WORLDTECHMicrosoft vice president releases free GPU Taskman to show VRAM use per program
Scott Hanselman, a vice president at Microsoft, has developed GPU Taskman, a free and open-source tool that shows how much of a graphics card's VRAM each running program is using. According to a report by Notebookcheck, the tool fills a gap in the standard Windows Task Manager, which does not break down VRAM use.
What the tool shows
GPU Taskman provides detailed insight into VRAM usage by individual processes, so users can see which apps and processes are taking how much of the memory on their graphics card. VRAM, the high-speed memory on modern graphics cards, is the resource that local AI models depend on mainly.
Notebookcheck reports that the tool is particularly notable for its ability to analyse local AI models and their memory requirements.
Gap in the standard Task Manager
The Windows Task Manager already lists running processes and their use of CPU, RAM, memory and network bandwidth. According to the report, however, it has no dedicated VRAM display and offers only a rough overview of overall GPU utilisation.
GPU Taskman is designed to close that gap. It has been made freely available on GitHub.
Platform support beyond Windows
The software is not limited to Windows. It can also run on Linux and, with some limitations, on macOS, and it offers considerably deeper insight into GPU utilisation than the standard tool does.
Open questions
- How far do the platform limitations on macOS affect the tool's functionality?