Radeon 6950

[Curtisonetwo]

Hello,
I have a Radeon 6950 msi twin frozr III power edition graphics card with 1gb of video memory, I benchmark my games and I always get just about 98 to 100% usage of my video memory, I could understand this if I were at a high res, but i'm at 1366x768? any thoughts of why this happens? I am worried about this because it dips my fps to nearly 10-12 then jumps back up
also my cpu is an intel core i5 2320 ( non overclockable :'/)
16gb of 1866mhz patriot memory
antec 650 watt psu
asrock Z75 Pro 3 motherboard
intel 510 series 120gb ssd
and 2 seagate 7200rpm drives 1tb & 500gb

 

[cbrunnem]

what game?

 

[Curtisonetwo]

Battlefield 3, Gta iv, aswell as Farcry 3 at times, I am currently using the latest beta drivers btw

 

[cbrunnem]

in bf3 you shouldnt be having that high of memory. i only use about 975mb on ultra minus msaa.