Is 2GB of VRAM enough?

[Guest GRRigger]

what do you mean?

direct x11 is fully supported on amd cards series 7000, yet on gtx 600 and 700 not fully.

[I'm Batman]

camaron?...

you dont even know who he is just goddamit..

[montyrule]

1080p fine 2560 will struggle and if you are going to be doing 2+ monitors might struggle 

[R4STABAN]

2gb is not fine. Almost all modern games will use over 2gb, even at 1080.

 

Explain how my 680s play those games with only 2GB vram

 

It's an easy one so you don't get any clues.

[Keystone Nyan Cat]

At 1080p, its fine. If you are running surround with 3x 1080p monitors, then it will be an issue...

[Dravic]

At 1080p, its fine. If you are running surround with 3x 1080p monitors, then it will be an issue...

 

Again, today.

 

And you would run at -almost- filled vram most of the time. Now consoles have 4-5GB RAM for games, what do you think they will use it for? Textures.

 

What if the amount of games with 2k+ textures raises quickly in next few months? Will you tell everybody to return 2GB cards because they can't run anything at playable framerates because of vram bottleneck?

[Vitalius]

Again, today.

 

And you would run at -almost- filled vram most of the time. Now consoles have 4-5GB RAM for games, what do you think they will use it for? Textures.

 

What if the amount of games with 2k+ textures raises quickly in next few months? Will you tell everybody to return 2GB cards because they can't run anything at playable framerates because of vram bottleneck?

They will use it for textures when in closed areas, however I doubt there will be many with the new games (mostly).

I am willing to bet that most of that VRAM will be used by Draw Distance. 

[_ASSASSIN_]

you dont even know who he is just goddamit..

and? Is it my fault that I'm ignorant like most people until I am feed information?

[_ASSASSIN_]

direct x11 is fully supported on amd cards series 7000, yet on gtx 600 and 700 not fully.

well, I didn't know that, interesting

[Dravic]

well, I didn't know that, interesting

 

You now know nothing for GRRigger spreads bullcrap.

 

DirectX 11 is fully supported for years now by Nvidia and AMD GPUs. It's the DirectX 11.1 not supported fully (only software by Nvidia and AMD also hardware) but then hell why would you support something that has no future? Until they make DirectX 12 a next big deal on some Windows, Microsoft has nothing on his hands really. Directx 11.2 being exclusive to Windows 8? PFff i am not switching to that crap and neither will switch 90% of Windows clients until they are absolutely forced to and so far not even 1 game reported making use of DX 11.2 (BF4 is rumored to use it partially).

 

lol.

[Guest GRRigger]

You now know nothing for GRRigger spreads bullcrap.

 

DirectX 11 is fully supported for years now by Nvidia and AMD GPUs. It's the DirectX 11.1 not supported fully (only software by Nvidia and AMD also hardware) but then hell why would you support something that has no future? Until they make DirectX 12 a next big deal on some Windows, Microsoft has nothing on his hands really. Directx 11.2 being exclusive to Windows 8? PFff i am not switching to that crap and neither will switch 90% of Windows clients until they are absolutely forced to and so far not even 1 game reported making use of DX 11.2 (BF4 is rumored to use it partially).

 

lol.

then dx 11.1. nvidia does not   fully support it

and dx 11.2 you are talking about has nothing to do with it

[simtransporter]

It all depends on the resoultion you are gaming at at. The higher the resolution the more vram you need.

For 1080p gaming today 2GB is fine. If you are running at higher resolutions or you plan to use a multi-monitor setup than you will need more vram.

[Dravic]

It all depends on the resoultion you are gaming at at. The higher the resolution the more vram you need.

For 1080p gaming today 2GB is fine. If you are running at higher resolutions or you plan to use a multi-monitor setup than you will need more vram.

 

Yet another person.

 

Hey do you think he buys this GPU for today or he buys it for next few years? Can you at least try to move your brain cells a bit? If 2GB is barely enough today, what will it be in a year? It will be below minimum.

[Bluuz]

Explain how my 680s play those games with only 2GB vram

 

It's an easy one so you don't get any clues.

Running out of vram doesn't "stop" you from playing, it just forces your gpu to switch over to system ram, which slows it down. 

Not sure about your library, but I'm seeing 2.7gb usage on Witcher 2 and 2.9gb on Skyrim. 

[R4STABAN]

Running out of vram doesn't "stop" you from playing, it just forces your gpu to switch over to system ram, which slows it down. 

 

I take it you haven't saturated your vram? Because it does stop you from playing.

 

I have forced full vram saturation to see what kinds of settings I could run with 2gb @3x1080p.

 

Frames were already dropping off a cliff because the gpus weren't powerful enough, so there was no point to the test, I was just curious.

[stevv]

So unless your a graphics hog ... 2GB would be fine.

You can eat up the 2GB @ 1080p easily with High texture.

Most current games are designed to work with the 2GB at the moment. They can turn it up if they wanted to with higher textures without extra polygon count, but they probably won't make it a requirement anytime in the next few years.

It wasn't that long ago when Battlefield breached the 1.5GB (recall Falcon $10K pc with the 2 x GTX590's that got tanked on a single 2560x1600 monitor... )... and people where all saying 1GB was enough. :rolleyes:

edit: I'm happy that I got the 2GB when everybody was getting 1GB, and now I have 4GB and ready to max that out with the next games and 3D...

[Lil Chillbil]

I am planning on ditching this 660 in about a year because I currently have 3 led 1080p monitors that I am going to be gaming on in surround on their way to my house.

 

 

given I play older titles a lot like 

 

Call of duty 4

Battlefield 1942

etc.

[Tr3vor]

The way I see it is that games optimize how much VRAM is used by how much VRAM your card has to an extent. That extent is when you just flat out don't have enough VRAM for the basic game stuff and you get like 2fps. I've had a 1GB 550Ti and now have a 3gb 7970Ghz. On Crysis 2 the game never used more than 800mb on the 550Ti maxed out @ 1080p (framerate was ass btw, but not "out of vram" ass, more like "GPU can't handle it" slowdown, there is a difference. no VRAM left causes the game to be stuttery, not enough GPU power gives a more consist framerate in my experiences.) and on the 7970 it uses over 1.75gb @ 1080p maxed out. 

 

I think that 2GB is plenty for 1080p gaming for now. You say that the consoles have 4-5GB of memory to work with, keep in mind thats also system memory. If games nowdays take 3-4GB of system ram, that leaves 1 or 2GB of RAM for video on the consoles, so they aren't gonna be pushing any kind ridiculous textures or draw distances that today's cards can't keep up with anyway.

 

 

Also, I'd think that the AMD cards would see a bit of the optimization from the consoles using GCN based video hardware. Since Devs will be probably porting from console to PC (or maybe an AMD equipped PCs to console) They'd know how to better optimized for that general architecture. 

 

BTW I also was playing Skyrim with and without the High Res texture pack on my 550Ti @ 1080p on high settings, textures maxed out. No noticeable frame rate difference.

[Vitalius]

The way I see it is that games optimize how much VRAM is used by how much VRAM your card has to an extent. That extent is when you just flat out don't have enough VRAM for the basic game stuff and you get like 2fps. I've had a 1GB 550Ti and now have a 3gb 7970Ghz. On Crysis 2 the game never used more than 800mb on the 550Ti maxed out @ 1080p (framerate was ass btw, but not "out of vram" ass, more like "GPU can't handle it" slowdown, there is a difference. no VRAM left causes the game to be stuttery, not enough GPU power gives a more consist framerate in my experiences.) and on the 7970 it uses over 1.75gb @ 1080p maxed out. 

 

I think that 2GB is plenty for 1080p gaming for now. You say that the consoles have 4-5GB of memory to work with, keep in mind thats also system memory. If games nowdays take 3-4GB of system ram, that leaves 1 or 2GB of RAM for video on the consoles, so they aren't gonna be pushing any kind ridiculous textures or draw distances that today's cards can't keep up with anyway.

 

 

Also, I'd think that the AMD cards would see a bit of the optimization from the consoles using GCN based video hardware. Since Devs will be probably porting from console to PC (or maybe an AMD equipped PCs to console) They'd know how to better optimized for that general architecture. 

 

BTW I also was playing Skyrim with and without the High Res texture pack on my 550Ti @ 1080p on high settings, textures maxed out. No noticeable frame rate difference.

You have not been keeping up with the console's specs. That is fine though.

The consoles each have a total of 8GB of RAM. The PS4 has 8GB of GDDR5 RAM and the XB1 has 8GB of DDR3 RAM.

The PS4 has, at most, 3.5GB of that RAM dedicated to the OS and other operations. Meaning that at least 4.5GB is left dedicated to the APU to use for games/video. 1GB of that RAM is flex RAM, meaning that the games can take it from the OS when necessary. This is hard to program for though and will likely show itself more in later games while being exclusive to first party developers early on until third party developers get the hang of it.

That means the games can have up to 5.5GB of VRAM available to them and a minimum of 4.5GB of VRAM.

Draw Distances and amazing textures, here we come. On PC, I mean, of course.

So yeah. It will definitely push current generation GPU's VRAM limitations.

[Tr3vor]

You have not been keeping up with the console's specs. That is fine though.

The consoles each have a total of 8GB of RAM. The PS4 has 8GB of GDDR5 RAM and the XB1 has 8GB of DDR3 RAM.

The PS4 has, at most, 3.5GB of that RAM dedicated to the OS and other operations. Meaning that at least 4.5GB is left dedicated to the APU to use for games/video. 1GB of that RAM is flex RAM, meaning that the games can take it from the OS when necessary. This is hard to program for though and will likely show itself more in later games while being exclusive to first party developers early on until third party developers get the hang of it.

That means the games can have up to 5.5GB of VRAM available to them and a minimum of 4.5GB of VRAM.

Draw Distances and amazing textures, here we come. On PC, I mean, of course.

So yeah. It will definitely push current generation GPU's VRAM limitations.

 

I have been keeping up with the console specs, I was just throwing out a quick estimation. 

 

you mean a maximum of 4.5GB VRAM?

 

What about the RAM for the rest of the game? all of your game isn't just VRAM. that'll take at least 3GB right there from your VRAM.

[_ASSASSIN_]

You now know nothing for GRRigger spreads bullcrap.

 

DirectX 11 is fully supported for years now by Nvidia and AMD GPUs. It's the DirectX 11.1 not supported fully (only software by Nvidia and AMD also hardware) but then hell why would you support something that has no future? Until they make DirectX 12 a next big deal on some Windows, Microsoft has nothing on his hands really. Directx 11.2 being exclusive to Windows 8? PFff i am not switching to that crap and neither will switch 90% of Windows clients until they are absolutely forced to and so far not even 1 game reported making use of DX 11.2 (BF4 is rumored to use it partially).

 

lol.

holy shit are forums confusing as fuck. Thanks for clearing up things

[Vitalius]

I have been keeping up with the console specs, I was just throwing out a quick estimation. 

 

you mean a maximum of 4.5GB VRAM?

 

What about the RAM for the rest of the game? all of your game isn't just VRAM. that'll take at least 3GB right there from your VRAM.

Ah I see what you mean now. You are talking about the normal system RAM that games usually take up. I did not even consider that. Hmm, frustrating.

No, I mean a maximum of 5.5GB VRAM with a minimum of 4.5GB VRAM. Though that is assuming, as you said, that all of it is VRAM, regardless, up to 5.5GB can be available to the game at any one time and the same it true with a minimum of 4.5GB of RAM.

Of the PC games that use lots of RAM, very few pass 2GB of RAM. Crysis 3, Metro: Last Light, and other extreme exceptions are these. I would expect console games to be more optimized to use less RAM for normal operations aside from VRAM. 

I would guess, at the absolute most, they would use around 1-1.5GB of the 4.5-5.5GB for said operations and the rest for VRAM leaving 3-4.5GB for it. That is still kind of a hell of a lot of VRAM.

[Dravic]

Ah I see what you mean now. You are talking about the normal system RAM that games usually take up. I did not even consider that. Hmm, frustrating.

No, I mean a maximum of 5.5GB VRAM with a minimum of 4.5GB VRAM. Though that is assuming, as you said, that all of it is VRAM, regardless, up to 5.5GB can be available to the game at any one time and the same it true with a minimum of 4.5GB of RAM.

Of the PC games that use lots of RAM, very few pass 2GB of RAM. Crysis 3, Metro: Last Light, and other extreme exceptions are these. I would expect console games to be more optimized to use less RAM for normal operations aside from VRAM. 

I would guess, at the absolute most, they would use around 1-1.5GB of the 4.5-5.5GB for said operations and the rest for VRAM leaving 3-4.5GB for it. That is still kind of a hell of a lot of VRAM.

Memory on consoles is more complicated, for there is hUMA, unified memory etc.

There is no longer vram and ram. Ps4 has 8gb of gddr5 and so the apu can use it however it needs (but there will be limits for system and limits for games etc.).

If game needs textures, apu is loading textures into ram. If apu needs to hold some temporary file, it just writes to ram and reads later.

Very complex and don't worry, it will make programming easier for the consoles but its not magic, just technology, and ram sharing will be separated on pc like usually.

[bcredeur97]

i still dont understand crossfire and SLI fully... When you hook up two 2GB cards why do you only get 2GB, why not 4GB??? where does 1 card's memory go? is it just not used? if so why is it not used? sorry for being off-topic but man i want this cleared up in my head

[_ASSASSIN_]

i still dont understand crossfire and SLI fully... When you hook up two 2GB cards why do you only get 2GB, why not 4GB??? where does 1 card's memory go? is it just not used? if so why is it not used? sorry for being off-topic but man i want this cleared up in my head

each card get an allocated 2GB, 4GB isn't shared between the 2 GPU's