Stress test to the limit

[Kmccallister91]

tl;dr- building a 7970 benchmark that utilizies 3-4 gbs of VRAM. questions encouraged. Thanks


Hey guys, I'm looking to run a stress test that utilizes all 4GB's of a 6990, or atleast 3GB's of a 7970. The goal here is to use every bit of VRAM the card has to offer.. the end result would be to determine whether or not the VRAM is performing as intended.

I'm not certain if a CPU bottleneck would limit the video card's ability to utilize the ram, my general understanding of VGA's is that that it shouldn't. within reason of course.

here's what i have in mind.

I want a 15-30 minute test, preferably something that i can provide to other users, (free if possible), that has a relatively simple interface to adjust settings.

System- (something like this...)
1000W PSU,
8GB DDR3 1600mhz,
Core i7 3770k,
z77 motheboard.

Crysis 3 seems like a logical start (not free), but frankly i'm not sure how to determine what amount of VRAM is being used, nor do i have a better starting point. That is why i am posting for help

Ideally i would like to be able to test both dx10 and dx11, dx11 being the primary concern. I'm just going to throw this out there and see if anyone's interested in helping me design a test like this or contribute to the knowledge it takes to setup/find a test like this. Thank you for reading.

Second though- could running 2-3 benchmarks at the same time on Eyefinity contribute to VRAM use?

 

[notarat]

If I want to bring my 7970s to a crawl I loop Valley at 3840x2160 resolution using Ultra settings and 8xAA

By test 9/18 it's a slideshow and the cards are thermal throttling, lol

 

[suiken_2mieu]

Be mindful that the 6990 only has 2gb of vram per gpu. It's not cumulative.

If I want to bring my 7970s to a crawl I loop Valley at 3840x2160 resolution using Ultra settings and 8xAA

By test 9/18 it's a slideshow and the cards are thermal throttling, lol

Yeah, I had that happen at 7680x1600. And that's with 2 7970s in xfire.

 

[Kmccallister91]

Ive read that running the games in 3d would force the card to use twice as much VRAM, but would likely limit some viewers to noticing minor artifacting.