It's at 1066MB in development mode and 232MB in a published build (which temporarily goes up to 296MB for 5+ seconds after changing resolutions on 1920x1080, which is a tad strange IMO).
That DirectX SDK/ debugger stuff sounds like a good idea, too bad this does not work on Win7 SP1, Win 8 and Win 10 though. -.- It's just not supported anymore.
EDIT: Uhh, got it running on an old laptop but there the crash has not happened so far - obviously.
EDIT2: Activating the debug version of DirectX 9 results in a different error, usually related to outdated DirectX versions (apparently):
D3D_DrawPrimitive: D3DERR_INVALIDCALL
D3D_DrawPrimitive: D3DERR_INVALIDCALL 0 lmaps 0 textures
D3D_DrawPrimitive: D3DERR_INVALIDCALL
Malfunction W1246: DirectX driver failure: D3DERR_INVALIDCALL...ok
LevelReady at 214.750
(listed as E1246 in the manual)