Iray Mem Assistant Is not Calculating VRAM correctly
Joe827
Posts: 229
Hi. Is anyone else having problems with Iray Mem Assistant? I purchased it about 2 months ago, and I cannot get it to work. I sent a note to the vender, no response.
I have 11Gig of VRAM, yet even when I load a blank scene, Iray Mem Assistant says that I have a "Potential VRAM Shortage = -,163.04".
Daz Studio Version 4.10.123.
03 - Blank Mem Assistant pg 1.PNG
703 x 626 - 21K
Post edited by Joe827 on
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HI, I also just installed this and Yes I get the same error, mine reads : -,255.01 and it also says estimated system ram remaining is: 9,686 which I would translate to 9.6 gb which cannot possibly be correct as I have 32gb in my system and according to the task manager Daz is only useing 386MB of ram.
I also do not get any readout on the bottom section like yours or the example pics in the store : I get <br> which tells me the code is screwed up or something.
I am not impressed at all with this - It also says it comes with a detailed PDF instructions - mine did NOT.
If you are able to contact any kind of support - let me know as well.
I also found this thread which gives some insight
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/72884/simtenero-iray-memory-assistant-commercial
I documented a lot of inaccuracies with the product in that referenced thread. It was not fixed. I returned it. I suggest you do the same.
For vram monitoring your best friend will be gpu-z or similar tools. Both the Mem Assistant and even the DAZ Studio log itself have serious issues in reporting real values. And it seems it can't be fixed.
Regarding the bottom readout, the first time I installed memory assistant, I was seeing mark-up like what you described e.g. <br>. However, a reinstall fixed that issue for me. I don't think it was an update because Daz Install Manager didn't list it as an update. It was just a reinstall.
As for support, I currently have a ticket open with Daz technical support. They are having me check some things on my end first.
Just an update, still trying to get support on this issue. Tech support keeps having me verify that I actually have 11GB of VRAM.
If your primary card is also handling rendering, then some of your VRAM is dedicated to that function. Therefore, all of it cannot be allocated to rendering.
SLI also takes up VRAM.
As I said earlier. I have 11GB of VRAM and this is a blank scene.
So you have 3 GPUs in your system: the primary which only handles display, and two others that are 5.5 GB each? Or is one 5GB and the other 6GB? Or are you using a single 16GB GPU and 5 GB is used for displaying images on your monitor? Or do you have a single GTX 1080ti handling both primary display and rendering?
I have a 12GB Titan x Pascal and an 11GB 1080ti. Right now, the 11GB is running a dForce simulation while the 12GB is only doing display duty. The 12GB is using 2.7GB of VRAM to display pictures and the 11GB is using 4.7 GB for the sim, and uses 300MB when it's sitting there idle.
You are not going to get all 11GB allocated to rendering because some of it is being used for basic functions like letting the CPU know it's there. SLI will cut your VRAM in half because it uses half of each card's VRAM to communicate.
Since He/she tried an empty scene the "Potential VRAM Shortage" is most likley caused by the bug that unables Iray Mem Assistan to se the correct amount of vram on newer cards.
System RAM is being calculated incorrectly as well. It is saying i have 59GB, but I only have 12GB.
So wait, I'm reading the product description and it says it tells you what items in the scene are going to cost to render, and you're testing it on an empty scene?
Put something in the scene and try again. If it doesn't have anything to work with, why do you expect it to work?
Or uninstall it and get your money back.
"Iray Memory Assistant is a scripted utility that displays information about the assets in your scene and generates estimates of available system and GPU memory. Unsure how your render's resolution is impacting your VRAM? Wondering if you can crank the SubD limit on an item without going over your computers memory limit? Iray Memory Assistant gives you visibility into your scene's memory requirements, helping you decide what to dial back and when you can push the limits."
GPU-Z and such can only tell you how much is being used at render time. This puports to tell you what in the scene has the potential to exceed your system before you click Render.
I've tested it with V4 loaded many times before coming here - the tool still does not work. And yes, I do expect it to work with a blank scene, or at the very least not report a VRAM shortfall.
But if it's designed to calculate the VRAM cost of assets in the scene given their polycount and texture size, and none of these are in the scene, what, exactly, are you expecting it to calculate?
If you want to know how much VRAM is being used for a blank scene, then yes, gpu-z, MSI Afterburner, or EVGA Precision X are going to do that for you in a separate process. With the last 2, you can even set mini-monitors in the taskbar that will give you live updates on memory usage, temperature, power draw, and many other wonderful facts, while a scene is rendering, or even when there's nothng to see.
It seems you want this thing to do what it cannot do and is not designed to do.
And V4 is the last thing I would use to test anything related to iRay. At least load the freebie Genesis 2 Base essentials and iray skin. Give it something to work with. Even a SPhere primitive with a bog standard iRay shader on it. The Material Ball preset. One of those Ready To Render scenes.
The toaster will run without bread in it, but don't expect the bread that isn't there to be toasted.
Look at the lower left corner of the screen caps provided. It is supposed to calculate remaining VRAM i.e. will the scene fit on the card or will it kick it over the CPU? For example: Remaining VRAM = Available VRAM - scene assets.
So in my case, Remaining VRAM = 11GB - 0 = 11GB (yes, it won't be exactly 11GB.
For a blank scene, 0 assets, it is telling my that the scene will require more VRAM than I have available. It is the same for a scene containing only V4. It is telling me that she will take up more VRAM than I have available which is nonsense. V4 does not consume 11GB of VRAM ;)
Do you follow now?
Please ask Daz if you can return it. It simply is not accurate. Cut your losses.
I've already requested one. I stuck it out long enough to give their tech support all the information they requested. Hopefully their QA's will run with it now and either drop the product from their store or (inaccuacies aside) get on the vendor to fix the outright defects.
The plugin's stated functions are implied as it pertains to Iray.
If V4 is not sporting an Iray shader, or does not in any way have any influence on Iray's performance, and if the plugin only factors in iray native shaders, including placed photometric lights, it's not seeing anything to calculate, and thus is faulting out. You have a negative Iray impact, which it cannot fathom, so it is probably assuming you have such a massive scene that is so far outside your system capabilities it's defaulting to a failsafe state and saying "don't even try".
Have you loaded anything into a scene that actually makes use of Iray shaders, and photometric lights which will cast light and shadows on an object?
Have you actually rendered the scene with V4 or does the plugin step in and re-route it to the CPU?
Yes I have. The plugin is just a calculator. It doesnt' decide what gets rendered on the GPU or the CPU. It just predicts whether or not it will be rendered on the GPU or the CPU. You can then analyze the summary to determine which assets are having the largest impact on VRAM so you can attempt to reduce their impact e.g. reduce a texture resolution here, delete some out of view polygons there.
Here's a render I did using V4 and only IRAY shaders and lights. It rendered in about 1 min 30 sec on my GPU's. However, mem assistant tells me that there is a potential VRAM shortage of "-,705.87". So it is telling me that the scene that was just rendered on my GPU cannot be renderd on my GPU. Lol!
The final screen cap is the tool's sysInfo page. It thinks I have 16GB of RAM (I only have 12GB) and that I have only have 2.48342MB of total VRAM (I have 11GB). This is funny because I've already gone though all of this with tech support. Lol! But I am happy to satisfy your curiosities.
Hello All,
I'm very sorry for the long delay. First, the user guide should be included when you install with DIM, but it is also hosted online here:
http://wiki.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/24290/24290_iraymemoryassistant.pdf
I've identified the issue causing the incorrect VRAM calculations. As some of you might now, Memory Assistant pulls info from Studio's log.txt file regarding your available memory. The format for those entries in the log changed in 4.10. I can update Memory Assistant to fix this, but it will likely break compatibility with older versions of Studio (the script will work fine, but the VRAM numbers will be off in versions before 4.10).
I've investigated ways of pulling the numbers straight from the Nvidia driver, but that wasn't reliable at all from script. I'm thinking of adding the ability to manually enter your memory numbers to help future-proof a bit. Does that seem like a good idea?
The rest of the numbers should be unaffected, that is, how much memory geometry and textures might use. To reiterate past posts, these numbers are just estimates. Also very important to note, your available memory is less than your total memory. The operating system, Studio, and other applications reserve some of your system and GPU memory for themselves, so evenm if you have a 4Gb GPU, Iray may only have access to 3Gb or so.
Is this still going to be fixed? Just purchased this product, and getting the same inaccuracies reported in this thread.