Good evening forum,
Quick question, would anyone know why on a 3090 with 24GB VRAM which is no where near being fully utilized I would be using shared memory?
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IGPU in my BIOS is disabled from the very beginning, and the shared GPU memory is currently 2.4GB
@skypilotYTS should have IGPU disabled, as I recommended some time ago in a private message along with other BIOS changes.
Shared GPU Memory Explained: Boost Performance or Bottleneck?
@WingWarper1 So, as you can see, it’s not exactly as you wrote – even with the iGPU disabled, shared memory is still allocated. You can disable shared memory, for example, in the Nvidia driver for certain applications. However, I won’t provide instructions on how to do this, as disabling it is not recommended.
Yes iGPU is disabled, even on last system which didn’t have iGPU it would get used.
Yep, even if we don’t have an iGPU, shared memory is still active and necessary for the proper functioning of certain tasks, such as running games, especially if someone has a GPU with a small amount of VRAM.
In some cases, this shared memory allocation can be adjusted or disabled through specific settings or drivers, but it requires a certain level of understanding about how your system functions.
Yea I know it can be and how to, I just found it odd that no where near the 24GB of VRAM was being used, yet 2+GB of shared was.
Shared memory is often dynamically allocated depending on the workload and it doesn’t necessarily mean that your VRAM is being underutilized. So, system RAM is temporarily used by the GPU for lighter tasks. Even with 20+ GB of free VRAM, the system sometimes “borrows” RAM for optimization. It’s a standard feature , not a flaw or cause for concern.
If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.
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Hope not hijacking topic but in dev mode FPS counter my GPU VRAM is only showing /14gb when it’s a 16gb card.
Where is the other 2gB VrAm
Is this why I saw two GPU line items when looking at the BIOS settings?
Thank you sir 
makes sense to me!
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The reason you saw two GPU line items is likely related to the settings in your BIOS, but we can discuss the specifics of those settings in your topic, as this one is focused on shared memory rather than BIOS settings.
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as far as i know, some system related tasks and some software related tasks needs the ram memory not the GDDR memory, as these tasks dose not need extreme power, and need direct access to cpu & ram.
However, this does not mean demanding tasks will be using shared memory if it is active and in use, share memory is just for little boy tasks that can be unstable sometimes if ran on the big boy memory.
Thanx for straightening me out!
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Interestingly enough, I tried switching to DX11 for this flight (always fly with DX12).
10 hours in, and have only used 0.8 shared.
Same flight that those screenshots were taken from the day before on DX12.