Texture Memory Size setting and its corresponding VRAM usage? (Hard crash due to mismatch?)

[sfried]

Recently I had just installed and tried out Warframe on PC after having played the Switch release since I had forgotten all about the basics of this game. I have a pretty capable PC system but do have an AMD R9 Nano which only has 4GB of VRAM (my system has 32GB or DDR4 RAM to compensate). Likewise, I set all the settings to the highest available, which includes Texture Memory to High, but do not restart the game as it seems to have applied all the settings. I play the game for a while and finish the tutorial segment.

The next day, I try to run Warframe and have it install all the updates. I click play and let the game load. As it was about 3/4ths on the splash screen, my monitors (I have a multi-monitor setup) all shut off, and I could hear my PC reboot. The game had crashed so hard that it actually deleted itself from my Steam library for some odd reason, but the files are still on the drive. I have steam "reinstall" Warframe, and after an update did the same same. Same result.

I further diagnose my test rig, making sure I have the latest AMD Drivers (currently Radeon Software Version 19.7.1) and that no viruses were present and have the appropriate Microsoft Redistributable VC Runtimes installed. Running Warframe again has yielded the same hard crash + Steam somehow "uninstalling" or forgetting Warframe is installed. I decided to completely uninstall Warframe and delete the Warframe folder under the "AppData/Users" portion of my drive (where configuration for Warframe is stored). After reinstalling and rerunning, I finally get Warframe to work. This time, I set all settings to High EXCEPT for Texture Memory size, which I set to Medium. I try exiting and restarting Warframe several times to confirm the the issue has been resolved.

This does bring me to my query: "Low", "Medium", and "High" Texture Memory sizes are pretty ambiguous. I was wondering if each of these settings correspond to a particular VRAM usage? Also, would it be possible to make it so that one can "Max out" their settings without accidentally going over their actual VRAM present? (Usually in the form of a Warning screen saying that this option exceeds your GPU's aloted VRAM, or simply grey out the option.) I was hoping some safeguards would be put in place to prevent people from accidentally encountering the same catastrophic crash that I did.

 

Current Specs:

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Intel Core i7 6700k (Stock frequency.)

AMD R9 Nano (tested with both stock and %50 Power Level increase. Stock frequencies.)

32GB DDR4 RAM

Edited July 13, 2019 by sfried