Yosemite VRAM usage

[Jose Almeida]

Hi,

 

I see a lot of people struggling with X-Plane under Yosemite and my experience tells me that it is often due to VRAM exhaustion. One may be induced in error by VRAM usage reported by X-Plane but this is only part of the story and video memory may get fully used, in spite of a reassuring value reported by X-Plane. It is possible that the issues are caused by X-Plane code making use of obsolete APIs and a full revision of those is likely to happen in version 10.35.

 

Meanwhile, if you want to monitor your real VRAM usage Apple doesn't make it easy for you; you can download the necessary tools from Apple but you must register as a developer. If you do, you'll have to download "graphicstools_for_xcode_6.1.dmg" wherein you will find "OpenGL Driver Monitor". This is a professional tool which allows monitoring many variables, among which "Current free video memory" and "Current Video Memory in Use".

 

I am not advising everyone to download and run those tools and it is certain they won't cure anything or improve anyone's frame rate but for someone who is curious about what is going on they may prove useful.

 

Best regards,

José

[chris k]

Agreed - It's a very useful tool -- dunno why they restrict it to having a Dev account. I suppose it's just to cut down the OSX distribution size; as not everyone needs such a utility.

 

I'm happy to make it available to people (and Apple can yell at me if they want..): http://cdn.isdg.com.au/~chrisk/OPENGLMONITOR/

 

I think this is the mavericks 10.9 build, Let me know if it doesn't work under 10.10, should though...

 

- CK.

Edited January 14, 2015 by chris k

[Andyrooc]

For Windows, there a free tool (GPU-Z) here:

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/