What happens if you go above your VRAM limit in SE?

[thestigma]

Hey all,

 

Quick question - what happens in SE if you go above your VRAM limit?

I think Oldrim just crashed basically - unless you were using fixes for ENB at least.

 

What happens in SE? Does it somewhat intelligently swap between RAM and VRAM such that you won't crash at least - and the worst that can happen is that you get stuttering when you ride full-gallop through a dense area?

 

I just want to know how conservative I should be in using texture mods on my GTX970 (4GB)

So far I can't really say that I've had much issue at all using quite a lot of 4K textures - but it is difficult to see what my margins really are. Sometimes Rivatuner says I am using near to full VRAM capacity, but that would be pretty normal if SE has decent VRAM handling. Unused VRAM doesn't do anyone any favors after all :)

[Alerios]

I remember that when I'm using the CK for Fallout 4, I compare Fallout 4 with SSE 'cause they are pratically the same (my point of view), it can get all of my memory and crash my computer... so... You know what I mean :confused:

Edited May 2, 2018 by Alerios

[TheWilloughbian]

As far as know the max SSE can use is 4GB. I seen talks about getting rid of this cap. The worst that's ever happened to me is my frames take a dive. Maybe a CTD, but that's rare.

[Alerios]

My bad, I forgot that SSE is caped to 4GB (really ? Not 8GB ?), it should just stutter and freeze. Your PC will not BSOD.

[thestigma]

I haven't really heard anything about a 4GB limit, but it would be hard for me to directly check since my card is 4GB.

 

I guess I will just going for high quality and see what happens - and be ready to scale back some of the packs to more reasonable settings if I encounter problems...

 

If anyone else has more in-depth info on this I'd be very interested to hear about it though (or have a link to a relevant source)

[TheWilloughbian]

I have a 4GB card and I run on ultra with some tweaks and 2k - 4k textures. You might have some areas that are slower than others, but it should still be playable. Get BethINI for more control.

[Deleted3897072User]

Skyrim Performance Monitor is good for watching memory usage.

 

I have a 6GB card and SSE uses up to 6GB. This is on Windows 10. After that it starts to use system RAM instead until that gets full (or as full as Windows will let it get, leaving room for the OS and other applications). Then it garbage collects as best it can and carries on. When the system RAM gets really full, it crashes.

 

In normal play, this never happens. The best way I've found to make it crash is to install both KS Hairdo's and Apachii SkyHairs, install ECE, bring up ShowRaceMenu, switch to a female character and keep making edits to flood the undo buffers with multiple copies of your character's head.

Edited May 2, 2018 by OldMansBeard

[QuagaarWarrior]

Some of you seem to be confusing Oldrim with SE.

Oldrim had a 4gb limit when using windows 8 or later. This is because the operating system limited 32bit applications to a max of 4gb VRAM.

No such limit exists for SE as itâs a 64bit application

This limit was removed for Oldrim with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update which allowed 32bit applications to access all the VRAM available (the same as SE)

[TheWilloughbian]

Well now I want a new graphics card. :D

 

I remember reading something about this but didn't pay close attention at the time.

[thestigma]

Some of you seem to be confusing Oldrim with SE.

Oldrim had a 4gb limit when using windows 8 or later. This is because the operating system limited 32bit applications to a max of 4gb VRAM.

No such limit exists for SE as itâs a 64bit application

This limit was removed for Oldrim with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update which allowed 32bit applications to access all the VRAM available (the same as SE)

 

Thank you - very useful to know about.

It is certainly a bit of a problem that a lot of "old wisdom" from oldrim get passed on to SE uncritically (not blaming anyone in particular for this - it's bound to happen in this situation)