Who used MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures? 1 or 0 Setting?

[Skywolf 992]

Hey,

 

Very grateful for Rob for posting his guide.  Now I am confused about this setting.  The guide says if this setting should be 0.  Would that not mean the setting is deactive and the system won't offload the textures.  If I do 1, that should enable it based on what all other settings do.  To enable a setting in prepar3d.cfg - it is set to 1 and to disable it is set to 0.

 

I did a very quick test.  If I leave it to 0, then my VAS on initial flight stayed the same.  but when I did 1, I did lose like 300MB of VAS.  I didn't test further then just seeing the vas difference but I am hoping someone else tried the settings out.

 

For example in the guide about enable graphics optimization setting

 

"2. Clear textures out when changing airports. Going to a new airport would trigger loading of new texture before the current area's textures had been given their 10-seconds to page out. Clearing out textures on airport change, helps prevent a spike in texture memory related to this. Note that with MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures enabled, this is less important as the bulk of the memory associated with these textures should already be freed up before the switch"

 

It says with that feature enabled.  I thought enabling requires a setting of 1 vs 0.

 

Rob can you clear this out for me.

 

Thanks.

[Skywolf 992]

Anyone Try this.

 

I am not seeing any VAS benefits.  Everything is same!!!

[downscc 1,327]

My interpretation was that enabling (1) was only beneficial to multi-GPU case.  I didn't see this as a tweak that benefits VAS but might impact it when enabled to a small degree.  Just my interpretation.

[Skywolf 992]

Thanks downscc,

 

I am using multi gpu.  This tweak didn't do what it said in the avsim p3d guide.  Oh well.

[usaboy 100]

My interpretation was that enabling (1) was only beneficial to multi-GPU case.  I didn't see this as a tweak that benefits VAS but might impact it when enabled to a small degree.  Just my interpretation.

I think you may have misinterpreted that section. The Description points out " The only real downside to this is in certain multi-gpu use cases. If the texture is later requested for another GPU, it must be reloaded off disk".  As such I understand that this is a downside/disadvantage to the multi-Monitor/GPU

It would appear that you would want to put this in and =0 if you and not SLI or multiple GPU.

I'm still playing with it..but I notice some remarkable improvements flying into Heathrow.    

[angeli662 43]

I think you may have misinterpreted that section. The Description points out " The only real downside to this is in certain multi-gpu use cases. If the texture is later requested for another GPU, it must be reloaded off disk".  As such I understand that this is a downside/disadvantage to the multi-Monitor/GPU

It would appear that you would want to put this in and =0 if you and not SLI or multiple GPU.

I'm still playing with it..but I notice some remarkable improvements flying into Heathrow.    

Is this on by default? I am also multi GPU/Monitor user and would love to know if disabling it would benefit my system. 

[usaboy 100]

Is this on by default? I am also multi GPU/Monitor user and would love to know if disabling it would benefit my system. 

That's a very good question.  I had asked the same on a different post but still waiting on that confirmation/clarification.  Hopefully Rob can crime in.

[vgbaron 3,583]

Seems to me that this setting is going to be on a system by system basis, No one size fits all as it depends on how you have your GPU(s) and monitor(s) configured.

 

Test it for yourself and see how it affects YOUR system - that's the ONLY test that matters.

 

FWIW, I run two gpu's in SLI on two monitors BUT the second monitor is only for add ons like AS16, PlanG, etc.  I saw no plus or minus with the setting on or off.

 

YMMV,

 

Vic

[usaboy 100]

Ok all, I had to dump both....I had experienced stutters for the first time in P3dv3.3.5.  By removing both and the AF all is back to normal.  Which now confirms for me that leaving the CFG. in v3.3.5 is best suited for my setup.

[angeli662 43]

I run 3 monitors and 3 cards in SLI, I did a test on/off and the only thing I notice was when changing views from VC to outside the aircraft was fully drawn nothing more.

[Guest]

Sorry, work has been keeping me busy lately ... I actually thought twice about including that setting as I knew it might introduce some confusion.

 

By default this entry will not exist in your Prepar3D.cfg but the actual variable (MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures) will have a value of 0.  If you have VAS to spare and multiple GPUs/monitors (not running in SLI performance mode), then adding MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=1, it would save a little time when textures are loading but may increase VAS usage.

 

I don't use this entry, I leave it at default (0).  I included it because someone might fit it's usage case.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[dgraham1284 92]

Not sure why, it causes an NTDLL.dll crash for me upon loading a flight. Not a big deal. Tried it out of curiosity. 

2x 980 Ti's Windows 10 Pro

[Potroh 14]

If you have VAS to spare and multiple GPUs/monitors (not running in SLI performance mode), then adding MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=1, it would save a little time when textures are loading but may increase VAS usage.

 

 

Rob is right, apart from those special cases this entry should NOT be used.

Depending on the system being used, if MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures is enabled, it can initially eat up 350 MBs of VAS.

 

It's never a bad thing to do some initial and static VAS-tests though, specially if someone is using quite a few add-on dlls. These add-ons can cumulatively eat up a lot of VAS, so one needs to be careful.

 

A very simple (static) VAS test clearly shows how much VAS memory initially allocated to different dlls.

Let me just quote a few of these and their initial VAS usage:

 

Using MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=1    - 360 MBs

FSLabs's Concorde (3 dlls) - 700 MBs

PMDG737        - 500 MBs

PMDG777        - 400 MBs

FSTramp         - 300 MBs

RAASPro        - 120 MBs

AccuFeel        - 100 MBs

UT2                - 100 MBs

SODE             - 45-50 MBs

GSX                -  10 MBs

 

These just show the initially allocated VAS, which can grow in flight.

 

Potroh