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960: 2GB or 4GB

dfish292

I am currently debating on wheter to spend the extra 40$ on a backplate/2 extra GB of VRAM or to let it be at the 200$ price point. I am refusing to go with AMD due to the fact that my power supply couldn't handle it, and my bank account couldn't handle replacing my power supply getting a new graphics card. I'm also not in the position to get a 970. 

 

Regardless, will the two extra GB of VRAM be worth it?

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Yes.

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4gb for sure, 2Gb is not really sufficient for AAA titles, what games do you plan on playing?

 

But 4Gb version is the way to go.

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Just curious what PSU you have. But TechofTomorrow did some benches and it didn't perform any better.

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What power supply do you have? Because an R9 280x would be a much better choice for the price.

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AMD cards are pretty power hungry if I was you I would buy a used 970 of ebay

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What power supply do you have? Because an R9 280x would be a much better choice for the price.

Why is the word cheaper orange?

 

 

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@Tagiau sorry if I didn't quote but the website is being a d**k

Do you mean in my signature? Well, I wanted to highlight it but I had already used red and green and blue doesn't look good on dark theme ^^ lol

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Only bother with the 4GB if you intend to SLI at a later date. The performance of the 960 considered, 2GB is about right for it.

 

4gb for sure, 2Gb is not really sufficient for AAA titles

 

Only if you're playing at settings the 960 isn't capable of delivering well anyway.

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The gtx 960 doesn't have that issue, since it's not a cut down version of another chip (which is what the 970 is). So in this case 4gb is actually 4gb.

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unless your driving a high resolution display, the 2GB on the normal card is fine imo.the only games that i know of that use more than 2Gb is Battlefield4 and Hardline, Shadow of Mordor. Otherwise the 2Gb is fine. Feel free to get the 4Gb though for some breathing room. 

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Anyways... to the OP. If you play at 1080p then 2GB is fine. I went with 2GB, vs 4GB and I can play all my AAA titles at full settings.

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4gb. definitely. my 750 ti can keep going at 60fps in shadow of mordor at pretty decent settings, can keep pulling 40+ with ultra textures but 2gb ram just kills it whenever it needs to cache new textures. not a scientific benchmark, but 2gb on a card is just not enough now quite a few games.

 

get 4gb, 2gb would be enough today, but you'll likely regret it tomorrow.

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Bigger is better. I looked at that Tech of tomorrow video, and honestly I think he fucked something up because it did not look right in the other cards he benched, not just the GTX 960 

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AMD cards are pretty power hungry if I was you I would buy a used 970 of ebay

No not of ebay, alot of people by wrong on it and get card's that have been used for mining and then have problem's with FPS and get mad blaming it on driver's.

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OP, The 2gig model should be fine unless you can fine a 4gig model for around the same price. 

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Only bother with the 4GB if you intend to SLI at a later date. The performance of the 960 considered, 2GB is about right for it.

 

 

Only if you're playing at settings the 960 isn't capable of delivering well anyway.

I would rather have assurance with 4gb than 2gb since 2gb is almost obsolete, 4gb or bust.

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Just curious what PSU you have. But TechofTomorrow did some benches and it didn't perform any better.

 

TechOfTommorow also did ridiculous benchmarks at settings where no game would ever go over 2GB VRAM usage, so of course it didn't show. I can't even get Crysis 3 to use more than about 1.8 GB on Very High system spec 1080p on my 970 and they were testing it at 1080p Medium. What they should have done was tested Shadow of Mordor with the high textures where they recommend 3GB and Dying Light with AA on, to see if the card meaningfully outperformed a 2GB 960 at those settings which actually should start to use in the neighborhood of 3GB VRAM or so.

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I would rather have assurance with 4gb than 2gb since 2gb is almost obsolete, 4gb or bust.

 

You aren't getting "assurance". If you think you need more than 2GB get a more powerful card that can actually benefit from it, or get the 4GB version if you are planning to SLI them.

 

Even that I don't recommend because of the memory interface.

 

 

TechOfTommorow also did ridiculous benchmarks at settings where no game would ever go over 2GB VRAM usage, so of course it didn't show. I can't even get Crysis 3 to use more than about 1.8 GB on Very High system spec 1080p on my 970 and they were testing it at 1080p Medium. What they should have done was tested Shadow of Mordor with the high textures where they recommend 3GB and Dying Light with AA on, to see if the card meaningfully outperformed a 2GB 960 at those settings which actually should start to use in the neighborhood of 3GB VRAM or so.

 
Who the hell is expecting to play Shadow of Mordor on ultra on a 960 though? I think you're being unreasonable, tbh, to demand a £150 GPU to run games like that at those graphics settings without compromises.
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Who the hell is expecting to play Shadow of Mordor on ultra on a 960 though? I think you're being unreasonable, tbh, to demand a £150 GPU to run games like that at those graphics settings without compromises.

 

 

actually it should run it fine without AA and some other compromises and use the ultra textures taking advantage of the 2gb more ram. i played it on a 750 ti and i could quite comfortably play it on med/high with textures on high, hitting the 2gb ram on card, pushing ultra textures would kill it fps wise due to RAM. 

 

if more games follow to use higher quality textures, the extra ram will help. while it's not going to be worth paying much more for, but if its for a similar price, definitely 2gb more. Yes getting a 970 will be a huge difference, but the extra ram on cheaper card which is still capable to run the games and use the ram will help and the nicer textures will be noticeable. 

 

it wont let you play shadow of mordor at ultra, but it will allow you to set textures to ultra with some compromises elsewhere (AA, lighting and such)

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TechOfTommorow also did ridiculous benchmarks at settings where no game would ever go over 2GB VRAM usage, so of course it didn't show. I can't even get Crysis 3 to use more than about 1.8 GB on Very High system spec 1080p on my 970 and they were testing it at 1080p Medium. What they should have done was tested Shadow of Mordor with the high textures where they recommend 3GB and Dying Light with AA on, to see if the card meaningfully outperformed a 2GB 960 at those settings which actually should start to use in the neighborhood of 3GB VRAM or so.

 

Of course it would at those settings. With the ultra textures enabled on Shadow of Mordor you need a 3GB card to run it.

The GTX 960 with 2GB is fine for 1080P gaming in pretty much every other game. In the extremely demanding ones, you just roll without MSAA and ultra textures. Performance-wise extra VRAM does nothing, it just prevents you from running out of VRAM in a situation that needs a lot of VRAM.

 

IMO it's not worth spending the extra money to get a 4GB version just so you can enable ultra textures and MSAA in a handful of games (right now I think it's literally just Shadow of Mordor and Dragon Age Inquisition, and pretty much every other game can still be ran at max settings with 2GB of VRAM at 1080p).

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