resolution. And other games take up around the same ammount.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

It's a bad card. based on the description of the problem, and occurrence throughout games, i can't think of another source of the problem besides a faulty power supply, and if that were the case, you would likely be seeing a different problem than just low vram usage

 

[dageek]

Alright. Well if that's the case I'll swap it out. What's a good stress-er for GPU just to be sure?

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

furmark, unigine valley, unigine heaven, there are a lot

 

[dageek]

furmark, unigine valley, unigine heaven, there are a lot

Thanks a lot guys. I'm downloading Heaven now to make sure. Will report back shortly

 

[dageek]

furmark, unigine valley, unigine heaven, there are a lot

So I just tested using Heaven. Memory went all the way up to 1024MB, at 99%GPU load. Seems weird. Should be at the full memory if it's at 3072MB

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

Heaven doesnt MAX out the vram, but it does max out the gpu. So it seems like you are getting just fine performance.

just because it doesnt use 3gb doesnt mean you arent playing the game to the best of the cards ability. some games really only use 500mb of video ram, and dayz is definately one of them

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

also dayz like i said before is not very well optimized, and so may run differently on different cards. So basically don't ever expect to see high vram usage playing those types of games, but if you ever play stuff like crysis, then you can expect higher vram usage.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

so no, you cannot make a gpu use more memory than it needs to run the game, because the game only uses that much vram. so unless you are seeing terrible stuttering, there is nothing wrong with your gpu

 

[Quakecry]

Don't be alarmed by bad performance in DayZ. It performs bad on any pc that isn't built in the future and sent back in time due to poor engine optimization. Also, go look on frankie's first dayz standalone video where he show his settings. I had 70+ fps with it on the r9 290 i had.

 

[dageek]

Don't be alarmed by bad performance in DayZ. It performs bad on any pc that isn't built in the future and sent back in time due to poor engine optimization. Also, go look on frankie's first dayz standalone video where he show his settings. I had 70+ fps with it on the r9 290 i had.

Yeah, unfortunately, It doesn't matter if I max out or lessen settings, I get the FPS since it's easy for the card =/

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

You've got to try a more benchmarkable game like crysis, battlefield 3-4 or say tomb raider. These games are used as benchmarkers for a reason because they are pc optimized games for the most part and are better at showing if there is a problem with the card rather than a problem with the game you are playing

 

[dageek]

I know I'm late to respond back. To anyone else reading this thread, it turns out that although the memory wasn't being utilized, the graphics card used as much as DayZ would request. Other games would increase the memory as needed. The reason my other cards would use more, was because they had less channels and were less efficient. The rest of the game relied on the processor.