So, I didn't have this bug pre-GW patch. I have the uber preset with texture resolution cranked to 175%. Client runs at a smooth 60fps. AO is off due to recent nVidia driver bug. If I zoom in, then zoom back out, I will see black textures which are quickly replaced by the real thing. I did not used to get this behaviour, I would zoom out and all the textures would still be in place. It's like the game is trying to save memory, but it shouldn't need to as I have 3GB of VRAM and 32GB of system RAM. I've attached a dxdiag.
If you're basically increasing the texture size by 75% over what it normally would be (which is what you're doing), 3GB probably isn't going to be enough. Super sampling beyond 100% isn't something you should probably be doing unless you have a current cutting edge system. You might be able to do what you're talking about at 720P, but honestly, I'd expect at 1080P or anywhere near it, you're gonna run out of video memory. Easy way to check is use Ctrl-P. How much video memory are you using when you do this? You're probably running out, and it's having to selectively decide what to page. Hopefully I didn't munge that description too badly. Varrak could give it much more accurately.
Hmmm, I don't recall seeing this behaviour previously. Also, I don't seem able to recreate it in replays. I fired up the replay of the game where it was last happening, which was clocking in at 1280MB VRAM usage, and no black textures. Yet when I was playing in that same game I was experiencing the issue.
I may be mistaken, but memory use in a replay does not directly map to memory use during a live game. Next time you're playing a live game, and see that problem, get your CTRL-P page up so you can monitor vram allocation. It may also not be vram related, but simply your GPU unable to keep up with swapping virtual textures that fast, but that would need Varrak to look at, rather than me.
Maybe some undeleted stack stuff? I once was checking Vram usage and I used about 1.3gb, I quit and reconnected and suddenly it used 700mb. This was with an old version of the game though, maybe even pre-gamma.
All textures generated on the fly all the time you move camera and game engine might decide to keep or overwrite already exists data depends on your camera position and angle. I suppose (but not sure) that some things like builfdings and explosions footprints on ground might affect it as well. And yeah this stats might be little buggy sometimes so you might see something like 5GB VRAM usage.
I've been testing this using the internal tools and GPU-Z, and on my nVidia GTX 780 Ti (3GB VRAM) I never use more than 2.1GB, that's including everything external to the game as well. Yet I still get black textures occasionally on zoom out. This is where I'm playing in the game rather than observing.
