This is all very unscientific and I should measure it etc but what I’ve been doing recently on my frugal 8GB 2080 card for VR and a Reverb is try to save about 1 GB of VRAM by reducing my main display resolution and the other attached monitors. I have a Frankenstein screen set up of this:
So a 4K display in the middle, a 1080p set up to read docs and stuff vertically and a huge 32 inch 1080p on the right (so it’s the same physical size as the 32 4k screen). Obviously that’s a lot of pixels and I can’t see any of them with the VR headset on.
What I do is hit Windows Key + p that brings up the old (and not used) Windows Projector Mode menu in Windows 10. I then pick ‘PC Screen Only’ that then disconnects the other screens, reduced the 4k to block-o-vision 1280x1024 (I think) and then I put on the headset and play the VR game (with a starting point of a bit more free VRAM.
When I’m done playing the VR game then I hit Windows Key + p again and pick ‘Extend’ and it magically puts it all back. Easy!
I don’t know if this really helps that much but I would be interested of others tried it and reported back.
I’ll do a search but one other nice WMR GPU memory saving tip is this, I recommend we all do this as it has very little downside:
To disable virtual monitor pre-allocation:
- Check Windows Update for one of the Windows 10 Cumulative Update Preview versions listed above, and install the update when available (you may find the update under Optional updates or Advanced options on the Windows Update settings page)
- Launch Registry Editor
- Navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Holographic”
- If the “PreallocateVirtualMonitors” REG_DWORD is not present, create it by selecting Edit > New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and entering PreallocateVirtualMonitors as the name
- If the “PreallocateVirtualMonitors” REG_DWORD is present (or you just created it), double-click the entry and change “Value data” from 1 (its default value) to 0 (zero)
- TRUE - 1
- FALSE - 0
Virtual monitors will now allocate when you attempt to launch a Win32 application in Windows Mixed Reality instead of pre-allocating. To reset this and re-enable virtual monitor pre-allocation, return the DWORD “Value data” to 1.
From: Windows Mixed Reality and the new Microsoft Edge - Mixed Reality | Microsoft Learn