OpenGL stunts: Watching GPU memory occupancy

[Petr Schreiber]

I found out there is a way to retrieve total/available memory on GPU. There is GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info on NVIDIA hardware and GL_ATI_meminfo on AMD cards.
The code I provide below works only for NVIDIA cards, once my friend gets ATi I will test the GL_ATI_meminfo and provide solution working on Radeons as well.

It is interesting to watch how much GPU memory uses for example Firefox, try to launch the program and then just open new tabs in FireFox 5.

The proggie is very elemental, it allocates 512x512 textures as user commands via PageUp/PageDown. The textures are created on the fly.


Petr