Does lacking Vram really hinder you?

[Imglidinhere]

I mean, if you compared the difference between a 4GB 980M and an 8GB 980M then you'll see no difference, same goes for a 3GB 970M and 6GB 970M. The GPU loses power before the Vram becomes an issue.

 

But moving to Pascal, does the difference between the 3GB and 6GB 1060 really make that huge of a difference, shader count difference aside? If you compared it to the 4GB 480, would the 3GB model really be that much worse in any way?  

 

It's something I've always told people, since I know a few games will tap into well over 3GB if it's available... (Looking at YOU Dying Light! It seriously draws 3.5GB right now at max settings.) o_O 

[toasty6776]

It really depends on the game and especially the resolution you play at. At 1080p the 3gb of the "little" 1060 should suffice for most games at max settings at higher resolutions the frame buffer does get pretty full which essentially leads to the VRAM bottlenecking your gaming experience since not enough data can be loaded into the GPU's RAM

[Guest]

Don;t mind my integrated gpu with no vram

[ImperialSteele]

Bit of an older vid, but points are valid.

 

[toasty6776]

1 minute ago, dexxterlab97 said:

Don;t mind my integrated gpu with no vram

iGPU does have VRAM although it's pathetically little

[Guest]

Just now, toasty6776 said:

iGPU does have VRAM although it's pathetically low

hmm never knew.

[TheRandomness]

1 minute ago, dexxterlab97 said:

hmm never knew.

The iGPU's VRAM is just the system's RAM just shared afaik

[toasty6776]

1 minute ago, toasty6776 said:

iGPU does have VRAM although it's pathetically little

actually let me take that back. iGPU uses DRAM

[toasty6776]

Just now, TheRandomness said:

The iGPU's VRAM is just the system's RAM just shared afaik

yup I got that wrong

[Guest]

Just now, TheRandomness said:

The iGPU's VRAM is just the system's RAM just shared afaik

There. I thought I was wrong

[Prysin]

15 minutes ago, Imglidinhere said:

I mean, if you compared the difference between a 4GB 980M and an 8GB 980M then you'll see no difference, same goes for a 3GB 970M and 6GB 970M. The GPU loses power before the Vram becomes an issue.

 

But moving to Pascal, does the difference between the 3GB and 6GB 1060 really make that huge of a difference, shader count difference aside? If you compared it to the 4GB 480, would the 3GB model really be that much worse in any way?  

 

It's something I've always told people, since I know a few games will tap into well over 3GB if it's available... (Looking at YOU Dying Light! It seriously draws 3.5GB right now at max settings.) o_O 

yes, even at 1080p i can hit the limit of my 4GB VRAM limit. People should understand and respect the fact that 3GB is too little, 4GB is just barely enough.
Proof is here:

 

[Imglidinhere]

8 minutes ago, Prysin said:

yes, even at 1080p i can hit the limit of my 4GB VRAM limit. People should understand and respect the fact that 3GB is too little, 4GB is just barely enough.
Proof is here:

 

So 4GB isn't enough to MAX OUT games... but because one or two titles uses more memory than the dozens of others that barely break, if they're even hitting, the 3GB mark, how is that a valid argument? Hell... when games finally started using more than 1.5GB of Vram, the GTX 580 wasn't obsolete until the following generation was released!

 

It's just I've never seen, in my lifetime thus far, the point where your Vram is your limiting factor. I could understand back waaay in the early 2000s when the Radeon 9800 and 9600 cards were coming out with 128MB and 256MB and back then, you could see a clear, night and day difference in performance. (Hint: the slower card had double the Vram and higher performance because of that) But again, can anyone give a real description of whether or not there's a legitimate performance hit when comparing a 2GB card to a 4GB card?

 

Hell, use the GTX 680/770. Still a viable card for 1080p in every possible way. They made 2GB and 4GB versions of each. Do tests to find out. This really does need to be answered because I'm tired of being proven effectively wrong when I tell someone more Vram is better on higher end cards.

[Mira Yurizaki]

3GB may be too little if you're maxing out on everything. But the problem is that the image quality of the game barely improves from maximum texture settings (which is part of the heavy hitter) down a lower level of detail. And yet it consumes way more VRAM. As an example (R6 Siege with Ultra vs. Very High textures): http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/tom-clancys-rainbow-six-siege/tom-clancys-rainbow-six-siege-texture-quality-interactive-comparison-002-ultra-vs-very-high.html

 

The satchel is noticeably different but that may be a lighting effect, but the rest of the scene is pretty much the same. And yet ultra consumes 1GB more VRAM. So where is this extra GB of VRAM being used?

 

I'm going to refer back to a case when "ultra" quality textures didn't really improve the image quality all that much: Doom 3. The only major difference between Doom 3's "high" and "ultra" texture settings was that "ultra" used uncompressed textures. If you had the VRAM, this theoretically improved something (initialization times? performance?) in practice though, it didn't really do anything. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is what "ultra" quality or maximum quality textures mean in some games. And no, texture compression doesn't introduce quality loss either, as textures are lossless compressed with a predictable compression ratio.

 

EDIT: According to NVIDIA's tweak guide, 1080p on the high preset consumes 2.5GB of VRAM.

[Imglidinhere]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

3GB may be too little if you're maxing out on everything. But the problem is that the image quality of the game barely improves from maximum texture settings (which is part of the heavy hitter) down a lower level of detail. And yet it consumes way more VRAM. As an example (R6 Siege with Ultra vs. Very High textures): http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/tom-clancys-rainbow-six-siege/tom-clancys-rainbow-six-siege-texture-quality-interactive-comparison-002-ultra-vs-very-high.html

 

The satchel is noticeably different but that may be a lighting effect, but the rest of the scene is pretty much the same. And yet ultra consumes 1GB more VRAM. So where is this extra GB of VRAM being used?

 

I'm going to refer back to a case when "ultra" quality textures didn't really improve the image quality all that much: Doom 3. The only major difference between Doom 3's "high" and "ultra" texture settings was that "ultra" used uncompressed textures. If you had the VRAM, this theoretically improved something (initialization times? performance?) in practice though, it didn't really do anything. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is what "ultra" quality or maximum quality textures mean in some games. And no, texture compression doesn't introduce quality loss either, as textures are lossless compressed with a predictable compression ratio.

That makes a lot of sense. It would explain why most AAA games would look almost no different going from High to Max settings. In games like World of Tanks or StarCraft 2, you can see a very obvious difference comparing High to Highest settings. There are clear differences between the two. Also, I don't like using AAA titles as examples because no one I know plays those games. hell, friends of mine are only just NOW starting to play MGS 5 The Phantom Pain.  So... not everyone plays the latest and greatest just because they have the hardware to run it.

 

In any case, that explanation (yours I mean) works better than anything else I've heard thus far.  Which is awesuuuuummmm~ <3 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just so you know, the biggest hitters to VRAM are:

• Screen resolution
• Texture quality
• MSAA, SSAA, or TXAA antialiasing. FXAA and MLAA (or other post process anti-aliasing) do not affect VRAM.
• Shadow quality
• Reflection quality (if not using environment maps)

Everything else has negligible impact on VRAM. As another example from NVIDIA's R6S guide, min settings + Ultra textures consumes 3.55GB of VRAM. Max settings with a temporal filter and FXAA consumes 3.7GB of VRAM.

[onlybuilt4cubanxlinx]

I am looking at the 470 Sapphire Nitro 8gb to get a great 1080p picture and plan on getting a 144hz monitor. Would it make any sense to get the 4gb version? 

[Morgan Everett]

Yes, it really will hinder you, to the extent running out of VRAM makes the game practically unplayable. I had this experience yesterday when I tried playing at 4k with ultra textures on DX: MD. Stuttering mess, even when locked to 30 FPS. 

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, Imglidinhere said:

So 4GB isn't enough to MAX OUT games... but because one or two titles uses more memory than the dozens of others that barely break, if they're even hitting, the 3GB mark, how is that a valid argument? Hell... when games finally started using more than 1.5GB of Vram, the GTX 580 wasn't obsolete until the following generation was released!

 

It's just I've never seen, in my lifetime thus far, the point where your Vram is your limiting factor. I could understand back waaay in the early 2000s when the Radeon 9800 and 9600 cards were coming out with 128MB and 256MB and back then, you could see a clear, night and day difference in performance. (Hint: the slower card had double the Vram and higher performance because of that) But again, can anyone give a real description of whether or not there's a legitimate performance hit when comparing a 2GB card to a 4GB card?

 

Hell, use the GTX 680/770. Still a viable card for 1080p in every possible way. They made 2GB and 4GB versions of each. Do tests to find out. This really does need to be answered because I'm tired of being proven effectively wrong when I tell someone more Vram is better on higher end cards.

its not just "one or two games" that are demanding more then 3GB for very high (let alone max), we are talking most AAA titles in the past 12 months and probably every title coming out in the future.

 

You must be really gullible if you think the issue is "all the games that doesnt". It is not. It is all the games to COME, that WILL COME, and could be perfectly playable at high or very high instead of medium, purely due to VRAM usage.

[-rascal-]

Here is a good example.

It depends on the game, but in their testing, the 3GB of VRAM on the GTX 1060 takes a hit in 1440p and higher resolutions.

They discuss the parts where the GTX 1060 3GB, and some cases the RX-480 4GB, takes a FPS dive.