Video Ram cut in half?

[blackroseMD1]

OK, so I have a BFG Geforce 9800 GT OC 1GB GDDR3 card.

Now, onboard video memory is 1024MB, obviously. However, whenever I do dxdiag, it tells me that I have "Approx. Total Memory: 494 MB".

What the hell? That's less than half of what I actually have. I didn't actually notice this until today, when I went to play Prototype on my PC for the first time, and it wouldn't let me set my resolution to anything above 1024x768.

According to Prototypes read me, the resolutions are locked at certain levels.

Cards with less than 512 MB cannot access resolutions with widths of greater than 1280 or heights of 720. This means with a card of LESS THAN 512MB VRAM has these available:

640 x 480
800 x 480
800 x 600
1024 x 768
1152 x 720
1152 x 864
1280 x 720
1280 x 800

Cards with less than 1024 MB cannot access resolutions with widths of greater than 1600 or heights of 1080. This means with a card of LESS THAN 1024MB VRAM has these available:

The following are only available for cards with 512MB VRAM or more:
1280 x 1024
1440 x 900
1600 x 1200
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1080
1920 x 1200
2048 x 1152
2048 x 1536
2560 x 1600

Where is the rest of my VRAM? Any help is appreciated.

 

[Orbital Shark]

What does it say when you access the advanced properties for the card? (right-click desktop -> Screen Resolution -> Advanced settings

Is it 1GB dedicated VRAM or shared?

 

[blackroseMD1]

Nope, it says 1024 MB Dedicated memory

 

[akash3656]

LOL ur card is a genuine 1 GB card... but dxdiag only sees less than 1/2 of it...
The reason I said lol is coz my GC's RAM is 256MB but dxdiag sees 510 MB on that control panel windows sees 256 MB if im not mistaken.. You should try updating your graphic drivers.. Welcome to NVIDIA - World Leader in Visual Computing Technologies > Download Drivers>GeForce>GeForce 9 Series>YOUR OS> Language >Search>Accept licences... >Download>install...
then try the game...

 

[blackroseMD1]

Yeah, I have tried reinstalling the drivers with a few different sets of Geforce drivers, including the latest WDDM 1.1 drivers. It hasn't helped. Everyone I've talked to, their dxdiag shows more VRAM than they actually have. Mine seems to be a very odd and uncommon problem.

Edit: Woohoo!!! I just installed the 190.15 drivers, and got a whopping 1MB of VRAM back!

Weird. I started playing Prototype today, and went in to see if I could change the resolution. I can get up to 1440x900 now. I have no idea what's going on...

 

[akash3656]

WOW! see driver updates ROX sometimes....!!!!!!!!! I also had unplayable frame rates on NFS Undercover with Ati CCC 8.10 then i updated to the latest 9.2 and BOOM! now its WAYYYY more playable.... (now i don't play it)
BTW, where did you get 190.15 drivers coz Welcome to NVIDIA - World Leader in Visual Computing Technologies doesn't list them....

 

[dmex]

BTW, where did you get 190.15 drivers coz Welcome to NVIDIA - World Leader in Visual Computing Technologies doesn't list them....

190.15 Drivers have not been released via NVidia plus they are not Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 compatible :shock:

 

[akash3656]

Ok thx anyways...

 

[Scotteq]

Regarding the allowed resolution - Happy to see that was resolved in driver updates.

Regarding VRAM: Not everything is memory mapped. I do not see an issue here.

 

[blackroseMD1]

Eh, I called BFG tech support, and they had no idea what was going on either. Whatever, as long as I get decent framerates on my games, I'm not to worried.

190.15 Drivers have not been released via NVidia plus they are not Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 compatible :shock:

Mine say they are WDDM 1.1