TEXTURE BUDGETING
Texture Memory Calculator
VRAM usage from dimensions, format, and count — with mipmap totals.
VRAM USAGE
Calculate texture memory
Texture memory guide
Texture memory quietly eats mobile and low-end PC budgets — a single 2048² RGBA texture is 16 MB before mipmaps, and a level with 50 of them is a third of a gigabyte. This calculator turns texture dimensions, format, and count into the actual VRAM numbers so you can budget before you hit the memory profiler.
The multiplication that adds up
A texture's memory is width × height × bytes-per-pixel. RGBA8888 is 4 bytes per pixel; RGB565 and RGBA4444 are 2; DXT1/BC1 and PVRTC4 are 0.5 (compressed); ASTC 4×4 and DXT5/BC3 are 1. Compressed formats are the difference between 16 MB and 4 MB for the same 2048² texture.
Mipmaps add ~33% on top (the sum of the halving chain: 1 + ¼ + 1⁄16 + …). It sounds small until you multiply it across every texture in the scene.
Platform realities
Mobile GPUs expect compressed formats — ASTC on modern Android, PVRTC or ASTC on iOS. Desktop can afford uncompressed but still benefits from BC compression. If your build is for mobile, treat every uncompressed texture as a bug.
Tip: Budget rule of thumb: keep total texture memory under ~30% of the target device's RAM. For a 4 GB mobile device that is ~1.2 GB of headroom for the GPU — textures should fit in a fraction of that.
Frequently asked questions
How much memory does a 1024×1024 RGBA texture use?
4 MB exactly (1024 × 1024 × 4 bytes). With mipmaps it is about 5.3 MB.
What is the best mobile texture format?
ASTC 4×4 gives good quality at 1 byte per pixel and is supported on virtually all modern Android and iOS devices. Fall back to PVRTC on older iOS or DXT/ETC2 where needed.
Should I always use compressed textures?
For anything larger than an icon, yes. Compressed formats lose a little quality but save 50–75% memory. Keep uncompressed only for UI sharpness or formats that need it.
Privacy note: texture memory calculations happen in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.