ada lovelace NVIDIA's RTX 4070 will allegedly boost to 2.8GHz offering the same compute power as an RTX 3090 Ti

[AnonymousGuy]

16 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

I guess that's why they can partially justify charging ridiculously high prices for Titans--they know that the card's large VRAM pool makes them more future-proof than their lesser counterparts. In fact, I got the Titan Xp used for this very reason. It's one of the cheapest cards that has 12GB of VRAM.

I had Titans in the past and IMO they were a waste.  By the time shit got around to even needing the extra VRAM the core wouldn't be powerful enough to crunch it at a real framerate anyways. 

 

I always figured the memory was more for compute tasks or whatever.

[BiG StroOnZ]

On 8/10/2022 at 4:55 PM, Kisai said:

I think at this point in time, nobody really needs anything over a 4070 in any capacity. I'm sure there may be a few games that might benefit if the RTX features are all turned on (ef FFXV still absolutely crushes 30-series cards when everything is on), but those features aren't selling points when few games use more than one of them. The parts are likely geared for workstation/server use.

 

That said, I do wish the 70 GPU's would all have 16GB standard, be it for 4K/8K video or VR. The 30-series felt like a bit of a joke when the 50's 60's (other than the TI which had 12) and 70's had 8GB, 80 had 10, and then 90 had 24. Like hello, the 80 should have been a 16GB card.

 

Nvidia might also be trying to head offer another landrush on GPU's in the event another crypto coin becomes popular shortly after launch. Like they might release TI models later with double the video memory and higher-yield on the CUDA cores.

 

At any rate, I feel that unless you're waiting for an AV1 encoder, buy the 30-series cards while they're being dumped.

 

I think a 4070, if specs are accurate, is really going to be one of those cards that holds its weight for years to come. Being around 3090-3090 Ti performance is big, and assuming pricing is somewhat respectable, it puts that level of performance in the hands of many more gamers. Even the 3090-3090 Ti is able to do relatively well with all the eye candy turned on. Cyberpunk 2077 on an RTX 3090-3090 Ti gets between 82-87 fps @ 1440p. If the 4070 is offering the same performance as a 3090 Ti at a 3070 price (hopefully), then NVIDIA really knocked it out of the park with Ada Lovelace. It should be noted that the 3070 launched at a $499 price point, and now the cheapest offering is $630. I think if the card even launched at a $550 price point, it would be a serious win (with this level of performance). 

 

I do agree that more memory should be offered on these cards, especially a card that is offering 3090-3090 Ti performance. Simply because now the 4070 is able to be considered a 4K card for many games, and 12GB seems sort of limiting for that resolution (high refresh 1080p/1440p is somewhat acceptable). This is where a used 3090 or 3090 Ti becomes a better bargain with a 24GB frame buffer, especially if prices drop drastically when the 4000 series launches. 

 

Historically, NVIDIA has always been behind AMD with video memory offerings. Remember Kepler? On certain occasions there were AIB cards that offered more video memory, but generally speaking, in recent history that really hasn't been the case. There have been some exceptions though.

 

Hopefully though, like you surmise, they release some Ti or SUPER models with more video memory and more performance in the future.

[AlwaysFSX]

On 8/10/2022 at 11:59 AM, Levent said:

Its not just about resolution, games tend to have higher quality assets even at 1080p you are looking at upwards of 8G vram usage if you have just 4x MSAA enabled. I would say 16G should have been the minimum that card.

Probably my most ignorant question to date since I don't ever use MSAA, does it really eat up VRAM?

[BiG StroOnZ]

1 hour ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Probably my most ignorant question to date since I don't ever use MSAA, does it really eat up VRAM?

 

Depends on the game, but it can start eating up VRAM quite quickly depending on your settings (old article but you get the point, although was updated in 2020):

 

 

44% Increase @ 1080p, 97% increase @ 1440p, and 118% increase @ 4K (with 8x AA enabled). 

 

https://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/90/much-vram-need-1080p-1440p-4k-aa-enabled/index.html

[Lordofcheez]

On 8/10/2022 at 1:45 PM, Levent said:

I wish Nvidia would stop releasing cards with bare minimum size of VRAM.

What do you consider bare minimum? I have 11gbs and vram and I never really use it at all in the 3 years of using the pc. Also its been heavy use I don't have a life.....

[Levent]

Just now, Lordofcheez said:

I have 11gbs and vram and I never really use it at all in the 3 years of using the pc. Also its been heavy use I don't have a life.....

16. Assets are getting massive, you will be running out of VRAM before running out of GPU processing power with the 30xx and 40xx cards that have 8 and 12G vram.

[Montana One-Six]

On 8/11/2022 at 11:40 PM, Levent said:

Also, Afterburner/RTSS monitors VRAM usage, not allocation.

If you are talking standard settings then yes, but you can make it display actual VRAM usage and not only allocation.

 

On 8/11/2022 at 11:40 PM, Levent said:

I can easily run out of VRAM in FH5 using extreme preset at 1080p (even 12G doesnt cut it for that preset)

Don't have that game but playing at 4K I have yet to play a game that uses more than 10GB VRAM (actual VRAM usage). Since I don't have FH5 I googled and guru3D has it listed to use 8-9GB at 4K extreme... .

[Levent]

8 minutes ago, Montana One-Six said:

If you are talking standard settings then yes, but you can make it display actual VRAM usage and not only allocation.

 

Don't have that game but playing at 4K I have yet to play a game that uses more than 10GB VRAM (actual VRAM usage). Since I don't have FH5 I googled and guru3D has it listed to use 8-9GB at 4K extreme... .

I will repeat, allocation vs usage difference doesnt matter. Allocated memory cannot be used by something else.

1080p extreme, 4x msaa. There were no player around and when there are other player I have seen it hit 8G no problem.

[Levent]

On 8/14/2022 at 5:27 AM, AlwaysFSX said:

Probably my most ignorant question to date since I don't ever use MSAA, does it really eat up VRAM?

Didnt see this message, nor that I tested myself BUT MSAA is pretty much rendering at higher resolution internally but outputting at selected resolution, so 4 times MSAA at 1080 in theory should be as much as 4K with no MSAA.

[LAwLz]

I'd just like to remind everyone that looking at VRAM usage is not a good way to measure how much memory is actually needed.

Just like with RAM, expunging data from VRAM is a costy operation that is not done unless necessary. As a result, a lot of unused data is kept in VRAM way longer than needed. Just because task manager says 7GB of VRAM is used does not mean 7GB of VRAM is necessary to get the level of performance you are getting. 4GB out of those 7GB might be old data that could be freed without any performance hit.

 

The proper way of measuring VRAM usage is to limit the memory the card has. Then, and only then, can an accurate estimate of "VRAM usage" in certain games be determined.

 

"I got a 12GB VRAM card and in this game task manager says it uses 10GB, so an 8GB card would struggle" is an inaccurate and misleading way of looking at VRAM usage. 

 

 

You can often get away with lower VRAM than what task manager says you are currently using.

 

 

Since someone mentioned tweaktown earlier, they have done some decent articles about VRAM usage. The last one was from 2020 and they concluded that unless you are running really high resolution (like 4K) AND use high amounts of AA, then anything over 4GB of VRAM would be a waste.

Yes, 4GB of VRAM, even if you game on 4K with Ultra settings in games like Battlefield 4 and GTA 5. I kind of doubt much has changed in less than 2 years.

[Levent]

30 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I'd just like to remind everyone that looking at VRAM usage is not a good way to measure how much memory is actually needed.

Just like with RAM, expunging data from VRAM is a costy operation that is not done unless necessary. As a result, a lot of unused data is kept in VRAM way longer than needed. Just because task manager says 7GB of VRAM is used does not mean 7GB of VRAM is necessary to get the level of performance you are getting. 4GB out of those 7GB might be old data that could be freed without any performance hit.

 

The proper way of measuring VRAM usage is to limit the memory the card has. Then, and only then, can an accurate estimate of "VRAM usage" in certain games be determined.

That too is misleading. You are using the wrong word there. Word you are looking for is "required". If an app requires more resources than available, it wouldn't work or simply crash due to lack of resources. (Also considering since early 2000s we have DVMT, crashing or not running due to lack of vram is very unlikely)

 

Memory leak scenario would makes sense only if I hadnt just launched the game with a video background in its menu, clicked 4 buttons and pressed the accelerator for 10 seconds and took the screenshot. However, issue is not garbage collection, issue is size of the assets combined with the open world aspect of the game.

 

More you stream from disk to RAM then to VRAM more stutters you will have and reducing that inherently requires more VRAM used by the app itself.

 

Also nobody here said that.

30 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

"I got a 12GB VRAM card and in this game task manager says it uses 10GB, so an 8GB card would struggle" is an inaccurate and misleading way of looking at VRAM usage. 

 

[LAwLz]

33 minutes ago, Levent said:

That too is misleading. You are using the wrong word there. Word you are looking for is "required". If an app requires more resources than available, it wouldn't work or simply crash due to lack of resources. (Also considering since early 2000s we have DVMT, crashing or not running due to lack of vram is very unlikely)

I am not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?

I never said anything about applications crashing.

 

I think "this program needs X amount of VRAM" and "this program requires X amount of VRAM" means the same thing. If you make a distinction between the two then feel free to explain the difference to me.

I looked both words up in dictionaries and it seems like they are more or less synonyms. Require is literally defined as "to need something".

 

33 minutes ago, Levent said:

Memory leak scenario would makes sense only if I hadnt just launched the game with a video background in its menu, clicked 4 buttons and pressed the accelerator for 10 seconds and took the screenshot. However, issue is not garbage collection, issue is size of the assets combined with the open world aspect of the game.

I never mentioned memory leaks. Keeping things in memory for longer than necessary is not the same as a memory leak.

 

 

33 minutes ago, Levent said:

Also nobody here said that.

A lot of people are implying or think that it is the way it works.

Have you not seen how many people bring up task manager to "prove" that they need X amount of VRAM? I am fairly sure you did so earlier as well.

 

Wen you posted the screenshot of some racing game using 7.3GB of VRAM, were you not implying that the game needs 7.3GB of VRAM to play at those settings and with that frame rate? 

[Dedayog]

Going on record with "4070 won't beat 3090Ti in real world application and frame rates".

 

It'll beat the 3080, but not the flagship/epeen card.

 

Cannibalizing their product stack isn't smart, and too large a jump now puts too much pressure on future generations to fulfill the same.

 

They've had too good of a go with the "Subtract 1 from previous gens" method.

[Levent]

  

Just now, LAwLz said:

I am not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?

I never said anything about applications crashing.

Lets assume for a moment that we dont have DVMT (or whatever AMD calls it nowadays) and GPU only has access to its own memory and nothing more. Assume that we have an app that needs 2e+9 (2 gigabytes) bytes, while you only have 1e+9 (1 gigabyte) bytes of addressable memory space, so when application tries to read or write (or allocate for that matter) that address space what happens?

 

Simple, it crashes. (A lot of programming languages and operating systems for the last 20/30 years have checks in between to reduce crashes due to running out of memory but doesnt mean it eliminates performance issues that will arise from them.)

 

DVMT/Shared memory saves that from happening when dedicated VRAM less than what app is trying to allocate. That is how most older graphics cards are able to run titles that use far more VRAM than they got. That is also why pagefile/swap is critical on low RAM applications.

 

9 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I never mentioned memory leaks.

Too aggressive garbage collection also results in constantly streaming assets from disk and that too results in stutters.

14 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Keeping things in memory for longer than necessary is not the same as a memory leak.

That is resource leak by definition and this is a memory leak hence we are talking about a resource that is not needed kept in memory.

 

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

A lot of people are implying or think that it is the way it works.

Have you not seen how many people bring up task manager to "prove" that they need X amount of VRAM? I am fairly sure you did so earlier as well.

  When you run out of VRAM, you will introduce stutters as I explained above. Hence why I said:

On 8/10/2022 at 8:45 PM, Levent said:

I wish Nvidia would stop releasing cards with bare minimum size of VRAM.

  Because also as I said even at 1080P I am able to use more than 8G vram and introduce stutters AND artifacts due to running of VRAM. When you run out of VRAM, you will introduce performance penalties and that is a fact.

2 hours ago, Levent said:

1080p extreme, 4x msaa. There were no player around and when there are other player I have seen it hit 8G no problem.

Which I explained in the previous post:

On 8/12/2022 at 12:40 AM, Levent said:

If you dont have enough VRAM, RAM is allocated (DVMT) and assets are swapped to ram when VRAM runs out. I can easily run out of VRAM in FH5 using extreme preset at 1080p (even 12G doesnt cut it for that preset) and have visual artifacts and stutters purely due to running out of vram and having to stream assets in and out of RAM.

 

It is all about how the game engine does asset streaming. Just because you can get by with less doesnt mean you cant do better with more.

[LAwLz]

7 minutes ago, Levent said:

Lets assume for a moment that we dont have DVMT (or whatever AMD calls it nowadays) and GPU only has access to its own memory and nothing more. Assume that we have an app that needs 2e+9 (2 gigabytes) bytes, while you only have 1e+9 (1 gigabyte) bytes of addressable memory space, so when application tries to read or write (or allocate for that matter) that address space what happens?

 

Simple, it crashes. (A lot of programming languages and operating systems for the last 20/30 years have checks in between to reduce crashes due to running out of memory but doesnt mean it eliminates performance issues that will arise from them.)

Could you please stop trying to sound smart? It's just annoying to read someone call "2GB of memory" "2e+9".

DVMT is not an AMD thing either. It's Intel specific. It's also not something needed for graphics cards with dedicated memory. You are just mudding the waters by bringing up random, unrelated stuff.

 

Are you trying to say "what would happen if a program needed 2GB of memory but the GPU only had 1GB, and we weren't allowed to swap out data in VRAM with data in RAM"? I am fairly sure it wouldn't flat out crash. It would be painfully slow though because instead of fetching data from RAM it would fetch it from storage. But all of this is completely irrelevant and I have no idea why you bring it up.

 

 

13 minutes ago, Levent said:

DVMT/Shared memory saves that from happening when dedicated VRAM less than what app is trying to allocate. That is how most older graphics cards are able to run titles that use far more VRAM than they got. That is also why pagefile/swap is critical on low RAM applications.

Again, no idea why you bring this up because it has nothing to do with what I said.

I think you have misunderstood what I said.

 

 

13 minutes ago, Levent said:

Too aggressive garbage collection also results in constantly streaming assets from disk and that too results in stutters.

No it wouldn't. It might fetch things from RAM (not disk, unless we're talking about a DirectStorage application, which there are none right now), but I don't see why this would be an issue.

And why said anything about doing garbage collection very aggressively? Not everything has to be an extreme.

The more VRAM you got, the less garbage collection will generally be done. That's why VRAM usage graphs in for example task manager are misleading. Because people who post their graphs are usually doing so when they got plenty of VRAM left and as a result very little garbage collection has been done.

 

 

16 minutes ago, Levent said:

That is resource leak by definition and this is a memory leak hence we are talking about a resource that is not needed kept in memory.

No it isn't. Stop using phrases you don't understand.

A memory leak is memory that is never freed. For example doing a "malloc" (allocating memory) operation but never doing a "free" (deallocating it) operation. Being slow to expunge unused things from memory is not the same as a memory leak. Again, doing garbage collection can be a rather costy operation to execute, so we want to do it as little as possible.

There is a very big difference between postponing a garbage collection operation because there is no need to free up memory, and a genuine memory leak. The difference is that one is going to fix itself when required, and the other will never fix itself.

 

At best I could give you that it is a "space leak", but a space leak is not a memory leak.

A defining characteristic of a memory leak is that the memory is NEVER released, unless the program is terminated. What I am talking about with games using more VRAM than necessary are not memory leaks, because they will free the memory up if necessary. 

 

 

28 minutes ago, Levent said:

  When you run out of VRAM, you will introduce stutters as I explained above. Hence why I said:

Yes, but my point is that just because you are approaching 100% memory usage does not mean you are running out of memory.

There are many situations where a GPU will report 7/8 GB VRAM usage, but you will still be able to load in 2GB of additional resources. Why? Because not all of that 7GB of "in use" memory was actually necessary. It's just that the computer did not have any need to expunge the memory until new calls to allocate resources were made. 

 

32 minutes ago, Levent said:

Because also as I said even at 1080P I am able to use more than 8G vram and introduce stutters AND artifacts due to running of VRAM. When you run out of VRAM, you will introduce performance penalties and that is a fact.

You never said you experienced stuttering. All you did was post a screenshot showing 7/8 GB used as "evidence" that you need more memory. The screenshot you posted proves literally nothing.

You hitting 100% memory usage and then getting stuttering would be evidence that you are VRAM limited. Showing 7/8 GB used and no stuttering is not. You showing 7/8 GB of VRAM used is not evidence for the game needing 7GB of VRAM either. Because we don't know if those 7GB of memory is actually in use, or if the garbage collection has simply not been run because there is no need to free up memory.

 

 

37 minutes ago, Levent said:

It is all about how the game engine does asset streaming. Just because you can get by with less doesnt mean you cant do better with more.

And just because you have more does not mean is actually makes any practical difference. 

Having 10GB of assets loaded into VRAM won't make the game run any better than having 3GB of assets loaded into VRAM, if the game only uses 3GB of assets at the moment.

 

A GPU with a lot of VRAM will usually show higher VRAM usage than a card with less VRAM. Not because the GPU needs more VRAM, but because modern computers are conservative with freeing up VRAM (and RAM). 

The more VRAM (and RAM) you got, the more will be used. But higher usage does not mean higher needs.

 

 

Right now my desktop is reporting 6.6GB of RAM used. I got a browser with 4 tabs open and a handful of programs running in the background.

Does that mean a PC with 6GB of RAM would struggle or stutter trying to run the same things? Hell no. My laptop got the exact same programs and tabs open and it uses 4.7GB of RAM. 

Why? Because my desktop has more memory than my laptop, so it will keep more stuff loaded into memory. It's not needed and it has zero effect on the performance of the programs I got running, but it's there "just in case", because why free up memory when I am only using 20% of it? 

My laptop doesn't have as much free memory as my desktop, so it is a little more conservative and expunges data from RAM more aggressively.

 

GPUs work exactly the same way. The more VRAM you got in your graphics card, the higher the usage you will see in task manager.

Task manager, afterburner, etc are NOT indicators of how much VRAM is actually needed, just like task manager is not an indicator of how much RAM is needed.

[Dedayog]

I'm totally going to like both of them arguing together, because it's full of information I don't understand.   I may actually learn something today.

 

But popcorn makes it all worthwhile.

 

*sits back to watch*

[Levent]

14 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Could you please stop trying to sound smart? It's just annoying to read someone call "2GB of memory" "2e+9".

DVMT is not an AMD thing either. It's Intel specific

I know DVMT is the name I can remember. Technology exists on AMD side of as well, AMD just keep renaming it. I dont even know what Nvidia calls it.

 

15 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It's also not something needed for graphics cards with dedicated memory. You are just mudding the waters by bringing up random, unrelated stuff.

You are wrong there, DVMT or whatever AMD and Nvidia is called is used when dedicated VRAM is ran out. (Launch your task manager and see Shared GPU memory under GPU, that is DVMT/Shared memory).

 

16 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

what would happen if a program needed 2GB of memory but the GPU only had 1GB, and we weren't allowed to swap out data in VRAM with data in RAM"? I am fairly sure it wouldn't flat out crash. It would be painfully slow though because instead of fetching data from RAM it would fetch it from storage.

Which is exactly what I said, I recommend you to read again.

1 hour ago, Levent said:

(A lot of programming languages and operating systems for the last 20/30 years have checks in between to reduce crashes due to running out of memory but doesnt mean it eliminates performance issues that will arise from them.)

 

DVMT/Shared memory saves that from happening when dedicated VRAM less than what app is trying to allocate. That is how most older graphics cards are able to run titles that use far more VRAM than they got. That is also why pagefile/swap is critical on low RAM applications.

 

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The more VRAM you got, the less garbage collection will generally be done. That's why VRAM usage graphs in for example task manager are misleading

Garbage collection depends on the game engine and the use case. It is not misleading. Map size, render distance and asset size is the defining factors. I will admit I havent wrote my own game engine but as with everyone in this industry I had my share at developing shitty basic games.

 

20 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

A memory leak is memory that is never freed. For example doing a "malloc" (allocating memory) operation but never doing a "free" (deallocating it) operation. Being slow to expunge unused things from memory is not the same as a memory leak. Again, doing garbage collection can be a rather costy operation to execute, so we want to do it as little as possible.

There is a very big difference between postponing a garbage collection operation because there is no need to free up memory, and a genuine memory leak. The difference is that one is going to fix itself when required, and the other will never fix itself.

 

At best I could give you that it is a "space leak", but a space leak is not a memory leak.

A defining characteristic of a memory leak is that the memory is NEVER released, unless the program is terminated. What I am talking about with games using more VRAM than necessary are not memory leaks, because they will free the memory up if necessary

That is correct that it is not a memory leak. Enjoy your trophy.

22 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

And just because you have more does not mean is actually makes any practical difference. 

Having 10GB of assets loaded into VRAM won't make the game run any better than having 3GB of assets loaded into VRAM, if the game only uses 3GB of assets at the moment.

 

A GPU with a lot of VRAM will usually show higher VRAM usage than a card with less VRAM. Not because the GPU needs more VRAM, but because modern computers are conservative with freeing up VRAM (and RAM). 

The more VRAM (and RAM) you got, the more will be used. But higher usage does not mean higher needs.

If you make the game load only 3e+9 bytes worth of assets sure you wont benefit from having 1e+10 bytes of VRAM.

 

31 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Does that mean a PC with 6GB of RAM would struggle or stutter trying to run the same things? Hell no. My laptop got the exact same programs and tabs open and it uses 4.7GB of RAM. 

Yes it would, just because it is able to mitigate lack of resources by caching into pagefile so fast that you are not able to notice doesnt make swapping magically have no impact.

35 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

GPUs work exactly the same way. The more VRAM you got in your graphics card, the higher the usage you will see in task manager.

Task manager, afterburner, etc are NOT indicators of how much VRAM is actually needed, just like task manager is not an indicator of how much RAM is needed.

More VRAM I got means more assets I can keep it in VRAM, higher quality assets I can keep in VRAM, instead of having to stream them from disk. I love how you act like asset streaming stutters were not a thing. Game engines got smarter about asset streaming but it doesnt take much for user notice stutters when assets are streamed (especially nowadays when 100hz+ gaming is common).

 

According to you there is no reason to get anything more than 4e+9 byte cards for gaming then?

[Dedayog]

"According to you there is no reason to get anything more than 4e+9 byte cards for gaming then?"

 

Dude, come on.  No one talks like that. Just say 4GB.

[porina]

I'm trying to think of the times I knew I ran out of vram, however it is measured, and there's exactly only one time. It was the Nvidia Marbles RTX demo. It seemed to be tuned for the 2080 Ti, and the 3070 with less vram tanked in performance. Like not just a bit slower, but a lot slower. I forget how much it was.

 

Trying to think, wasn't there one game in some setting that was tuned to work on 16GB AMD GPUs but ran out on lower nvidia ones? I vaguely recall it being shouted aloud by fanboys at the time.

 

IMO I still think, anyone buying at a 70 tier is looking for a balance of performance and cost. Worst case you have to drop a setting somewhere. I still think for most games the difference between Ultra and High is insignificant outside of side by side pixel peeping. So if you have to drop a bit it isn't a big loss. If you're the go ultra or go home crowd you're looking at 80 tier or higher anyway.

[WereCat]

16 minutes ago, porina said:

I'm trying to think of the times I knew I ran out of vram, however it is measured, and there's exactly only one time. It was the Nvidia Marbles RTX demo. It seemed to be tuned for the 2080 Ti, and the 3070 with less vram tanked in performance. Like not just a bit slower, but a lot slower. I forget how much it was.

 

Trying to think, wasn't there one game in some setting that was tuned to work on 16GB AMD GPUs but ran out on lower nvidia ones? I vaguely recall it being shouted aloud by fanboys at the time.

 

IMO I still think, anyone buying at a 70 tier is looking for a balance of performance and cost. Worst case you have to drop a setting somewhere. I still think for most games the difference between Ultra and High is insignificant outside of side by side pixel peeping. So if you have to drop a bit it isn't a big loss. If you're the go ultra or go home crowd you're looking at 80 tier or higher anyway.

I agree that Ultra vs High visuals are usualy miniscule and it's most likely not worth the performance hit.

 

I disagree with the defense of the low VRAM.

 

You know that Doom Eternal runs at 4k Ultra Nightmare with RT better on RTX 3060 than on RTX 3070 or 3070ti right? 

You know that Forza Horizon 5 is artifacting due to low VRAM at Extreme settings at 1440p and higher on 8GB RTX cards but it runs flawlessly on RTX 3060? And that games runs at fairly high FPS on Extreme even on weaker cards so its not like Extreme settings are a waste of time.

 

So if 8GB is already starting to be issue even at 1440p then soon 10GB will also not be enough and 12GB may be just enough till "next" gen. Yes, it's only few games but its still stupid that cheaper lower end card runs some games better because it has more VRAM than your more expensive premium card... it's just really, really stupid.

[porina]

14 minutes ago, WereCat said:

You know that Doom Eternal runs at 4k Ultra Nightmare with RT better on RTX 3060 than on RTX 3070 or 3070ti right? 

You know that Forza Horizon 5 is artifacting due to low VRAM at Extreme settings at 1440p and higher on 8GB RTX cards but it runs flawlessly on RTX 3060? And that games runs at fairly high FPS on Extreme even on weaker cards so its not like Extreme settings are a waste of time.

I did not know that, since neither of those games are on my radar. That is a good point, and it helps to have examples like this. I'd certainly would like more vram if it didn't have other impacts that are worse, such as lower bandwidth. It is only one factor of many. Waiting for that 3080 20GB for nearly two years  

 

I do recall people doing testing on which of the many settings in games affects fps how much. Do we need similar for vram? Many games have a built in indicator, but I don't know how accurate those are.

 

I suppose the other half of the equation is just how are game devs tuning their presets? So the suggestion here is that we already have games that end up needing more than 8GB but less than 12GB? Will we need more than 12GB for a 70 tier performance though? 

[pas008]

32 minutes ago, WereCat said:

I agree that Ultra vs High visuals are usualy miniscule and it's most likely not worth the performance hit.

 

I disagree with the defense of the low VRAM.

 

You know that Doom Eternal runs at 4k Ultra Nightmare with RT better on RTX 3060 than on RTX 3070 or 3070ti right? 

You know that Forza Horizon 5 is artifacting due to low VRAM at Extreme settings at 1440p and higher on 8GB RTX cards but it runs flawlessly on RTX 3060? And that games runs at fairly high FPS on Extreme even on weaker cards so its not like Extreme settings are a waste of time.

 

So if 8GB is already starting to be issue even at 1440p then soon 10GB will also not be enough and 12GB may be just enough till "next" gen. Yes, it's only few games but its still stupid that cheaper lower end card runs some games better because it has more VRAM than your more expensive premium card... it's just really, really stupid.

you have a link to this?

[Sir Beregond]

The last time I legitimately (or 'legit' as the kids say) ran out of VRAM and introduced horrendous stuttering to the game as a result was on a 2GB GTX 670 playing Skyrim with too many texture mods around 2012-2013.

 

I do think the 30-series was weird because you hit that weird spot where 16GB sounds awesome for a 3080 instead of 10 or 12, but then you realize that would be a 256-bit card, unless configured to be a 512-bit card, and nobody does that anymore. So you might have more VRAM, but you'd have bandwidth problems once you hit 4k.

 

It's also safe to say Nvidia has definitely stagnated VRAM. Since Fermi (400/500 series), usually every segment doubled VRAM the next gen up until we hit Turing, and even then we had some exceptions with the Titan and x80 Ti class cards. The fact that some segments have not advanced in VRAM capacity since 2016 Pascal is kind of absurd.

 

To document VRAM changes gen to gen, look at the following. (Do note I am basing this off of chip class, not necessarily product naming. Fermi to Kepler, the x80 card fell from high end to mid-range chip until the 3080 for example).

 

• Fermi Midrange: GTX 460/560 - 1GB
• Fermi High-End: GTX 480/580 - 1.5GB
• Fermi Titan: N/A
• Kepler Midrange: GTX 680 - 2GB
• Kepler High-End: GTX 780/780 Ti - 3GB
• Kepler Titan: Titan/Titan Black - 6GB
• Maxwell Midrange: GTX 980 - 4GB
• Maxwell High-End: GTX 980 Ti: 6GB
• Maxwell Titan: Titan X: 12GB
• Pascal Midrange: GTX 1080 - 8GB
• Pascal High-end: GTX 1080 Ti - 11GB
• Pascal Titan: Titan Xp: 12GB
• Turing Midrange: RTX 2080 - 8GB
• Turing High-End: RTX 2080 Ti - 11GB
• Turing Titan: Titan RTX: 24GB
• Ampere Midrange: RTX 3070 - 8GB
• Ampere High-end: RTX 3080/3080 12GB/3080 Ti/3090 - 10GB/12GB/24GB
• Ampere Titan: N/A

Looking at that trend, we see the mid-range stall after Pascal. High end (the Ti cards) also stalled as they were typically half the VRAM of their gen's Titans, but when the Titans stalled at 12GB, Nvidia differentiated them with 11GB. So there was not a gen on gen doubling as before. 

 

Ampere muddies the water a bit. Although called "Titan class", its clear that the 3090/3090Ti as GeForce products were the replacement for the 2080 Ti. In that, it had a doubling of VRAM, just about. There is no Titan card for this generation, but if there was, it should have been a 48GB card. We also see the 80-class cards return to the high-end chip, so could be said the 3080 has a regression from the 1080 Ti and 2080 Ti 11GB. And the 12GB for the 3080 12GB and the 3080 Ti is only a slight improvement on capacity over the 11GB.

 

So yeah, VRAM has definitely stagnated and we should definitely be higher than we are now.

[AnonymousGuy]

2 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

So yeah, VRAM has definitely stagnated and we should definitely be higher than we are now.

It's like system ram....I've been on 32gb for the last 10 years and it still works fine.  I don't think because time goes on that there's an inevitable need for more memory.

 

There's always going to be some Crysis game where a dev said "fuck it" to optimization and loads the entire world of textures when they're not even visible.

[Sir Beregond]

20 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

It's like system ram....I've been on 32gb for the last 10 years and it still works fine.  I don't think because time goes on that there's an inevitable need for more memory.

 

There's always going to be some Crysis game where a dev said "fuck it" to optimization and loads the entire world of textures when they're not even visible.

Yeah, I am not saying it needed to keep doubling. But 8GB was a weird and kinda low number to settle on for majority of mainstream buyers for 3 generations in a row.