8 gb vram on rtx 3070 worth it?

[Fat Cat11997]

I'm looking at getting a 3070 for my 7 7700x build, but it only has 8 gigs of vram. Will that be enough? I've heard that some cards are too slow to take advantage of extra vram, but is the 3070 one of those? 

[WereCat]

Yes, there are games like Last of Us or Hogwards Legacy for example where you simply won't be fine with 8GB of VRAM especially if you want to max out textures for example.

Just get AMD RX 6700 XT or RX 6750 XT instead if you can... unless you absolutely need some of the NVIDIA features.

[RONOTHAN##]

4 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

but it only has 8 gigs of vram. Will that be enough?

Depends on the game. In a lot of AAA games, the answer is "no." 

 

4 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

I've heard that some cards are too slow to take advantage of extra vram, but is the 3070 one of those? 

No, the 3070 is fast enough to run into issues because modern games are using significantly more VRAM than in the past. If you mostly play Indie titles, you can usually get by with 8GB of VRAM, though if you want to play more recent AAA games you can run into issues (The Last Of Us and Jedi: Survivors are the first two to come to mind, though there are others). 

[kitnoman]

It depends on the game you are playing and at what resolution. Is it worth it in 2024? How much will it be? Anything around $200(converted if you're not in US), that's a steal. Personally, if it's more than that, I would start to look at other gpus like 6700xt or even just 6650xt/6600xt.

[8tg]

I don’t get the “worth it” mentality.

Besides the point

 

The 3070 is in a spot where what it’s capable of will be limited by its vram quantity pretty quick before the gpu itself is a limitation. I own a 3070ti, I don’t use it and instead use a 16gb a770 because I play games in 4k. And the amount of times I ran into vram limitations while pulling 90+ fps at max settings in some games was irritating. It’s a very capable GPU paired with a simply inadequate amount of memory.

 

So instead the 3070 and cards like it fit this niche where you have some graphically demanding need that’s low on vram usage, ie esports in 1080/1440p for high refresh rates. Or older games, emulation at high fps, etc.

But for a general purpose use case where you’d want something not so specialized, more vram is better.

So the question becomes, do you fit the niche use case of the 3070? Do you want a fast GPU limited by video memory? Does the vram limit matter to your use case?

If all you do is play CS2 in 1080 aiming for 400fps or whatever, it’s a great choice.

If you’re trying to play a variety of games in assorted resolutions and settings, aiming for an fps target relative to graphical fidelity, get a 12-16gb card instead.

[8tg]

It’s worth mentioning that this and things like the 12gb 4070 are a different situation from a few other cards with vram limits. The 3070 and 4070 are more in line with artificial product segmentation. It’s to create a product gap and direct customers to one or the other peripheral choices. It’s a market tactic most commonly done by cpu manufacturers depending on the generation, it’s why the i5 K skus are always there, but are always kinda mid. If you’re buying a Z series chipset and K sku cpu, just get the i7 because the lower tier options for that suck. An extreme example of this is the i3 7350k…

Nvidia and AMD do it sometimes with gpus. If you’re buying a high end gpu just get the real high end gpu, because the other ones suck. They don’t have to suck, nvidia or amd make them suck so get you to buy the higher end card, or the cheaper to manufacture card.

 

Which is different than say, the R9 fury line which has the same problem of being powerful gpus limited by 4gb of vram. Those cards are limited by the manufacturing limitations of early HBM chips.

And this is different than the 8gb 4060 which purposely exists in the market realm of less demanding titles with high refresh rates in mind. It’s a midrange generalist card, it’s expected to be doing 1080p in popular multiplayer titles.

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

are you buying new or used?

 

if you are buying new just dont and get a used rx 6800(xt) or 3080 for the same price as that new 3070

 

if you are buying used get a 6700xt or 6800 which should be around the same price as a used 3070

[kitnoman]

3070 is actually one of the few GPU in history that the vram can become a bottleneck first before the actual GPU specs can. The previous gpu that has this issue were like 2060 6gb, 1060 3gb and 6gb and those 16 series with 6gb. The problem with these cards were that, processor-wise the graphic settings could still be set higher, but would be forced to turn down simply because of running out of vram. Honestly 3070 should had at least 10gb of vram. But as is, it still worth it depending on how much it is now compared with other gpus. But if your monitor is 4k, no don't buy this. 1440p? look for amd if possible. 1080p, yeah, sad to say, for new titles and if you normally play using high settings or higher, 1080p is your best bet. If your monitor is 1440p and would like to play at that settings, you might need to play around with the settings more on new games.