when a GTX1060 is not a GTX1060 - the VRAM problem

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, Fetzie said:

Yeah, now they're misrepresenting the power of the card. It isn't only 3GB of VRAM that has been cut - the card is missing a shader unit, and the core and memory run at lower speeds (obviously the memory is also on a lower bus width due to using less chips too).

 

Labelling this the GTX 1060 3GB leads the buyer to believe that it performs like a 1060. And it performs anywhere between 5 and 10 FPS lower than the "full" 1060 according to guru3d.

Sorry missed this one on multiquote but consider my reply above as also mostly applying as my re: to this.

[bob345]

I dont see why people are making such a huge deal about this. 90% of the people that buy this card will be perfectly fine with 3 gb.  Even in modern games its not that big of an issue. Dont buy a lower tier card and expect it to max out every title you throw at it. Thats just delusional. If i can still deal with a 2gb 770 and run newer titles perfectly fine at 1080p, im sure many people will be fine with a 3gb 1060.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

it's not even about that

 

do you recall the Fiji with it's 4GB of HBM1 - everyone from AMD and their dog were adamant that 4GB is enough - it was not

4GB is not enough for what? 4K? I'm not even sure about that considering the GTX 980 Ti and the Titan XM weren't all that more better despite having more VRAM.

 

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

do you recall the whole debacle surrounding the GTX970's VRAM allocation?

Yeah and I'm thoroughly convinced most people who still harp about that don't know what's going on and are so anal retentive that you can stick a coal up their butt and get a diamond out an hour later.

 

Besides, NVIDIA can't put 4GB on the GTX 1060. It's not equipped for that. The GP106 only has a maximum of six memory controllers. 4GB/6 is 682.667 MB. Tell me where I can find RAM modules with that size, because last I checked, you're either going to have 512MB or 1024MB. But is 6GB really that much more pricey than 3GB? Well... Newegg sells 8GB of RAM for $33 and 16GB of RAM for $60... and considering this is high performance RAM, I'd say $50 on the consumer is about right.

 

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

it's not the matter of the price, it's the matter of what you're selling and towards what segment

I saw the same bullshit excuses from the raging AMD fanboys, and now I'm seeing same bullshit excuses from naysayers and apologists

But most people agree that the card itself is fine, it's just poorly named.

 

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

the GTX1060 3GB is artificially strangled by the lack of VRAM in certain situation in current games - this card is within 5% of the 6GB model, but goes down to 30% when constrained by VRAM

Up to 30%. Looking around at benchmarks, the 1060 3GB is getting within spitting distance of the 6GB for a lot of other games. It also starts to really choke when you push higher resolutions but at this market segment, you're not looking at a gamer who has a 1440p screen or larger. This is more for the 1080p resolution people which the 3GB, for the most part, performs almost as good as the 6GB version.

 

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

again, and I can't fucking stress this enough, what about next batch of games, what about DX12, Vulkan - those will eat up VRAM

DX12 and Vulkan by themselves do not "eat up VRAM". It's just going to be par for the course that games will continue to push the higher end GPUs. But nobody knows what the future really holds and so you just have to look at today. I mean what, were you expecting a GTX 680 or Radeon HD 7950 to hold up to anything today at 1440p on maximum settings?

 

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

RotTR is a case study and a herald of what's to come - 3GB for 1080p will not be enough

And RotTR is one game out of many other benchmarks available to the world. This is like saying Ashes of the Singularity (and only Ashes of the Singularity) is solid proof that NVIDIA is screwed in DX12, even though it's been show every other DX12/Vulkan benchmark doesn't exhibit that level of disparity.

 

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

tone down quality settings? then excuse me .. why did you spend 200$ on it when you could've very well kept your money and play with the integrated graphics at 720p

no!? 

I'm not the one thinking that getting a $200 video card means I can crank up everything and expect smooth performance. It's a $200 video card, you don't want to compromise on your graphics settings? Then why did you compromise on your choice of GPU? If you think the only options you have for graphics quality is low and maximum, you really shouldn't be on a PC enthusiast forum. Go back to whatever PC Master Race forum you came from.

 

1 hour ago, zMeul said:

a lot of people use GFE and a lot of those people use GFE to set the games they play for them

how long until GFE will push GTX1060 6GB settings for 3GB card owners? since you know ... nVidia thinks it's the same card 

Uh, what? You think that GFE looks up the card name and goes "oh well this is the same"? You really do lack the know-how in how all of this works out.

[Yoinkerman]

so how is it when you don't crank the settings?

[shdowhunt60]

3 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

And that is a perfectly reasonable recommendation (specially 470 > 1060). But ultimately there is such a thing as a tech saavy but budget consumer (i.e. most of this forum) that can decide "I rather have the horsepower instead of the vram" and opt for the 1060 for something like high refresh rate 1080p

Thing is, is what's the cheapest G-sync panel out there? I don't think I've seen one go south of maybe $350. You can get a Freesync panel for as much as a $100. 144hz Freesync panels are like $230. So, I don't know, if I was being budget saavy (and I actually have done this, I've got my Freesync panel, and am just waiting on my 470), that's the route I would go.

[Misanthrope]

27 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Thing is, is what's the cheapest G-sync panel out there? I don't think I've seen one go south of maybe $350. You can get a Freesync panel for as much as a $100. 144hz Freesync panels are like $230. So, I don't know, if I was being budget saavy (and I actually have done this, I've got my Freesync panel, and am just waiting on my 470), that's the route I would go.

Sure there are trade offs for both sides and that's certainly one. It's ridiculous that Nvidia refuses to release cheaper G-sync screens when we fucking know they can (Wendell from Tech Syndicate showed this by getting a Gsync laptop screen to do freesync no issues)

 

But then again a good screen should last several builds, 8 or more years easily I can potentially see the reasoning behind a higher price tag.

[shdowhunt60]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

Sure there are trade offs for both sides and that's certainly one. It's ridiculous that Nvidia refuses to release cheaper G-sync screens when we fucking know they can (Wendell from Tech Syndicate showed this by getting a Gsync laptop screen to do freesync no issues)

 

But then again a good screen should last several builds, 8 or more years easily I can potentially see the reasoning behind a higher price tag.

Fair enough, but when you're like me and you work at McDonald's for 30 hours a week, you can't exactly justify the purchase a $4-5-600 purchases no matter how much of a long term investment it is. It's best to buy what's cheap and disposable in the immediate future, and to phase out what you have later on.

[Misanthrope]

2 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Fair enough, but when you're like me and you work at McDonald's for 30 hours a week, you can't exactly justify the purchase a $4-5-600 purchases no matter how much of a long term investment it is. It's best to buy what's cheap and disposable in the immediate future, and to phase out what you have later on.

Yeah your case would be spot on for a 470 and a cheap 1080p freesync display.

[shdowhunt60]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

Yeah your case would be spot on for a 470 and a cheap 1080p freesync display.

Yeah, hell, the PC itself was a HP Z420 I got for $200 with a E5-1620, 12gb of RAM, and a 2tb hard drive. I don't call it "The Pauper King" for nothing.

[Carclis]

11 hours ago, Bhav said:

Im pretty sure this happens all the time. Its not hard to research a cards performance and reviews and make a decision on whether or not to purchase it based on that.

 

Yours, and other peoples reasons for simply not liking the card are pretty weak tbh. If you dont like something, then dont buy it and move on.

Right now there are some reviews comparing the 3 and 6GB cards but the launch has mostly gone under the radar. Who knows what will happen in 6 months time? Do you expect reviewers and tech sites to benchmark both the 3 and 6GB cards when a new game comes out?

 

10 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

The naming convention is unintuitive and unclear.

 

Kinda like when the R9 280x was faster than the R9 285 which also was launched after the 280x making it even more confusing.

 

Oh wait, could it be that this other GPU company also has a stupid fucking naming scheme? Say it isn't sooo!!!!

They are both failures IMO.

[Mira Yurizaki]

18 minutes ago, Carclis said:

They are both failures IMO.

Their product and marketing teams certainly are. As my old coworker used to say, marketers are the "obfuscators of truth". It sounds less dirty than "liars".

[ConnorDahne]

Can I just say I'm proud of zmuel??
You've really come a long way in the last couple months.

No sarcasm.

[Rohit Jackdaw]

How is this a tech news post ? Click bait title....lol. Btw this is common sense. People can understand that 3GB won't be sufficient for 1080P AAA titles. I was honestly expecting a 970 like scandal when I clicked the post.

[VerticalDiscussions]

Hope they make a "gimp" video about this one :p, like the one for the 970 hehe.

[samcool55]

In every new Nvidia generation there has to be a card with a VRAM issue...

 

Well let's hope paying too much for an rx 480 8gb will be worth it in a few years.

[Notional]

21 hours ago, zMeul said:

when this card was announced, I had a head to head with couple of people who said 3GB of VRAM is quite enough for 1080p gaming - my reasoning is that while that can be true for some games, you don't buy a card for couple of months then toss it in the bin, you make an investment for couple of years; especially for the market segment this card is tailored for, people that don't have much cash to spend on PC components

This is literally the argument I've had since the launch of the 700 series. It was true then and true now. The VRAM usage only goes up, as textures gets higher resolution, and as we get more unique textures on the screen at any given point. Because textures has such a miniscule impact on performance, you can  really use all there is.

As such I never quite understood why there even was a 4GB 480 model. Should have been 8GB only, as several games need more than 4GB today already.

 

3GB. That wasn't even enough when the 700 series launched. What a joke Nvidia.

[Misanthrope]

18 minutes ago, Notional said:

This is literally the argument I've had since the launch of the 700 series. It was true then and true now. The VRAM usage only goes up, as textures gets higher resolution, and as we get more unique textures on the screen at any given point. Because textures has such a miniscule impact on performance, you can  really use all there is.

As such I never quite understood why there even was a 4GB 480 model. Should have been 8GB only, as several games need more than 4GB today already.

 

3GB. That wasn't even enough when the 700 series launched. What a joke Nvidia.

Again even today the 780 is mostly ok in all games. What it cannot max out amounts to 2 or 3 settings at the most with very little loss of visual fidelity. Sorry but the reality of the card is basically the exact opposite of what you're saying here: It has been ok for years already. This card (1060 3gb) shouldn't be expected to be ok for as many years simply because it isn't sold as a flagship or high end card. And even then it will basically be ok at medium texture and AA settings even 2 or 3 years down the line.

 

You and zmeul desperately want to pretend this is a tremendous problem when it's just a kind of shitty naming convention at worst.

[Notional]

6 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Again even today the 780 is mostly ok in all games. What it cannot max out amounts to 2 or 3 settings at the most with very little loss of visual fidelity. Sorry but the reality of the card is basically the exact opposite of what you're saying here: It has been ok for years already. This card shouldn't be expected to be ok for as many years simply because it isn't sold as a flagship or high end card. And even then it will basically be ok at medium texture and AA settings even 2 or 3 years down the line.

 

You and zmeul desperately want to pretend this is a tremendous problem when it's just a kind of shitty naming convention at worst.

Depends on how you define "mostly ok". Take Rise of the Tomb Raider. With only 3GB of vram, you would have to choose medium textures. Look at the difference here (especially the mud on the left)

http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/alt/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-texture-quality-interactive-comparison-002-very-high-vs-medium-alt.html

Also look how blurry the painting is on this one:

http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/alt/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-texture-quality-interactive-comparison-004-very-high-vs-medium-alt.html

 

And it only costs 1-2 fps at max.

 

 

Of course if you have enough VRAM. If not, then massive stutter will happen. In 2016, 3GB or anything lower than 6GB simply doesn't make any sense on even the mid end market. 2 years ago people claimed they would never use more than 2-3GB. Today you basically need more than 4GB even on low mid end. This will only be worse as time goes by,

[Misanthrope]

14 minutes ago, Notional said:

Depends on how you define "mostly ok". Take Rise of the Tomb Raider. With only 3GB of vram, you would have to choose medium textures. Look at the difference here (especially the mud on the left)

http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/alt/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-texture-quality-interactive-comparison-002-very-high-vs-medium-alt.html

Also look how blurry the painting is on this one:

http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/alt/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-texture-quality-interactive-comparison-004-very-high-vs-medium-alt.html

 

And it only costs 1-2 fps at max.

 -pic-

 

Of course if you have enough VRAM. If not, then massive stutter will happen. In 2016, 3GB or anything lower than 6GB simply doesn't make any sense on even the mid end market. 2 years ago people claimed they would never use more than 2-3GB. Today you basically need more than 4GB even on low mid end. This will only be worse as time goes by,

So an Nvidia card doesn't does as good as an AMD card in an AMD game, gee I'm so surprised. And it's still only 1 fucking game. 2 at the most. Most developers that are not AMD biased actually optimize their textures to look a lot better using a lot less space i.e. Witcher 3.

 

You get what you pay for for midrange cars: in the case of this one it's a very specific limitation on very few games (Because you can't see the future if anything, we already see that you where wrong about the 780) and in the case of the 470 you get a lot less performance on a lot more games due to simply lack of horse power.

 

Normal people around here see that there's advantages and disadvantages about either card as we discussed in this very thread. Then there's you and zmeul just driving a narrative.

 

 

[Notional]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

So an Nvidia card doesn't does as good as an AMD card in an AMD game, gee I'm so surprised. And it's still only 1 fucking game. 2 at the most. Most developers that are not AMD biased actually optimize their textures to look a lot better using a lot less space i.e. Witcher 3.

 

You get what you pay for for midrange cars: in the case of this one it's a very specific limitation on very few games (Because you can't see the future if anything, we already see that you where wrong about the 780) and in the case of the 470 you get a lot less performance on a lot more games due to simply lack of horse power.

 

Normal people around here see that there's advantages about either card as we discussed in this very thread. Then there's you and zmeul just driving a narrative.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is an NVidia sponsored title with some GameWorks effects (HBAO+ and VXAO for instance). Why do you think it's one of the worst DX12 implemented games out there? So yeah, idk what you are talking about.

 

Well you have Watch Dogs, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Rainbow Six Siege, Assassins Creed Syndicate, just to name a few. All use more than 3GB at 1080p, where the MEC, DEMD and RotTR all needs more than 4GB.

Do you honestly think this issue will get smaller or bigger as time goes by? When you then look at how long the people in this market segment tends to keep their cards, it's a joke to release a 3GB version. Especially when texture settings have such miniscule impact on performance. It's a typical cash grab from NVidia to make the product much cheaper while selling it for a higher price.

 

How was I wrong about the 780? Speaking of the "not at all gimped" 780:

 

Is that a 290 being 9% points ahead of the 780? (it only gets worse at 1440p).

[Misanthrope]

12 minutes ago, Notional said:

-text wall-

More than 1080p at maximum settings or near max. We've been saying that nobody should expect to max games even at 1080p with just a 200 bucks card. Just because you're late to the thread doesn't means you get to ignore everything that is being discussed. State you disagree with our statements instead of pretending we never made em just because you disagree.

[Notional]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

More than 1080p at maximum settings or near max. We've been saying that nobody should expect to max games even at 1080p with just a 200 bucks card. Just because you're late to the thread doesn't means you get to ignore everything that is being discussed. State you disagree with our statements instead of pretending we never made em just because you disagree.

Textures are the single greatest VRAM hog setting in any game. Shadows are a close second. This is excluding MSAA which uses insane amounts of VRAM, but also murders any performance, so it's not relevant, and I've never used MSAA as an argument. So my point very much still stands. Texture settings uses a lot of VRAM and has almost no impact on performance between low to ultra. NVidia's own guides supports this claim.

 

I don't care if it's NVidia making a 3GB 1050ti and selling it at an overprice as a "1060" or if it's AMD making a 4GB 480: It's simply dumb and people are getting worse graphics as a result, even when the GPU is more than capable of handling higher texture settings. There simply is no excuse, and I don't understand why anyone is defending this, when there's plenty of empirics showing games using more than 3GB very often now, and that this will only continue onwards. You can thank the 5+GB of Vram in the consoles for this huge leap in texture quality and using more unique textures to increase the detail of the world much more. And good for that.

[Misanthrope]

5 minutes ago, Notional said:

Textures are the single greatest VRAM hog setting in any game. Shadows are a close second. This is excluding MSAA which uses insane amounts of VRAM, but also murders any performance, so it's not relevant, and I've never used MSAA as an argument. So my point very much still stands. Texture settings uses a lot of VRAM and has almost no impact on performance between low to ultra. NVidia's own guides supports this claim.

 

I don't care if it's NVidia making a 3GB 1050ti and selling it at an overprice as a "1060" or if it's AMD making a 4GB 480: It's simply dumb and people are getting worse graphics as a result, even when the GPU is more than capable of handling higher texture settings. There simply is no excuse, and I don't understand why anyone is defending this, when there's plenty of empirics showing games using more than 3GB very often now, and that this will only continue onwards. You can thank the 5+GB of Vram in the consoles for this huge leap in texture quality and using more unique textures to increase the detail of the world much more. And good for that.

Right you say they're worst.

 

I say, however, that one card is held back on performance due to vram on very few games.

 

A similarly priced card (The 470) is held back on performance simply because it's GPU is flatout not as powerful.

 

Tech saavy budget customers can choose between getting a GPU and:

1) Not being able to max out all settings but still enjoy relatively good to really good looks by tweaking a few settings on very few games

2) Fuck all cause your card is just not as powerful.

 

As someone said earlier factor in Freesync and you have a legitimate case for the 470 sure. But for most people, you would have to not understand the issue or be biased towards AMD to think choice 2 is preferable to choice 1.

 

Ideally we'd have good choices. This is almost never the case on midrange cards because as I keep saying: you get what you pay for.

[Notional]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

Right you say they're worst.

 

I say that one card is held back on performance due to vram on very few games.

 

A similarly priced card (The 470) is held back on performance simply because it's GPU is flatout not as powerful.

 

Tech saavy budget customers can choose between

1) Not being able to max out all settings but still enjoy relatively good to really good looks by tweaking a few settings on very few games

2) Fuck all cause your card is just not as powerful.

 

As someone said earlier factor in Freesync and you have a legitimate case for the 470 sure. But for most people, you would have to not understand the issue or be biased towards AMD to think choice 2 is preferable to choice 1.

 

Ideally we'd have good choices. This is almost never the case on midrange cards because as I keep saying: you get what you pay for.

Your argument just doesn't make a lot of sense. Textures are not vendor biased in any ways, it's not like AMD is better off when you have the same amount of VRAM between AMD and NVidia cards.

A 470 is plenty powerful to max out textures, as long as it has enough VRAM. Sadly they only have 4GB afaik, so you can't max them out in all games, but it has nothing to do with GPU power. 

There simply is no single setting that has such a huge impact on graphics, but such little impact on performance than the texture setting. Only thing it really needs are enough VRAM, that's it. And you seem to be against this somehow? Why? 3 AAA games this year alone needs more than 4GB for ultra textures. Something even a 470 can run fairly well, if it had enough VRAM.

[Misanthrope]

13 minutes ago, Notional said:

Your argument just doesn't make a lot of sense. Textures are not vendor biased in any ways, it's not like AMD is better off when you have the same amount of VRAM between AMD and NVidia cards.

A 470 is plenty powerful to max out textures, as long as it has enough VRAM. Sadly they only have 4GB afaik, so you can't max them out in all games, but it has nothing to do with GPU power. 

There simply is no single setting that has such a huge impact on graphics, but such little impact on performance than the texture setting. Only thing it really needs are enough VRAM, that's it. And you seem to be against this somehow? Why? 3 AAA games this year alone needs more than 4GB for ultra textures. Something even a 470 can run fairly well, if it had enough VRAM.

So if you ignore most of my arguments I feel I should return the favor so:

 

- Yes: VRAM has impact on textures which in turn have little impact on performance. The real impact however, it's the price of the gddr chips which is not negligible so it's disingenuous for you to assume there's no good reason to use less of them when there's a plenty good reason right there to go with less vram.

 

Nvidia has been doing this for many years in fact: AMD always goes overboard with the amount of VRAM they put on cards (8gb for a 390? You're kidding me not even the 1080 can utilize that much with like 2x the horsepower) and people that like AMD have been saying how big of a problem this is, yet it has been almost always just fine and in need of very few tweaks.

 

Just a perpetual go-to argument that AMD likes to throw around not unlike their "core" wars "More cores, we have more cores! You're getting 8 cores for the price of only 2 cores from intel!" "More ghz! Look we ship a 5ghz chip!!" That to me is a transparent marketing gimmick: it looks nice to have fairly large numbers on the back of the box stats.