Is it possible to reduce VRAM usage by MHW?

[Jones_Crimson]

Pretty vague question as I'm sure it is possible, but does anyone have any ideo on how it might be attempted? Has anyone tried it so far?

I know that limiting it's core usage to physical cores has already been accomplished, along with some other fine tunings.

I feel like the most demanding requirement of this game is the 2Gigs of VRAM. It's just way more than most other PC games, at least as a bare minimum. I'm sure 60FPS would be much more accessible if we could bring it down.

[Seamus]

Not really. At minimum settings, I'm using 1.2-1.6 on average, whith spikes up to my 2gb limit when the vram decides to stop properly flushing and it starts overflowing into the system ram causing lag spikes during the caching.

[Jones_Crimson]

Originally posted by Seamus:

Not really. At minimum settings, I'm using 1.2-1.6 on average, whith spikes up to my 2gb limit when the vram decides to stop properly flushing and it starts overflowing into the system ram causing lag spikes during the caching. :csdmeh:

1.2 on minimum settings? That's insane. The PS4 has only 8Gb of System RAM and no VRAM to speak of, so how could it have run at all? This is totally bizarre.

[Seamus]

Originally posted by Jonesy "Master Blaster" Crimson:

Originally posted by Seamus:

Not really. At minimum settings, I'm using 1.2-1.6 on average, whith spikes up to my 2gb limit when the vram decides to stop properly flushing and it starts overflowing into the system ram causing lag spikes during the caching.

1.2 on minimum settings? That's insane. The PS4 has only 8Gb of System RAM and no VRAM to speak of, so how could it have run at all? This is totally bizarre.

The ram in the ps4 is shared ram like an APU in a pc(The PS4 and xbox one both use AMD apus for that matter...) and those 8gb of ram are gddr5 like you'd find on pretty much any gpu that's been made in the last eight years.

1.2 is in no way insane. Newer games, larger assets, more vram required. This is just how technology progresses.

[Jones_Crimson]

Originally posted by Seamus:

The ram in the ps4 is shared ram like an APU in a pc(The PS4 and xbox one both use AMD apus for that matter...) and those 8gb of ram are gddr5 like you'd find on pretty much any gpu that's been made in the last eight years.

1.2 is in no way insane. Newer games, larger assets, more vram required. This is just how technology progresses.

I don't feel like this is an excuse for no optimizations being available on PC. You can run 16 instances of Blender with it's 128MB for every one instance of MHW with it's 2Gb listed requirement. You could almost run two instances of the Unreal Engine 4 with that amount of VRAM at reccomended settings for high performance. A game requiring such an absurd amount isn't "technology moving forward" it's just incredibly poorly optimized. The game isn't even aesthetically pleasing, it feels underwelming when compared to a couple of FFX cutscenes, and I guarantuee I can run those off of a literal single potato powered PC if I really tried.

[ShadyDay]

What GPU do you have that doesn't have at least 2gb of vram?

[Jones_Crimson]

Originally posted by ShadyDay:

What GPU do you have that doesn't have at least 2gb of vram?

Getting a 2Gb card in the last several years isn't difficult, for sure, but the problem is even high end computers are struggling for 60FPS, and I guarantuee the higher than normal VRAM requirement is the cause. Bringing it down a bit will benefit literally every user, high end and low end.

[Seamus]

Originally posted by Jonesy "Master Blaster" Crimson:

Originally posted by Seamus:

The ram in the ps4 is shared ram like an APU in a pc(The PS4 and xbox one both use AMD apus for that matter...) and those 8gb of ram are gddr5 like you'd find on pretty much any gpu that's been made in the last eight years.

1.2 is in no way insane. Newer games, larger assets, more vram required. This is just how technology progresses.

I don't feel like this is an excuse for no optimizations being available on PC. You can run 16 instances of Blender with it's 128MB for every one instance of MHW with it's 2Gb listed requirement. You could almost run two instances of the Unreal Engine 4 with that amount of VRAM at reccomended settings for high performance. A game requiring such an absurd amount isn't "technology moving forward" it's just incredibly poorly optimized. The game isn't even aesthetically pleasing, it feels underwelming when compared to a couple of FFX cutscenes, and I guarantuee I can run those off of a literal single potato powered PC if I really tried.

Blender isn't loading hundreds of textures, light maps, shaders and models all at once.

For that matter, just because blender has a minimum requirement of 128mb doesnt mean that's all it's going to use.

God, I'd hate to see your reaction to a game like the newer Battlefields, or god forbid, RE7.

[ShadyDay]

Originally posted by Jonesy "Master Blaster" Crimson:

Originally posted by ShadyDay:

What GPU do you have that doesn't have at least 2gb of vram?

Getting a 2Gb card in the last several years isn't difficult, for sure, but the problem is even high end computers are struggling for 60FPS, and I guarantuee the higher than normal VRAM requirement is the cause. Bringing it down a bit will benefit literally every user, high end and low end.

I am getting well over 60FPS at 1440 with a higher end setup. Bringing the VRAM usage down from 2gb wont help me do anything. It also isn't absurd at all for VRAM usage.

[Jones_Crimson]

Originally posted by ShadyDay:

I am getting well over 60FPS at 1440 with a higher end setup. Bringing the VRAM usage down from 2gb wont help me do anything. It also isn't absurd at all for VRAM usage.

Then why did you even join this discussion? You obviously don't care either way.

[♋Phenex]

Generally the only way to reduce VRAM usage is to reduce graphics quality to low and set other settings to low or off. The game uses a lot of VRAM because there are many textures and effects present in the game. If you played something like GTA 4 or 5 previously it shows you how much memory the game uses when certain settings are configured.

[Ancient]

You think 2GB VRAM usage is "absurd"?

This game came out a year ago: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1521942743

[Aemony]

The 2 GB of VRAM minimum requirement is not a demanding issue for this game. As Seamus mentioned, the game barely sees more than 1.2 - 1.6 GB of VRAM used while playing at 1080p with everything set to lowest settings. Lower resolutions would see the VRAM usage decrease even further.

This is also why the minimum listed requirements (which targets 1080p) lists GPUs with 2 GB of VRAM that are half a decade old as well, as lower amounts of VRAM will start to negatively affect the frame rate when playing at 1080p.

System Requirements

Minimum:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit required)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4460, 3.20GHz or AMD FX™-6300
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 or AMD Radeon™ R7 260x (VRAM 2GB)
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 20 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectSound (DirectX® 9.0c)
Additional Notes: 1080p/30fps when graphics settings are set to "Low"

So if this extremely tiny amount of VRAM is an issue for you, start lowering the resolution further below 1080p. Lowering the resolution down to 1280x720, for example, sees the VRAM usage decrease to around 1 GB, with a few highs to 1.1 GB (which will only marginally start to affect frame rate on 1 GB GPUs).

Edit: Basically you're much more likely to be bottlenecked by a ton of other factors on weak GPUs than the VRAM use of the game. 2 GB VRAM have been the standard for gaming-oriented GPUs for at least half a decade now, and if you don't have one of those then you're much more likely to be bottlenecked by some other aspect, such as the sheer lack of processing power in said GPU.