Hi, I’m facing this issue where the editor throws up this warning message of “Video memory has been exhausted, expect extremely bad performance” and the editor begins to lag unbearably. This issue happens even on a completely blank level. The problem disappears if I begin PIE, and comes back as soon as I stop. It usually takes about 5 minutes or so after opening the editor before it shows up. This started happening recently out of nowhere, with no OS or driver updates or anything. I’m using an RTX 2060 6gb (I know it’s not the best for the job, but I’ve been using it for 5 years for Unreal dev without issue till now). Task manager shows my GPU is barely being used as well when this happens.
Things I’ve tried to no avail:
Disabling upscaler plugins (FSR and DLSS)
Reinstalling NVIDIA drivers (using DDU)
Increasing texture pool size with r.Streaming.PoolSize
Changing viewport scalability (this actually works for a few minutes before it kills itself again, and I can even move the scalability down and then back up and it’ll fix it for a few minutes)
This is an unusual scenario you are encountering, specially considering that it started from nowhere, with no system changes, and that it even affects empty levels. I would also assume no problems appear in other programs or games, and it’s just relegated to UE’s viewport.
So, something in the viewport is generating a VRAM leak effect. First option I would try, is disabling real time rendering in the viewport itself:
Next, I would disable all visualization effects for the viewport (Nanite, Lumen, VSM, shader complexity, etc). And then, clearing UE’s cache (not the project, as there is no specific project here). To do so, please locate your Local App Data folder, navigate to …/UnrealEngine/Common/DerivedDataCache, and delete it’s contents.
One more thing I have seen messing around UE in very unexpected ways, are graphic overlays. Please make sure that you none of them active in your system (nVidia Experience, XBOX Game Bar, Discord Overlay, etc). And finally, use a monitoring tool, like GPU-Z, and check your VRAM values while operating UE.
If the issue persists after all these changes, then last remaining path would be a full uninstall/reinstall of all Epic software from your system:
Uninstall the engine, launcher, any asset packs, etc
Open the registry directory HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Epic Games\Unreal Engine\Builds, and delete any build entries
Delete the folders %userprofile%\AppData\Local\UnrealEngine and %userprofile%\AppData\Local\UnrealHeaderTool
After that, no elements related to UE should be left in your PC
Reinstall UE launcher from scratch, and only add the latest version of the engine
After the process is complete, test opening a blank project, and check how the viewport behaves
