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[Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

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eXAKR
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Joined: January 11th, 2012, 12:22 pm

[Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

Post by eXAKR »

Okay, quick overview: I'm currently writing an update to my TenSystem Rainmeter suite (https://www.deviantart.com/eonity/art/TenSystem-for-Rainmeter-603984420), and one of the new widgets I'm writing for is a GPU monitor widget (the network activity monitor widget I talked about in my other thread elsewhere on this forum will also be one of the new widgets for it). What I intend for it to do is similar to the CPU widget: display GPU usage as a graph, with detailed usage stats in a tooltip when you hover over it.

For this purpose I'm using the built-in UsageMonitor plugin to retrieve the usage percentage of the GPU, as well as its VRAM usage stats for the tooltip. For VRAM stats, I intend to display the amount of VRAM in use, out of the total amount of VRAM, and the percentage of it in use, for both dedicated and shared VRAM.

And it is with this latter part that I'm running into problems: see, I have tried using UsageMonitor and setting the Alias to VRAM and VRAMSHARED to retrieve these values, but it appears that these values are not congruent with what I'm seeing in Task Manager (and yes, I have tried converting them from bytes to gigabytes). In addition, I'm trying to find a way to retrieve the total amount of both dedicated and shared VRAM either with UsageMonitor or without using additional third-party plugins or apps, with not much success.

I'm honestly wondering what I'm doing wrong here. Do I have to set Index to -1 for this to work, or should I be measuring another Category/Counter altogether? Someone please share some insight into this.
mak_kawa
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Re: [Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

Post by mak_kawa »

Hi eXAKR

I don't think it is possible, as far as I know... Why don't you want to use HWiNFO and its plugin? There is no problem about them at least for me, and they are really functional with Rainmeter.
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Yincognito
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Re: [Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

Post by Yincognito »

eXAKR wrote: September 1st, 2020, 8:17 pm [...] but it appears that these values are not congruent with what I'm seeing in Task Manager (and yes, I have tried converting them from bytes to gigabytes). [...]
They don't have to be congruent with the values from Task Manager, they only have to be congruent with the associated values from the Windows Performance Monitor (i. e. PerfMon.msc). If they are, it means you're not doing anything wrong, and you have to accept it, if you don't want to use 3rd party plugins or apps (an approach I share in my skins, bar the plugin needed for temps and such, MSI AB in my case).
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eXAKR
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Re: [Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

Post by eXAKR »

mak_kawa wrote: September 2nd, 2020, 6:30 am Hi eXAKR

I don't think it is possible, as far as I know... Why don't you want to use HWiNFO and its plugin? There is no problem about them at least for me, and they are really functional with Rainmeter.
That's the thing: I'm trying to keep my Rainmeter suite as lightweight as possible, without depending on too many third-party apps or plugins. HWiNFO makes it easy but also causes bloat, which I'm trying to avoid.

Oh well.
mak_kawa
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Re: [Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

Post by mak_kawa »

Hi eXAKR

Ah... I see. I don't think HWiNFO and its plugin cause a "bloat", but it is your choice. :-)
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Mor3bane
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Re: [Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

Post by Mor3bane »

Even a very 'large", "bloated" skin suite rarely exceeds at the top end of 15 MB. In these current times that download is less than a minute and is insignificant compared to say other windows back end apps, like device management systems for example razer products, their apps exceeds 100 MB and is considered small and light weight.

MSI afterburner and core temp together are very efficient and lightweight even coupled with rainmeter the dll's they use in rainmeter use less disk space and memory than some of the graphics used to display them in a skin suite.
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eXAKR
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Re: [Help] Getting VRAM usage/total (and other GPU info) using UsageMonitor/without other plugins

Post by eXAKR »

Mor3bane wrote: September 3rd, 2020, 12:22 am Even a very 'large", "bloated" skin suite rarely exceeds at the top end of 15 MB. In these current times that download is less than a minute and is insignificant compared to say other windows back end apps, like device management systems for example razer products, their apps exceeds 100 MB and is considered small and light weight.

MSI afterburner and core temp together are very efficient and lightweight even coupled with rainmeter the dll's they use in rainmeter use less disk space and memory than some of the graphics used to display them in a skin suite.
I don't really mean "bloated" as in the size of the skin; rather, when I say I want to keep things lightweight and not bloated, I mean it as by cutting down as much as possible on external or third-party dependencies, like third-party apps etc. My philosophy here was to design a Rainmeter suite that can be run immediately out-of-the-box, without the user having to download, install, and run any additional apps on their computer or device or worse, keep an app running in the background just for the skins to work.

Either way, I have completed and released my updated TenSystem suite, which you can check it out here: https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=36027
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