use the texturewidth and textureheight commands to check
your loaded texture. If anything converts it to power of 2 from a non power of 2 it would be the drivers. I know the old voodoo cards would convert larger textures to 256x256 and odd sized textures to power of 2
the reason it wastes memory is because most memory is based on power of 2 addressing. If all of your textures are power of 2 then they squeeze into memory easier. I would suspect that a 540x540 texture would take up 640x640 memory on some cards ... just a guess... so you end up with the rest as waste.
your loaded texture. If anything converts it to power of 2 from a non power of 2 it would be the drivers. I know the old voodoo cards would convert larger textures to 256x256 and odd sized textures to power of 2
the reason it wastes memory is because most memory is based on power of 2 addressing. If all of your textures are power of 2 then they squeeze into memory easier. I would suspect that a 540x540 texture would take up 640x640 memory on some cards ... just a guess... so you end up with the rest as waste.