GTX 980 Not Utilizing full 4GB

[Guest]

Today I decided to monitor my now 6-7 month old 980 and I discovered (through GPU-Z) that the maximum memory used is only 3595mb out of the 4 gb it is supposed to have. Keep in mind that I am monitoring it while playing Far Cry 4 on Medium- High graphics. Even when I switch over to more intensive games, it still only uses about 3500mb roughly barely over.

PC Specs:
i5-4690k OC to 3.8
H97 PC Mate Motherboard
16gb of Corsair DDR3 1600MHz
GTX 980 Gigabyte Windforce

 

[jcjw77]

From your description I could only say that you have not used the full 4GB.

VRAM usage is not like Core usage where it will use as much as it can to get the best performance.
Textures and other items that are in use by the GPU are stored on the VRAM for quick access for the GPU so only the bare minimum is used, in other words not much point making a few images take a full 4GB when they are under 2GB