What does the Vram usage in games reeally mean ?

[SnowBallYT]

I switched from 1060 3gb to rx 580 8gb and noticed alot of my games use 3-5gb vram , before on 3gb card my games would use 2.5 or so . So how is it that now my games use almost double vram but still run pretty much the same ?? where does the extra vram go ? for example in gta 5 my game uses twice as much vram as before but my fps is the same . Does it use it fpr stability or to make the pc use less cpu and ram ?

 

[zyh1987]

it will depends on the driver/game/os, basically your system knows how much vram you have. if you have lots of vram, then game will just load tons of textures onto your vram, whether it use it or not the game doesn't care, where as if you have a 1063, if will only load the ones you needs.

here is a video from NCIX tech tip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utv144XeHag

 

[Eximo]

Effectively, yes.

When you move around in open world games the entire map and its textures aren't all loaded into memory. When you have more Graphics memory, more can be pre-loaded and the system will take advantage for that by storing less in the memory, and having to go back to disk less often. The way graphics are rendered on cards is different as well. This is getting into a whole other subject, but how efficiently memory is used inside a graphics card can be a factor. I know both AMD and Nvidia have turned to compression algorithms and other features to decrease memory requirements.

In terms of raw performance, the 1060 and RX580 trade blows, so I'm not surprised you aren't seeing a huge difference.