GTX 980 8GB worth waiting for?

[ultrabeing]

I'm looking to upgrade my system and was wondering whether or not to wait to for the rumored 8GB 980s and if 8GB would really be practical for a single 4k monitor or would the 4GB be enough?

[Godlygamer23]

I personally expect 4K games to eventually get past the 4GB mark. Is it worth it? It's vastly subjective so you'll only get opinion. If a game is texture heavy, then I think 8GB of VRAM will be very useful in games rendered at 4K.

[Pansysk75]

Although it won't make much difference, it will (hopefully) not cost that much more. I don't know, maybe for futureproofing

[matto97]

What about if you plan to do 3 screens at 1080p is it worth paying a bit more to get the 8gb version?

[Guest]

If you buy a single 980 and don't play on going SLI I'd say no. Even a 980 will not max out future games (or indeed current games) at 4k and you will probably have to either turn down some detail or AA, which will result in less VRAM usage. Sure, if you buy 2 or 3 of them it's sensible to fet the 8GB version because you have that much more horsepower behind those 8GB, but not with a single GPU.

 

What about if you plan to do 3 screens at 1080p is it worth paying a bit more to get the 8gb version?

 

That's actually less demanding than 4k, so everything that applies to 4k also applies to 3x 1080p.

[BarisERY]

Nope, you have to understand something about these GPU's with MASSİVE amounts of VRAM is that they are mostly marketing, why i say this? well because the GPU itself is not powerful enough to run something that requires more than 5-6GB's of VRAM even when SLI'd (read this couple of times it may be hard to understand at first)

[Izaya Orihara]

Although it won't make much difference, it will (hopefully) not cost that much more. I don't know, maybe for futureproofing

They will cost at least 150$ extra.

[Sernyhough]

> 1440p yes. 

[maazster]

If you are planning to go SLI and play games at 4k then yes.

[ERSCreeper]

Have fun trying to game on a single GTX 980 @ 4K

[Manny Calavera]

Nope, you have to understand something about these GPU's with MASSİVE amounts of VRAM is that they are mostly marketing, why i say this? well because the GPU itself is not powerful enough to run something that requires more than 5-6GB's of VRAM even when SLI'd (read this couple of times it may be hard to understand at first)

Whats the source of this (dis)Info?

 

[Godlygamer23]

Have fun trying to game on a single GTX 980 @ 4K

It doesn't do THAT horrible. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review

[Nuluvius]

Definitely!

[GoodBytes]

Standard GTX 980 at 4K is fine, due to the compression techniques that the GPU does.

More memory will help you for future games, but depends on your upgrade time cycle. If you upgrade every year, then its a waste of money. If you upgrade every 5 years.. then it could be useful.

 

Of course, it is difficult to measure by assumption. We have to wait and see.

[bob345]

if you arnt trying to run 4k in surround, just get the 4gb card

[WhiteSkyMage]

What about 1440p with MFAA. Will GTX 980 be worth If I want to SLI it later? I heard some people say it's bottlenecking on BF4.

[bossman111]

Nope, you have to understand something about these GPU's with MASSİVE amounts of VRAM is that they are mostly marketing, why i say this? well because the GPU itself is not powerful enough to run something that requires more than 5-6GB's of VRAM even when SLI'd (read this couple of times it may be hard to understand at first)

Hi There,

 

I understand what you're saying but can you show me proof or provide some detail into this information.

It will be much appreciated thanks

[BarisERY]

Hi There,

 

I understand what you're saying but can you show me proof or provide some detail into this information.

It will be much appreciated thanks

 

 

Whats the source of this (dis)Info?

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/1481789/baashas-4k-surround-quad-gtx-titan-black-sc-benchmarks-thread

 

take a look at this and you will see that it takes 4x OC'd Titan Blacks to run something that uses only 5GB's of VRAM(even 4xTB's dont get 60FPS avarge), now you tell me how can 1/2 980(s) run something so intense that it requires more than 5-6GB's of VRAM?

 

another thing you can see in these graphs are that even 4K doesnt use more than 3GB's of VRAM the graphs show 3x4K screens in surround and it only uses 5-5.5GB's of VRam.

[Godlygamer23]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1481789/baashas-4k-surround-quad-gtx-titan-black-sc-benchmarks-thread

take a look at this and you will see that it takes 4x OC'd Titan Blacks to run something that uses only 5GB's of VRAM(even 4xTB's dont get 60FPS avarge), now you tell me how can 1/2 980(s) run something so intense that it requires more than 5-6GB's of VRAM?

another thing you can see in these graphs are that even 4K doesnt use more than 3GB's of VRAM the graphs show 3x4K screens in surround and it only uses 5-5.5GB's of VRam.

I hope you also realize four way SLI is extremely unoptimized and can also reduce frame rate.

[Manny Calavera]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1481789/baashas-4k-surround-quad-gtx-titan-black-sc-benchmarks-thread

 

take a look at this and you will see that it takes 4x OC'd Titan Blacks to run something that uses only 5GB's of VRAM(even 4xTB's dont get 60FPS avarge), now you tell me how can 1/2 980(s) run something so intense that it requires more than 5-6GB's of VRAM?

 

another thing you can see in these graphs are that even 4K doesnt use more than 3GB's of VRAM the graphs show 3x4K screens in surround and it only uses 5-5.5GB's of VRam.

yup. but thats not because only texture making a strain on gpu. thats because 3 times the resolution, or 4 times for UHD

 

gpu is not enough powerful for game, and not for vram usage

--->that doesnt mean you cannot mod game with textures to actually use it all <---

 

its not marketing gimmick. people said same for gtx 770 4gb. they also said things like "not enough bus width" etc...

 

it can use it.

[BarisERY]

yup. but thats not because only texture making a strain on gpu. thats because 3 times the resolution, or 4 times for UHD

 

gpu is not enough powerful for game, and not for vram usage

--->that doesnt mean you cannot mod game with textures to actually use it all <---

 

its not marketing gimmick. people said same for gtx 770 4gb. they also said things like "not enough bus width" etc...

 

it can.

Im not saying it cant use 8GB's of VRam im saying that by the time it does use 8GB's of VRam the card(s) wont be able to keep up.

[BarisERY]

I hope you also realize four way SLI is extremely unoptimized and can also reduce frame rate.

1/20 of games, yes it may reduce frame rate, but 19/20 of games it actually adds performance not much but still it does perform better than 3-Way. What you are doing right now is just trying to find a way out because i gave you proof and proved you wrong...

[Manny Calavera]

Im not saying it cant use 8GB's of VRam im saying that by the time it doeuse 8GB's of VRam the card(s) wont be able to keep up.

again,... yes i agree with you, but that depends on game and resolution NOT on filled up ram.

 

you can have 4k + 8k + 16k textures, lots of object in one place or fast travel through map, game is constantly pre-loading textures, it NEVER loads textures on the fly because thats too slow, and when it does it, its is because it doesnt have enough vram so frames drop under 10 fps

i can dig out benchmarks of 2gb vs 4gb gtx 770 that 2gb drops down to like 3 fps while 4gb still plays normally.

 

so since 980 8gb is more than 2 times more powerful than 7870 ( 7870 crossfire is about a titans worth of oopmh)

980 is like more powerful than 780ti also

760 is closer to its power

are you saying that 7870 / gtx 760 cant use 4gb because its too weak?

[WhiteSkyMage]

If you use 4GB Vram with GTX 980, you would probably be bottlenecked. Use 8GB. Maybe u won't use it all, but you will use at least 5-6 of it, or let's say max 7 if you put up some high AA... That on 1440p screen...

[bossman111]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1481789/baashas-4k-surround-quad-gtx-titan-black-sc-benchmarks-thread

 

take a look at this and you will see that it takes 4x OC'd Titan Blacks to run something that uses only 5GB's of VRAM(even 4xTB's dont get 60FPS avarge), now you tell me how can 1/2 980(s) run something so intense that it requires more than 5-6GB's of VRAM?

 

another thing you can see in these graphs are that even 4K doesnt use more than 3GB's of VRAM the graphs show 3x4K screens in surround and it only uses 5-5.5GB's of VRam.

 

Okay so after going over the link you provided I see that the 4 way SLI Titan Blacks, whilst using a 6480×3840(Which is about almost a 7k resolution) resolution across 3x Dell UP2414Q it maxes between 5.3 GB - 6.038 GB of RAM.

Now considering the these GPU's only have a max capacity of 6 GBs of VRAM it is quite easy to see that these GPU's did in fact max out between 88% - 100%.

What this tells me is that if Nvidia were to make a 980 Ti (Hoping that its the GM200  ) then it would quite certainly max out and use a majority of its VRAM in SLI on most games (depending on whether those games are SLI compatible). 

 

At the moment if you play BF4 with Ultra High Settings with AA and Motion Blur on I believe you can use easily between 2.5GB - 3.5GB of RAM (but don't quote me on that, I haven't had a chance to test it but I read it on an article).

 

 

 

I'm looking to upgrade my system and was wondering whether or not to wait to for the rumored 8GB 980s and if 8GB would really be practical for a single 4k monitor or would the 4GB be enough?

 

So to answer your question ultrabeing, the GTX 980's are more than capable of playing at relatively ultra high settings in 4k (with AA and some other features turned off) but if you were to wait for the rumored 980Ti (GM200) then most definitely you will be able to max out mostly all games and probably some future ones as well at ultra High settings