I have an RX 9070 XT with 16 GB of VRAM, but Steam's performance overlay recently showed around 20.5–21 GB of VRAM being used. This happened while playing Star Wars Outlaws at 1080p on medium settings, and I've also seen similar behavior in Space Marine 2 and Palworld. I'm experiencing stuttering, inconsistent frame rates, and noticeable drops. Is the card borrowing system memory, or is something misconfigured?
2 Answers
The game and settings matter a lot when interpreting the number. At 4K with very high textures, heavy memory use can be expected, but 20-plus GB reported at 1080p medium is unusual if that number is supposed to represent dedicated VRAM alone. Check the dedicated-versus-shared GPU memory figures in Windows or AMD’s monitoring tools, since some overlays combine them and make it look like the card exceeded its physical capacity.
That reading probably includes shared system memory, not just the card’s dedicated 16 GB. Once the game fills the available VRAM, Windows can allocate regular RAM as shared graphics memory, but it’s much slower and can cause stuttering and uneven frame times. The fact that this is happening at 1080p on medium settings across several games makes it worth checking whether the overlay is reporting dedicated and shared memory together.
That makes sense. I noticed the same stutters and frame drops in Star Wars Outlaws, Space Marine 2, and Palworld, so it doesn’t seem limited to one game.