High VRAM consumption in Space Marine 2 gameplay
High VRAM consumption in Space Marine 2 gameplay
I've been searching online for hints about the situation, but nothing concrete. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Last night I launched Space Marine 2 with friends and faced severe performance problems. My VRAM was reaching its limit, causing extreme stutters and frame drops. Current configuration: Ryzen 7800X3D with 32GB DDR5 at 6000MHz, paired with an Asrock Taichi 9070XT 16GB on a 4K display. I'm using FSR 4 in AMD Adrenaline (driver 25.3.2) for SM2. I've adjusted various settings, even switched to FSR Balanced with high options, but VRAM usage stayed above 15GB and the game kept stuttering around 20fps. After switching to Fullscreen from Borderless and restarting with FSR Balanced at high settings, the cap issue disappeared but VRAM usage remained high—over 13GB. I also confirmed I don’t have the 4K texture pack installed, just the base game. Before upgrading to the 9070XT, I was using my 6800XT with FSR Balanced and optimized settings (mix of high/low with ultra textures) which worked smoothly. I only encountered VRAM problems when using HDR, so I played without it and it was fine. This is confusing because the community says 4K games only need around 10GB VRAM, yet I'm hitting limits with a 16GB card. Thanks for any advice or insights you can share.
I initially didn't, but last week I ran DDU and reinstalled the drivers. I kept the internet off until the AMD driver was fully reinstalled. The FSR 4 toggle in AMD adrenaline is essentially the same "Upgrade" option as in FSR 3.1, so the FSR setting remains unchanged in-game. I experimented with native 4k, Quality, Balance, and Performance modes, but VRAM usage didn't change noticeably.
Game runs smoothly on a Gen 4 SSD. Loading is quick, though VRAM usage seemed excessive. I’m considering a reset. What do you mean by resetting the game? I’ve checked for "verify game files" on Steam. I might reinstall it fresh and set the resolution to 1080p, but at 4K native, ultra settings usually hit around 60-80fps—especially when VRAM isn’t limited. I’ll attempt a driver reset and a fresh install to see if it improves things.
I performed a factory reset in AMD Adrenaline, removed the shader cache, and reinstalled Space Marine 2. Then I manually deleted any caches linked to those files. One or more of these steps seemed effective. When loading the game at 4K Native, VRAM usage reached 10-11GB, which is within the expected range. After enabling frame generation at 4K with FSR (including the 4 upgrade toggle), VRAM increased to 14GB-15GB again, but it didn’t exceed the limit and caused no stuttering or frame drops. Achieving 140-220 FPS with frame generation and those settings varied by area. Most importantly, VRAM would adjust correctly when settings or scenes changed. Likely the issue was excessive VRAM retention instead of unnecessary clearing. My conclusion is that clearing shader caches resolved the problem. Thanks for guiding me in the right direction.
Thank you for your input. I experienced performance issues after a short gaming session and checked an RTX 5080. I discovered an nVidia command that helped inspect memory usage. RAM usage gradually increased until it reached its limit, even when new content was loaded. After reinstalling the game and removing the shader cache from the user profile, I normalized to around 13GB. This reduced frame drops significantly.