Hi,
I just started with Unreal Engine 5.3.1. But before I even did anything, I saw the following warning message in the main window:
“Video Memory has been exhausted (306.614 MB over budget). Expect extremely poor performance."
I’m running the program on a 2022 Surface Laptop Studio with Intel Core i7, 32GBRAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA® GeForce
The Value Field for the video card reads PCIVEN_10DE&DEV_25A0&SUBSYS_00541414&REV_A1\4&32093AAF&0&00E8 which I was told means the machine has 16 gigabytes (GB) of video card memory.
I downloaded the latest NVIDIA driver and software. It didn’t help.
I spent a few hours plowing through this forum.
I tried one fix that was easy enough to follow. I changed the VRAM value from 70 to 0.
I did that in aWindows config file>C:\ProgramFiles\Epic Games\UE_5.0EA\Engine\Config\Windows\ WindowsEngine. It didn’t help.
Most suggestions I couldn’t follow. I’m not a developer; I’m a user and a novice.
Here are my questions.
Can I assume that my laptop computer is fully capable of running UE5, especially since the project has hardly any items loaded?
Is there an easy fix? A fix that is easy enough to follow for a UE novice like me? I need step-by-step instructions. Could you please provide me a link?
If there isn’t an easy-to-follow fix, can I buy this hand-holding service? Can I get in touch with someone who would know what changes I need to make and could guide me through the process? Maybe a web meeting with a tutor or the like. Could you direct me to such a site or person?
I think that 16gb ram, may be shared memory. So if system wants more RAM it lowers video ram. You should check that in nvidia panel. Or post exact model here, maybe somebody knows how ram is allocated in your laptop.
with the included information I can’t find much on your system (the highest VRAM I could find was 12 for a RTX-4050 model)
this article covers how to find more detailed information about your system
additionally if you open up “Task-Manager” (right-click the task bar on Windows 11 it is one of the 2 options, on Windows 10 it will be in the list, or Ctrl+Shift+Esc on your keyboard)
go to Performance->GPU which will tell you how much memory is allocated to your GPU.
if the information is not in Task manager then maybe “DxDiag” (if you open Search and type “dxdi” it should show up in the list) then go to Display it will give you the information directly from the registry as reported to DirectX.
i’ve found that disabling lumen seems to help avoid this error message, and I am on a desktop machine that is a good bit over the recommended specs.
you can add a post process volume to your level and disable lumen just with a checkbox on a per level basis that way - in case you want to keep it enabled project wide and just turn off for performance while working.
In case someone has the same problem, here’s what I did.
I asked Google BARD how to turn off Lumen :
To turn off Lumen in Unreal Engine 5, follow these steps:
Open your project in Unreal Engine 5.
Go to Edit > Project Settings .
In the Project Settings window, go to Engine > Rendering .
Under Global Illumination , select Ray Traced Global Illumination instead of Lumen Global Illumination .
Under Reflections , select Screen Space Reflections instead of Lumen Reflections .
Click Save to apply your changes.
End of BARD’s instructions.
You can stop at step four. When I clicked off Lumen under Global Illumination, the message disappeared instantly.
(BTW, there is no Save to apply changes; that’s just BARD being silly. )
Of course, now I’m wondering what Lumen is good for and when I’ll need it. But that’ll be the next step I guess.