MERGED QUESTION
Question from OverclockDaddy : "Can a GPU Memory/Vram Utilize or Use the ddr3 System Ram/Memory to increase performance?"
OverclockDaddy :
1st of all i have an old system - Fx 4100, msi 760gm-p23, 8gig ram, gtx 560 se, 600w psu and my question is that can the old gtx 560 video memory of 1gig gddr5 utilize the dd3 system ram?... playing fallout 4 Nuka world but stuttering with high settings even when the gpu is oc at max slider and max voltage. (Fraps show gpu memory usage is at 99%, cpu 75%, gpu 82% at high settings. Bottleneck maybe?
ryguybuddy :
It will if it runs out of VRAM, and your FX-4100 is slightly bottlenecking it anyway.
Dunlop0078 :
Well fallout 4 uses about 1500mb of VRAM on low 1080p so yes you are definitely using all your VRAM. What you are asking is the only reason the game continues to run after you use all your VRAM. Once all your VRAM is used up your PC will start using system RAM as VRAM, however system ram is much slower than VRAM and has far more latency, so you are going to get mainly a lot of stuttering as you described, or even large frame rate dips.
No, the only way one can allocate system ram for video is when you are using integrated graphics.
Some games are graphics limited and some are cpu limited.
FX processors are slow, the likely cause of your stuttering is lack of single thread processor performance.
More cores from a FX-6 or FX8 will not do it.
In the short run, perhaps you can overclock your FX-4100.
If that will not do the job, consider Intel for a good mid range gamer.
A i3-6100, a lga1151 motherboard and some DDR4 ram will be a nice boost.
Here is what it can do:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10543/the-skylake-core-i3-51w-cpu-review-i3-6320-6300-6100-tested
I am dubious about the need for Vram,
VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
A more current set of tests shows the same results:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/page5.html
And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.
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