Texture memory limited to 512MB?

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Does anyone know why the texture memory slider in the hardware options under preferences is limited to 512MB?

I have a lot more room in there, four times as much. My gpu monitor says the card is using 710MB or something.

I have to admit I haven't looked at it very closely, maybe it goes up sometimes.

[Ceera Murakami]

512 MB is the limit that the LL coders hard-coded into their Viewer. I have 1 GB of dedicated VRAM on my card, but can also only set the texture memory to 512 MB.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

It doesn't seem to affect the performance, so it's not a big deal.

Still I wonder if there would be benefits if the number was higher.

[Nala Spires]

well i don't think it is a limit really what i assume is that your vga loads the textures on your area i highly doupt those are in tottal  more than 512 mb  .... even 256mb really .... if that was the case imagine how long would have been taking to rez each time you teleport somewhere !

[Cerise1488303085]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

Does anyone know why the texture memory slider in the hardware options under preferences is limited to 512MB?

I have a lot more room in there, four times as much. My gpu monitor says the card is using 710MB or something.

I have to admit I haven't looked at it very closely, maybe it goes up sometimes.

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They used to allow higher, but kept running into buggy OpenGL drivers that could not handle higher amounts. This cap was set a few years ago, I hope that those buggy drivers are nearing extinction and the cap can be raised soon. I think that the current limit might start to hurt once people start to use more textures with the materials functionality.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

The data pushed through your graphics card doesn't have to be downloaded I guess. If that was the case I (and everyone else) would be waiting and waiting and waiting as it is. When running SL, my card uses the 512MB alright according to GPU Tweak. I don't know any of the technology behind it, but I am sure I didn't download those 512MB.

A 1024x1024 texture uses 4MB (I guess mipmapping brings this down?) and we all know how 1024-happy a lot of builders in SL are. At 4MB though, it adds up quickly.

Cerise made a good point with the new material system that's hopefully around the corner. When every object can have multiple textures, the memory use will increase. Not sure if that's a real problem as long as your card can push the data in and out fast enough, but at a certain point what's on your screen will be more than the 512 we can use now.