Interesting Old Reddit Post Regarding VRAM

[WallacEngineering]

I got a Notification pointing to an old Reddit post from someone working at AMD Radeon 10 years ago. It provides us with some useful insight into why each company chooses a certain amount of VRAM for a certain product.

 

Before you begin commenting about "Oh these companies are stupid and didn't give us enough VRAM..." - I agree, however keep in mind that development of RTX 4000/ RX 7000 began as soon as RTX 3000/ RX 6000 series finished releasing all initial products, back when 8 or 12GB of VRAM was still plenty for the vast majority of gamers. This does not excuse the problem, but you should give credit where it is due...

 

COPY-PASTE FROM OLD REDDIT THREAD:

 

I work for AMD doing product marketing in the Radeon division. I can answer your question:

 

1) Memory quantity is initially chosen by us, and is influenced only by two factors. First, how much it costs to equip every product sold with XYZ quantity of memory. Secondly, how much memory the board can physically accept with respect to the capacity of each chip and the space available on the board. We let partners add more if they feel like footing the bill.

 

2) Bus width determines how much data can be moved into memory per 1Hz of memory clockspeed. The clockspeed determines how many times that can happen per second. At any given clockspeed, a 384-bit bus will be able to move 50% more data than the same RAM on a 256-bit bus.

 

3) The width of the bus does not determine how much RAM can be installed, or how much RAM can be utilized. As an aside, it *does* determine how the memory chips must be installed on the board (e.g. in groups of 2 or 3). The number of textures (and their size) and the number of special effects ("shaders") determines how much VRAM is used. Generally speaking, the better the game looks, the more VRAM it will use.

 

4) The priority of GPU performance is: compute shaders* > memory bandwidth > GPU clockspeed > memory quantity. The importance of memory quantity and GPU clock flip if the VRAM is < 2GB.

 

We equip our high-end boards with 3GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, and let partners add more. NVIDIA's guidance was to use 2GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus. The end result is that at resolutions equal to or higher than 2560x1440, Radeon is better performer because the Kepler architecture runs out of VRAM *and* hits the limit of its memory bus. 

 

We can presume NVIDIA made this decision because most gamers are playing at 1080p, which doesn't highlight the limits of their RAM configuration. Our data suggests that our high-end customers are choosing higher resolutions, e.g. 1440p or 1600p (or Eyefinity), so we built the boards to fit those needs.

 

\* NOTE: We call them Stream Processors, NVIDIA calls them CUDA Cores.

 

//EDIT: Removed statement irrelevant to an example.

 

SOURCE:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/wtew1/could_someone_explain_the_significance_of_amds/c5gdv0v?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[maartendc]

I mean, yes, it is obvious that more goes into engineering something as complex as a GPU than most consumers understand. But the simple fact remains, VRAM is not an issue, until you run out of it.

 

I would say the hardware is even more complex than most "tech Youtubers" understand. Most reviewers have a pretty limited understanding of how the hardware actually works, they just run some benchmarks.

 

The only exception would be Digital Foundry. Whenever I listen to their podcast, I am amazed by how much they know about how games, game engines and 3D visuals are actually made and work. But then strangely they are mostly a software / games channel, whereas they probably understand more about the hardware than most hardware reviewers.

 

The only other exception is maybe Gamers Nexus. They do a lot of in depth testing. But even with them, I am sometimes not sure if they understand the full picture of how everything works.

[ewitte]

8 hours ago, maartendc said:

VRAM is not an issue, until you run out of it.

 

That has always been true the problem is putting borderline amounts on purpose so that the life of the card is limited.  With the new generation ports starting it is happening in most of the latest titles after 1 generation!

[ipkpjersi]

VRAM generally isn't an issue unless you are talking about gaming at resolutions higher than 1080p, or have high-resolution textures, or have machine-learning workloads, etc.

 

For me personally, I've recently been getting more into machine-learning type stuff so like, even with 12GB of VRAM I feel like it's enough, like it's going to be a never-ending journey of me always wanting more VRAM lol

[WallacEngineering]

12 hours ago, ipkpjersi said:

VRAM generally isn't an issue unless you are talking about gaming at resolutions higher than 1080p, or have high-resolution textures, or have machine-learning workloads, etc.

 

For me personally, I've recently been getting more into machine-learning type stuff so like, even with 12GB of VRAM I feel like it's enough, like it's going to be a never-ending journey of me always wanting more VRAM lol

 

Thats the thing, 1080p these days is considered "entry-level" and 1440p is quickly becoming the standard.

 

With modern games using more and more VRAM, even 12GB is already being maxed out on 1440p with Ultra settings.

 

This is exactly why Nvidia is releasing a 16GB version of the RTX 4060-Ti in a month or so, regardless of the fact its a useless and terrible GPU in general for far too much money.

 

So, to be honest, 16GB+ needs to become the new standard for RTX 5000/ RX 8000 series. And for bow we just do what we can with what we have.

 

I personally upgraded to the 7900-XTX and with 24GB of VRAM I have nothing to worry about, however if you want to play the latest titles at 1440p Ultra or 4K resolution, I can only suggest cards with 16GB of VRAM or more.