Is 10GB of VRAM enough for 4K gaming? - tested with Microsoft Flight Simulator.

[SFFDesigns]

Many of us have been curious as to whether 10GB of VRAM is enough for 4K gaming, so I decided to test it out in one of 2020's most demanding games, Microsoft Flight Simulator.

 

I only have a 1440p monitor, but I can obviously change the resolution and render scaling. I tested the Courchevel landing challenge in the TBM 930 at 1440p (100 render scaling), 4K (100 render scaling) and 8K (which is just 4K with 200 render scaling, as I am not able to set a resolution of 8K) using the Ultra preset. You'll notice that the 1440p numbers are only barely higher than the 4K ones, this is due to CPU bottlenecking (3700X) as the sim does not use more than 4 cores right now. 

 

 

As you can see, 8K is unplayable (trying to land at ~3fps was rough haha) due to VRAM bottlenecks. Based on testing with the 3090, MSFS at 8K can use upwards of 20GB of VRAM at 8K so I'm not surprised. At 4K and obviously 1440p, VRAM does not limit performance. The sim allocates 9.1 GBs at 4K, but using the sims dev tools (which sadly don't currently allow logging of data) I was seeing usage of around 6-8 GBs maximum. I didn't test it here, but I did try 4K with 150 render scaling, and although the frame rate was lower (most likely just due to the higher resolution, not due to a VRAM shortage) VRAM usage was less than 10GBs, but it was spiking to around 9 GBs so the margin is smaller (this was over New York, which is one of the most detailed cities in the sim).

 

In conclusion, 10 GBs does seem to be enough for 4K (or even higher, just not 8K) in Microsoft Flight Simulator.  I reached 100% GPU usage long before running out of VRAM, so I have no issue recommending the 3080 for those looking to use Microsoft Flight Simulator right now!

[Letgomyleghoe]

6 minutes ago, Hymenopus_Coronatus said:

Many of us have been curious as to whether 10GB of VRAM is enough for 4K gaming,

it is and has been 

 

i may be worng but vram is used more for textures, and usage does not scale as you raise resolution 

[Action_Johnson]

I've seen in benchmarks, that the new Ryzen 5000 CPU's is really where its at if you want to clear 60fps @ 4k

[Sophia_Borjia]

If higher res uses higher res textures then ram use goes up at the square of texture size.  If it uses mostly same textures ram use won't change much. 

A 4k texture is 4096x4096, not the 3840 x 2160 of 4k picture. 

Size of textures will vary at same resolution, so it is not as simple as 4k texture res for 4k screen res.

Gpu can also do particles and physics as well, so what percentage of ram is used for textures can vary a lot.

A 4k photoscaned texture may not compress well, where 8k procedural one could compress to be smaller then 2k.

It can very hugely from game to game

[Narukin]

I'm really interested in this! I recently got another UQHD so it's become a concern of mine.

If anyone has managed to get their hands on the new hardware, I would really appreciate any information on what your setup is and how much VRAM is needed for a single UQHD or even better if you have 2!

My final resolution when playing MFS would be 3440x2880.

I'm currently using an EVGA 980ti Hybrid which has served me well at ~30fps, ~5VRAM usage @ low settings, 3440x1440.

High time for an upgrade! 

 

[Action_Johnson]

I'm testing out a Radeon 5700XT and I'm pretty happy with what I'm getting out of FS2020. My settings are a little screwy, but I lock the framerate to 30fps (Makes it feel alot less game-y), and it looks perfect on my 1080p monitor.

 

In game, I have everything cranked to the max ultra except DOF and Motion Blur (yuck), then I set resolution scaling to 60, and run it at 4k. In the Radeon drivers I set Chill to 30fps, and give it about 60-70 sharpening. 

 

AMD's supersampling looks GREAT at 1080p, and I think it generally looks better than in-game supersampling. It might lack the finer control of the GeForce cards, but I think the results are still good enough. I'm guessing it would probably look a little mushy at 4k...