RDNA2 VRAM Leaks: Go buy AMD cards if you want more than 10GB.

[porina]

1 minute ago, Results45 said:

So the amount of VRAM in midrange cards seems to double every 3 years?

Depends on how you define that doubling. I intentionally didn't attempt to fit a trend line to the chart. I think I'd prefer weighting it with sales volume but that would be more effort than I'm willing to go though, if the data is even obtainable at all. Probably would be good to go back even further to get a better trend.

 

Hmm... maybe it is not too much work to list "firsts" at each VRAM level? BRB

[porina]

1 hour ago, Results45 said:

So the amount of VRAM in midrange cards seems to double every 3 years?

I want to make nicer charts but I'm really struggling with LibreOffice here... anyway, this is the first time nvidia (in blue, sorry, I forgot to change it) or AMD increased the max VRAM offerings on their cards, starting at 32MB. I only counted VRAM quantities which increased over time, so if they offered a lower unique amount later on, I ignored it. Hence no 30 series here. I also ignored shared system ram, and dual GPU on single card configurations.

 

Very roughly by eyeball, we saw about 10x increase between 2008 and 2018. Note I used a log scale. The line is almost but not quite linear on that, with a hint of slowdown. The previous "10x" was roughly 2001-2008, so only 7 years to do so.

 

Anyway, 10x in 10 years isn't far off a doubling every 3 years, but it does feel like we're sat on 8GB for a while now. 

 

To re-iterate, this is when either side pushed the VRAM quantity upwards, and does not represent the masses. Apart from the odd ball Radeon VII, AMD haven't budged from 8GB offerings since 2013. Nvidia only joined the 8GB party in 2016, but they did go a little further to 11GB the year after.

 

Edit: note this actually shows some flaws in my previous post, since I didn't look back so far, there were instances where the first usage of a quantity of VRAM happened earlier.

 

Spoiler

Rage 128	0.03125	Aug 98
Rage 128	0.0625	Aug 99
Radeon 7000	0.125	Aug 01
Radeon 9000	0.25	Mar 03
Radeon X800	0.5	May 05
Radeon HD2000	1	May 07
Radeon HD4000	2	Jun 08
Radeon HD6000	4	Apr 11
Radeon HD7000	6	Jan 12
Radeon 200X	8	Oct 13
Radeon VII	16	Feb 19

GeForce 256	0.03125	Oct 99
GeForce 256	0.0625	Dec 99
GeForce 3	0.125	Oct 01
GeForce FX	0.25	Mar 03
GeForce 6000	0.5	May 04
GeForce 8000	0.75	Nov 06
GeForce 8000	1	Apr 07
GeForce 9000	1.5	May 08
GeForce 400	2	Jul 10
GeForce 400	3	Oct 10
GeForce 600	4	Mar 12
GeForce 700	6	May 13
GeForce 1000	8	May 16
GeForce 1000	11	Mar 17

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

On 9/21/2020 at 8:04 AM, WereCatf said:

I have yet to see anything credible to indicate that 8GB VRAM, let alone 10GB, won't be perfectly fine for the next 5 years or more.

I have seen things that say 10gb is needed for 4k now.  The 16gb thing seems to be based on the practice of attempting to best consoles through the “beat all hardware always” methodology. Consoles have 16gb vram which is also used by the system for OS stuff, so a card with 16gb will always have as much memory on tap as a console

[WereCatf]

7 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

Here's your indication: not everyone uses their GPU as a toy! Some of us need real memory capacities to do real work!

You know full well that the discussion was in the context of games.

[Fatih19]

14 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

Here's your indication: not everyone uses their GPU as a toy! Some of us need real memory capacities to do real work!

Then buy a Radeon VII.

[GDRRiley]

16 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

For me it was the GTX 970 debacle, which I owned

nothing that gen on the high end had enough vram. almost instantly I was maxing my 970 out at 1440p.

[Tristerin]

On 9/21/2020 at 8:28 AM, Valentyn said:

Why get 16GB, when NVIDIA are offering me 24GB this Thursday?
 

 

Rare sighting of the only available RTX 3090 at launch, better hope your bot skims the best!

[porina]

1 hour ago, epicdotexe said:

16GB isn't enough

What is enough? It does sound like your needs are outside the consumer/gaming market. Higher end solutions are available if it is a genuine need.

[Jet_ski]

If AMD ups their game on their CUDA alternative ROCm, I would 10000% buy their cards.

[spartaman64]

10 minutes ago, epicdotexe said:

Yeah, but believe it or not there is a category of people who:

 

1) Need more than 16GB of memory.

2) Don't have an unlimited budget for $8,000 cards.

then you wouldnt even be considering a consumer card

[derr12]

On 9/21/2020 at 6:02 AM, FloRolf said:

Vram doesn't tell you the hole story. If you pair an RX550 with 16gb HBM2 memory it isn't magically faster than a 3080.

 

-> wait for benchmarks before saying something is better than the other, unreleased thing. 

i think i saw hole story on pornhub once.  worst pixar film ever.

[porina]

1 hour ago, epicdotexe said:

Yeah, but believe it or not there is a category of people who:

 

1) Need more than 16GB of memory.

2) Don't have an unlimited budget for $8,000 cards.

I get that. However you still haven't said just how much VRAM would satisfy your needs? Is 24GB enough? There's already the Titan RTX, and later this week the 3090 (subject to availability). I believe both can be nvlinked to pool their VRAM in some use cases to 48GB. Both are less than $8000.

 

What if you don't have enough? Is it a bit slower? A lot slower? Doesn't work at all?

[Senzelian]

The good ol' vRAM debate, where eveyone seems to look at their current vRAM usage and determines that because it's obviously almost completly in use, that they suddenly need at least double the amount.

I remember when people were telling me that it would be IMPOSSIBLE to play Watch Dogs with my GTX 760 2GB, because their GTX 780 or 980 was already using much more than 2GB...  Yeah right...

[Senzelian]

Just now, comander said:

Modern cards try to load themselves with as much stuff as they can, preemptively. 

It helps and it'll limit the number of hiccups since random requests to/from system memory/storage are reduced. 

Yup. That's one of the many mysteries about vRAM that people don't seem to understand.
Comparing different kinds of vRAM to another and using 8x MSAA and not understand the effect, being a few more.

[Trik'Stari]

5 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

nothing that gen on the high end had enough vram. almost instantly I was maxing my 970 out at 1440p.

I was impressed by how well it handled GTA V at 5760x1080 on display spanning. Damn did it look good. And this was a Strix 970, so not that great to begin with.

[GDRRiley]

13 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

I was impressed by how well it handled GTA V at 5760x1080 on display spanning. Damn did it look good. And this was a Strix 970, so not that great to begin with.

I own the strix it was a good card

[Results45]

1 hour ago, comander said:

Modern cards try to load themselves with as much stuff as they can, preemptively. 

It helps and it'll limit the number of hiccups since random requests to/from system memory/storage are reduced. 

 

 

Yup. That's similar to how RAM in smartphones work. The OS keeps as much data from applications and background processed in the RAM as possible so that it doesn't waste time or resources fetching them from storage or reloading it every time you wake the phone up or want to use an app. Hence why you'll see 50%-70% of the RAM always in use.

[Gamer Schnitzel]

I'm probably going to buy the 3060 so I'm happy as long it gives me 8 GB VRAM though I hope AMD will give me better options.

[Maticks]

A lot are crying over "only 10GB of VRAM on the 3080" turn your texture quality down from Ultra at 4K and you are fine you will slip under 10GB if the game even used 10GB to start with.

Probably find you will hit 100FPS+ with it turned down under Ultra anyway which you would want to do.

I don't see this being an issue, most people are doing 1440P which have nothing to worry about 10GB is plenty enough, that extra memory will come with a cost plenty and like $500 to us the buyer given it will fit in nicely between the 3090 and 3080. "Future Proofing" for something in 2 years time? why? just buy a 4080 it will be out by then.

 

Why pay more for something you don't need now when you do need it you can get a better product for the same price you paid now with no premium?

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, Maticks said:

A lot are crying over "only 10GB of VRAM on the 3080" turn your texture quality down from Ultra at 4K and you are fine you will slip under 10GB if the game even used 10GB to start with.

 

And there aren't that many games that use more than 10GB at 4K Ultra as it is anyway. With the new DirectX changes coming with the ability to directly access storage from the GPU pipeline that could all change too, a lot of things that get pre-loaded in to GPU memory may no longer be needed or be done because you can stream it in quickly on demand when required and unloaded when not.

 

I think it's too soon to be worrying about VRAM limit when talking over 10GB, that's a lot and as you said there will be simple ways to lower usage without realistically being able to notice a difference at all visually.

[HumdrumPenguin]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

And there aren't that many games that use more than 10GB at 4K Ultra as it is anyway. With the new DirectX changes coming with the ability to directly access storage from the GPU pipeline that could all change too, a lot of things that get pre-loaded in to GPU memory may no longer be needed or be done because you can stream it in quickly on demand when required and unloaded when not.

 

I think it's too soon to be worrying about VRAM limit when talking over 10GB, that's a lot and as you said there will be simple ways to lower usage without realistically being able to notice a difference at all visually.

One does not buy a high end card to lower usage of, well, anything.

[Letgomyleghoe]

On 9/21/2020 at 6:01 AM, Moonzy said:

-sips tea-

 

internally:

  Hide contents

 

call me a fanboy if you want, but all of their previous launches for the last few years were train wrecks

hope they can do it better this year

 

Haven’t had any issues tbh, even after flashing to a 5700xt, no issues

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, HumdrumPenguin said:

One does not buy a high end card to lower usage of, well, anything.

Nothing today would require you to, future is future. Like I said everything could change so worrying about what might happen later is pointless, just buy the next new GPU at that point.

 

But also no, the difference some setting make is literally zero visually, when going from Ultra to High.

[vsteel]

I have never uttered the phrase "Rats, I have too much memory, I wish I would have bought a lower spec'ed card".

 

Nvidia could be keeping the memory low because they want to make sure their graphics cards don't compete with their professional cards.  The pro cards cost so much more because they know companies will pay more for things they need, only a small part of that price is the hardware and extra software.  

[Blademaster91]

51 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Nothing today would require you to, future is future. Like I said everything could change so worrying about what might happen later is pointless, just buy the next new GPU at that point.

 

But also no, the difference some setting make is literally zero visually, when going from Ultra to High.

This is fine if you can always upgrade to the latest card, but not if you want to keep a GPU for at least 3 years. After seeing the GN 3080 teardown the FE has room for 2 extra chips, either Nvidia has a 3080Ti planned or the leak from Gigabyte of a 20GB 3080 is true.

It seems like Nvidia held back on adding memory because either they don't want people keeping their GPU's like so many did with Pascal cards, or Nvidia knows they have no competition so they can keep the memory low, and get those that need the extra VRAM to buy a 3090.