TLDR: Did not test under a variety of conditions, but it does appear that disabling 3D view will lower GPU utilization (Serg likely had interval immediate set). Monitoring failed to show any difference in GPU memory utilization (even when using a program that could distinguish between allocation and usage).
Okay, I did a little bit of testing with one client on a GTX 1060. Max settings meant all effects turned on, high texture quality, and all graphic content settings cranked up to high (including Anti-Aliasing). Only messed with in-game settings for min settings. Didn’t change any settings in the nVidia control panel. Values taken from latest MSI Afterburner with Riva Tuner Statistics Server (more on this in a moment). Was sitting on station undock. Did not test under various circumstances.
Okay, measuring video memory usage is a little tricky because games do things like request the maximum amount of video memory they might need, instead of just what they currently need. In fact, some games will request all available video memory (whether they need or not), which has led some people to the mistaken believe that they needed more. If you want to know more about this, you can check out this link. The short and skinny of it, however, is that GPU memory usage in windows 10 task manager can’t be trusted because it shows allocated video memory, and not actual video memory usage. The latest beta version of MSI afterburner, however, can apparently give a more accurate estimate.
How to set up MSI Afterburner and RTSS (mostly stolen from here)
Summary
- Install MSI Afterburner 4.6.3 Beta 2 Build 15840
- Enter the MSI Afterburner settings/properties menu
- Click the monitoring tab (should be 3rd from the left)
- Near the top and next to “Active Hardware Monitoring Graphs” click the “…”
- Click the Checkmark next to “GPU.dll”, and hit OK
- Scroll down the list until you see “GPU Dedicated Memory Usage”, “GPU Shared Memory Usage”, “GPU Dedicated Memory Usage \ Process”, “GPU Shared Memory Usage \ Process”
- Pick and choose what you want to be tracked using the checkmarks next to them. “GPU Dedicated Memory Usage \ Process” is the # that most closely reflects the # we find in FS2020 Developer Overlay and Special K (DXGI_Budget, except Unwinder uses D3DKMT api)
- Back in the main window, click the button that looks like a line graph on a computer screen. Note that the graph opened up really small for me. I only saw the red “x” to close the window, and had to click and drag the edge in order to expose the graphs.
Finally, do note that I could only see one sig fig when it came to GPU usage percentages -which is important when GPU usage is very low. For example, a difference between 3 and 4% GPU usage could be interpreted as a 25% reduction in usage. However, the actual values might be as small as 3.4% and 3.5%, which is a difference of only 2.9%. So, keep this in mind when looking at the data.
Okay, assuming I did everything correctly, here are my results:
It does appear that turning off 3D view will indeed lower GPU usage. The change is rather dramatic at max settings, but it is unclear exactly how big of a change we’re looking at with minimum settings. Perhaps I might try testing on my laptop later.
VRAM usage appears to be unaffected, which seems counter intuitive to me. Did I do something wrong, or is there another explanation. Perhaps someone who knows more can offer some insight.