6.20 [511811] - VRAM usage inflation/leak

[Yaeko]

Version: 6.20, DE, Build: 511811
Mods/Scripts: NONE
Game Start: Emergence

The Problem: Whenever the game loads a new mesh (Station/ship/etc.) it pushes data into the VRAM, but doesnt remove it again when its not needed anymore. Just doing a round on the Highway will increase VRAM-Usage by 5.3 GB, and after a bit more of flying around I end up at roughly 12GB and probably could push it even further if I would go and visit the xenon sectors with unique stations etc. (or if there were more ships/station module types.)

This does have performance implications, especially in populated systems like "second contact" and the Framerate drops significantly when I re-visit the system after the game "gobbled up" all that VRAM.

I already did some profiling on this, so I have this as a timeline and more in depth information:

Timeline: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sKK5Yd ... sp=sharing
VRAM by usage after loading: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vx0Wwf ... sp=sharing
VRAM by usage at the end of the Timeline: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WSMd1o ... sp=sharing

Savegame: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wGdPPo ... drive_link
DxDiag: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qF_ZZY ... drive_link
Vulkaninfo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cR9Dyk ... sp=sharing

Replication: Just load any (or the provided) savegame and do a round on the highway, fly around the universe, it should become immediately visible even in the Taskmanager.

[Imperial Good]

I think the intended behaviour is that X4 tries to use as much VRAM as available to cache assets. I/O and CPU to GPU memory transfers do have performance implications so should ideally be minimised, which is what caching already loaded and used assets helps with. As your GPU has 16 GB of VRAM, caching assets up to 12 GB or even 14 GB of VRAM seems pretty sensible to me, and is something the player should want in order to benefit from having a lot of VRAM.

I recommend testing if X4 keeps allocating VRAM past 16 GB. If it does, that would be a strong indicator of a possible VRAM memory leak. If it does not, and instead caps out at ~12 GB, then that is likely working as intended with the game trying to use large amounts of VRAM for better performance when available.

Your GPU driver is a few months old. Try updating it in case it is an issue with how the driver is managing VRAM.

[Yaeko]

I recommend testing if X4 keeps allocating VRAM past 16 GB.

I cant, because there currently isnt enough stuff in the game for that, someone else with a 12GB or 8GB card would need to do that - sorry. (I already would have checked that otherwise.)

I expected that this might be "intended", but since the framerate drops a lot when its that full (depending on system), I perceived it more like a bug. (Usually when I get into second contact I have like 8 fps (I put a bit too much stuff there xD), and when its full it goes down to 1-2 or lower. Which is like, 75% of the fps are gone.)

Anyway, I will keep an eye on this, how this evolves over time and drivers etc.