Reading GPU memory usage statistics in the messages window

[Alex_M]

I'm trying to render a scene with the GPUs and one of them seems to fail because of insufficient memory. I looked for the memory statistics in the messages window and I see Mtls 23MB, Geo 600MB, Lights 80MB, LightCache 10MB and Other 2500MB. All of these are self-explanatory except for "other". What does "other" actually mean? It consumes 80% of the memory and I would like to bring it down but can't because I don't really know what this is. Also, does Mtls include textures?

[savage309]

Materials include textures, thats correct.
Other is everything else that the render have allocated during rendering, including some memory that it needs in order to operate. 2.5GB seems a lot. The only way for us to tell you whats in Other is to send scene over so we can investigate.

Best,
Blago.

[Alex_M]

Hi Blago,

I've just sent a scene to support's email along with a screenshot that shows memory usage of 17GB for "other". This is strange because there's only 7 GB being used when rendering with Adv. I'll be happy to find out what causes this and to learn how to keep "other" from occupying so much GPU RAM. Thanks in advance.

[savage309]

Ah, in that case - it could be just us collecting how much memory is used for what. Most likely we don't account for some deallocation in other and we print wrong statistics ... Thanks, we will check it.

Best,
Blago.

[Alex_M]

Yes, seems like something might be wrong with statistics. I just tested the same scene with Max 2016 and Vray 3.6 and for "other" I get 1.1 GB instead of 17 GB.