Help with finding missing memory!

[GoreTiger]

I want to start off by saying I'm not the most savvy PC operator.

I have a Nvidia Geforce GTX 660TI. I know it's an old card, But it' still been able to decently run newer games. I'm running the new Star wars game on High settings. I'm able to run Battlefield 5 On Decent settings. I haven't ran into too many games where the demand is so high that I can't play on at least 1920x1080.

I recently bought Red Dead 2 on PC. And it's the first game I ran into where I don't have enough memory to play the game on 1920X1080.

I have 2010mb of memory with the card I believe. I own GTA 5 on pc and in the graphics settings, it says the max memory I have to spare is 2010.

But on RDR2, It's saying my max amount of memory to spare is only 1680. The bare min I need to run on just 1920x1080 with decent texture settings is 1920.

So my question is, Why do I not have the same amount of memory available in RDR2 as i do in GTA? Where did it go?
And also, Is there any way to squeeze a few more memory out of it?
Thanks for the replies.

[r.linder]

Even if you had enough VRAM, your GPU is ~30% below the minimum requirement (770 2G) for RDR2. You're never going to get good enough performance with that card at 1080p, you have to drop the resolution to 720p.

[L37]

Probably unrelated but 660(Ti) is also one of those cards where nvidia did funny thing with memory. Basically 3-channel memory controller, 2gb memory, 512+512+1024, which (in extremely simplified way) means that the card has 1.5GB of fast memory and 512MB of slow memory. Filling vram completely on this cards drops performance significantly.
Other than that - game might be looking at free vram (or vram it can use), not those physically available.

[DeadPhoenix]

Its time to upgrade.

[chiefputsilao✖️ping]

state what memory is needed, VRAM (video card memory: GDRR5, GDRR6, HBM, etc)) or system RAM.(DDR3, DDR4)

list your complete pc specs for clarity...

[[☥] - CJ -]

Originally posted by L37:

Probably unrelated but 660(Ti) is also one of those cards where nvidia did funny thing with memory. Basically 3-channel memory controller, 2gb memory, 512+512+1024, which (in extremely simplified way) means that the card has 1.5GB of fast memory and 512MB of slow memory. Filling vram completely on this cards drops performance significantly.
Other than that - game might be looking at free vram (or vram it can use), not those physically available.

I Ran 660 Ti's in SLI and this is the FIRST Time i've ever heard of this, so proof would be appreciated.
-

RDR2 is more demanding in general than the other games you play, its also not 100% optimized so thats an issue for such an old card as well.

The other problem you are likely to be running into is, if you only have 8GB of RAM.
When VRAM gets maxed or nearly maxed it starts using Physical RAM as Shared Video Memory, meaning the system can use up to HALF your Physical RAM as Graphic Memory, so if you only have 8GB then up to 4GB can be used and that wont be leaving you much left over, which is why in cases like these 16GB is best to have as theres plenty left over for general performance.

I ran into that exact problem a few years ago with ARK, once i upgraded to 16GB my overall performance improved in such situations. I also upgraded to a 1060 6GB a few years ago, MUCH better than SLI 660 Ti's in every sense.

Its time to save up for a new GPU bud, even a modern GPU with 4GB VRAM gives more performance than the 660 Ti while using much less power.

For the naysayers that dont know about Shared Memory being used in the way i mention, open task Manager and go to the GPU tab, Shared GPU memory is listed there and will be shown as Half your physical RAM.

Oh, and your "Missing" VRAM is probably hardware reserved or being used for something in the background, either way, its not enough to make a difference in that game even if you did have the full amount available as i explained above.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Todays games at high settings at 1080p generally need 3-4gb of vram minimum. Despite vram amounts, gtx 6xx anything is much too poor for RDR2, even all the gtx 7xx would be a poor choice for such game.

It's really time for a new gpu, such as GTX 1660 Super or better.

What's the rest of your full hardware specs? What OS edition, version, build?

[Ralf]

Originally posted by ☥ - CJ -:

I Ran 660 Ti's in SLI and this is the FIRST Time i've ever heard of this, so proof would be appreciated.

GTX 660 Ti will mix up the number of chips attached to each controller in order to get 2GB out of 8 chips. Specifically, there will be 4 chips instead of 2 attached to one of the memory controllers, while the other controllers will continue to have 2 chips.

The best case scenario is always going to be that the entire 192bit bus is in use by interleaving a memory operation across all 3 controllers, giving the card 144GB/sec of memory bandwidth (192bit * 6GHz / 8). But that can only be done at up to 1.5GB of memory; the final 512MB of memory is attached to a single memory controller. This invokes the worst case scenario, where only 1 64-bit memory controller is in use and thereby reducing memory bandwidth to a much more modest 48GB/sec.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review/2

[The Chicagoan]

Originally posted by GoreTiger:

I want to start off by saying I'm not the most savvy PC operator.

I have a Nvidia Geforce GTX 660TI. I know it's an old card, But it' still been able to decently run newer games. I'm running the new Star wars game on High settings. I'm able to run Battlefield 5 On Decent settings. I haven't ran into too many games where the demand is so high that I can't play on at least 1920x1080.

I recently bought Red Dead 2 on PC. And it's the first game I ran into where I don't have enough memory to play the game on 1920X1080.

I have 2010mb of memory with the card I believe. I own GTA 5 on pc and in the graphics settings, it says the max memory I have to spare is 2010.

But on RDR2, It's saying my max amount of memory to spare is only 1680. The bare min I need to run on just 1920x1080 with decent texture settings is 1920.

So my question is, Why do I not have the same amount of memory available in RDR2 as i do in GTA? Where did it go?
And also, Is there any way to squeeze a few more memory out of it?
Thanks for the replies.

It could be a glitch, like GTA 4 had. Where most users had like 800 video memory even though at the time most people should have 2048MB. But I haven't faced this issue, nor did I even knew it existed. But regardless of the settings I can't say it will be fun to play this game with your hardware, I can hardly even play this game and get 60 FPS at the maxed settings. The 2080TI can't even max this game out. If you really want to play this game at 1080p 60 FPS, I'd upgrade that GPU.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

OP hardware is too poor for RDR2, simple as that. Now if you have maybe a 4770K or 4790K, 16gb ram and ssd you should be ok, but a new gpu is needed for sure.

[L37]

Originally posted by ☥ - CJ -:

I Ran 660 Ti's in SLI and this is the FIRST Time i've ever heard of this, so proof would be appreciated.

Yeah, i had 2*660 (non-Ti) too and it worked fine at the time.
Thought the memory thing was common knowledge, but if ou want proof the link Ralf gave above is a good place to start. 660 (Ti) is also not the only card that has such configuration, any card that has 192bit, 384bit, etc memory bus and nice round 2GB/4GB/8GB of memory inevitably has the same issue. Similarly to how you can not have, for example, 9Gb of proper dual channel system memory.

[GoreTiger]

Processor Information:
CPU Vendor: GenuineIntel
CPU Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2700K CPU @ 3.50GHz
CPU Family: 0x6
CPU Model: 0x2a
CPU Stepping: 0x7
CPU Type: 0x0
Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
DirectX Driver Name: nvldumd.dll
Driver Version: 26.21.14.4120
DirectX Driver Version: 26.21.14.4120
Driver Date: 11 6 2019
OpenGL Version: 4.6
Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
DirectX Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x1183
Revision: 0xa1
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
No SLI or Crossfire Detected
Primary Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Primary Display Size: 20.08" x 11.30" (23.03" diag)
51.0cm x 28.7cm (58.5cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 4x
Primary VRAM: 2047 MB
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x

Like I said I know it's old and I need to upgrade, But i figured since I could play GTA 5 on pretty high settings I'd at least be able to play rdr2 on 1920X1080 on Medium settings, But because it doesnt use the full 2047mb of ram for rdr2 I can't even set it to 1920x1080 on low graphics without it going over the 16k Ram it restricts me to.

[r.linder]

You need to upgrade from the 660 Ti, it's too weak for RDR2 anyway
Get an RX 570 if your budget is tight, otherwise one of the 1660 cards

[GoreTiger]

https://www.newegg.com/abs-computer-technologies-mage-m-ali322/p/N82E16883102787?Description=pre%20built%20gaming%20PC&cm_re=pre_built_gaming_PC-_-83-102-787-_-Product

This is the one I'm thinking about going with so far. My budgest is in the $1300-$1500 range. I'm going prebuilt because of my little knowledge on the matter and no one around me to help build.

[Komrade]

Originally posted by GoreTiger:

https://www.newegg.com/abs-computer-technologies-mage-m-ali322/p/N82E16883102787?Description=pre%20built%20gaming%20PC&cm_re=pre_built_gaming_PC-_-83-102-787-_-Product

This is the one I'm thinking about going with so far. My budgest is in the $1300-$1500 range. I'm going prebuilt because of my little knowledge on the matter and no one around me to help build.

Do not go prebuilt, it's very simple to build it yourself, it's just assembly, it's like adult lego. There are tons of youtube tutorials around and it's pretty hard to mess up unless you're dropping parts.

[Komrade]

Originally posted by notkennyS:

Originally posted by GoreTiger:

https://www.newegg.com/abs-computer-technologies-mage-m-ali322/p/N82E16883102787?Description=pre%20built%20gaming%20PC&cm_re=pre_built_gaming_PC-_-83-102-787-_-Product

This is the one I'm thinking about going with so far. My budgest is in the $1300-$1500 range. I'm going prebuilt because of my little knowledge on the matter and no one around me to help build.

Do not go prebuilt, it's very simple to build it yourself, it's just assembly, it's like adult lego. There are tons of youtube tutorials around and it's pretty hard to mess up unless you're dropping parts.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Q8ZLsk

I mean seriously, building it yourself will get you a 2080 Super over a 2060 Super, huge difference in performance, and prebuilts often come with cheap components in them.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2080S-Super-vs-Nvidia-RTX-2060S-Super/4050vs4049

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZaFqY8UF6I