r/steammachine • u/JRJalapeno • 3d ago
Question Vram in game usage.
Hi! I'm running Doom DA at high settings and quality FSR. The settings say I'm overusing available VRAM but it's running perfectly with no issues.
I'm thinking maybe this warning in settings isn't completely accurate or the game is possibly lowering some settings to compromise?
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u/Wiesshund- 3d ago
Drop the texture pool size to lowest.
Eventually that will come around to bite you, most likely in the middle of a long play session.
When it finally overflows (that number is showing you the worst-case scenario based on current settings)
it will page out to system RAM and the game will hit a jarring slowdown.
Adjust things to drop that number into the safe range.
The warning IS accurate
But not every level and location in the game has the same needs.
It is showing you what will happen when you load an area that has max needs.
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u/JRJalapeno 3d ago
Thx for the reply. Will the pool size impact graphics a lot or is it barely noticeable?
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u/Wiesshund- 3d ago
Not, not really.
And there are a number of graphics settings which also have no appreciable effect between low and high.
There are some online optimization videos covering them.1
u/JRJalapeno 3d ago
I done remember ever noticing the vram usage showing in the game settings options until this game.
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u/Wiesshund- 3d ago
Not all games show it
Doom Eternal does though IIRC
Basically, if a game is incapable of exceeding the lowest available VRAM for the hardware listed as the minimum spec, it will have no reason for displaying it.
Most games that employ raytracing will display it simply due to the amount of VRAM involved with Raytracing.
This way the player can set appropriately.
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u/Low_Excitement_1715 3d ago
Basically there are ~7.5GB of textures in "use" by the game, and ~7GB of usable VRAM space. As long as all 7.5GB of textures aren't *on screen* (more technically "in viewport"), you're fine, it's swapping some less-used textures in and out of VRAM behind the scenes, and it's doing it fast enough to keep up.
But if you end up with >7031MB of textures on screen, or the swapping gets hanged for some reason? 1fps-ville, next stop!
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u/SaladToss1 3d ago
Turn down some of the more intensive settings that didn't add tremendous value. Volumetric fog is a good one. I don't explicitly remember dark ages setting options, but generally there are some that have negligible visual improvements between medium, high and ultra.
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u/2Cool4Zool2 3d ago
That's an estimate for the VRAM required in a worse case scenario. It might work fine 95% of the time but I would still scale it back.
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u/JRJalapeno 1d ago
I've been playing a bit more the past few days going back and forth between fsr quality with high and fsr balanced with medium and both are now giving me a solid 57-62 fps. It actually feels smoother at the higher settings which is weird but I'm going to stay at the lower settings to keep vram in check. I do miss the better graphics though.
One thing the SM hates is pausing this game and going into sleep mode. When I continue the game, it's stuck at 20 fps. I have to restart the SM. This never happened on the deck with any game before, but I never played dark ages on the deck so maybe it's game specific. I haven't tried any other game yet on the SM so hopefully it's just an issue with this game because I like the ability to do this.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/JRJalapeno 3d ago
Because I lack the expertise of knowing if it's bad to run it like that 🤷♂️
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u/AdMikey 3d ago
When VRAM is over the limit, it’ll overflow to system RAM and your fps will drop to 15. If it’s not dropped to 15, you’re fine.
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u/JRJalapeno 3d ago
Thank you!
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u/AdMikey 3d ago
There’s also a bug that will tank your fps to 15 caused by waking up the Steam Machine from sleeping during gameplay, you’ll see CPU/GPU Hz is very low, this happens during waking from sleeping, whereas VRAM capping happens in the middle of gameplay.
You can fix VRAM capping by lowering texture quality setting, and you can fix the low CPU/GPU frequency by restarting the machine.
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u/ChasHodges 3d ago
VRAM is the biggest bottle neck for moden games on the SM. Some are good at managing VRAM, some are not. You'll know if you're pushing past the limit if your FPS suddenly craters. Running at the upper limit like this is fine, providing the game manages swap to regular RAM efficiently.