3gig vram enough for 1080p gaming?

[othertomperson]

1 hour ago, MEC-777 said:

Like I mentioned before, even at 1080p I can see the difference between high/ultra textures in some games. The highest res textures aren't always "just" for 4k. It's mean to sharpen the image quality across all resolution from 1080p and up. You're right, you don't get the "full benefit" of these textures unless actually running the game at 4k native, but I'm know I'm not the only one who can see the difference even at 1080p. As a personal preference, I like to run my games with the best visual quality as possible (while maintaining 60fps+ as well). So knowing the 980 could do this if it had more Vram, that's why I'm saying it's Vram choked in these few scenarios. 

 

I'm not doing anything "wrong". I'm running the game how I want to run it so that it looks the way I want it to look. And again, I can see the difference, especially with DSR.

 

 

How long is a piece of string? By your argument an RX 460 would "benefit" from 12GB vram because it will be able to handle arbitrarily large textures, because the textures themselves don't strain the GPU. All you end up doing is having the majority of the texture file not being displayed at a time, or the full texture being loaded for very distant objects, which are at this point so small that the pixels can't accurately define it anyway. You're basically going out of your way to un-optimise your game on what is now a mid-tier card.

[MEC-777]

7 hours ago, Soundsystem90 said:

I ran Batman Arkham knight at 39-60FPS on a 2GB 680 and the game said i needed 3GB yet the 680 handled it just fine with no stuttering.

 

 

LOL

What settings?

6 hours ago, othertomperson said:

How long is a piece of string? By your argument an RX 460 would "benefit" from 12GB vram because it will be able to handle arbitrarily large textures, because the textures themselves don't strain the GPU. All you end up doing is having the majority of the texture file not being displayed at a time, or the full texture being loaded for very distant objects, which are at this point so small that the pixels can't accurately define it anyway. You're basically going out of your way to un-optimise your game on what is now a mid-tier card.

No, I would never say an RX 460 would benefit from 12GB Vram. That's just silly and you and I both know that. I'm saying cards like the 980 could benefit from a little more Vram (even just 2 more would help). Have you noticed Nvidia and AMD have started increasing the Vram on all of their cards from the lower-mainstream segment to the top enthusiast cards? Because they know it's necessary as games increase in detail moving forward.

 

RX 460 4GB

RX 470 4GB

1050Ti 4GB 

1060 6GB

RX 480 8GB

1070 8GB

1080 8GB

 

The 1060 3GB is a bit of an odd-ball product and doesn't have enough Vram for it's performance bracket, IMO. It's borderline enough. It will run most games fine, for the most part, but it would be better off with a bit more.

 

That's all I'm saying. I think you're reading way too much into this and into what I've been trying to say. 

 

Just to throw it out there; I was playing Watch Dogs 2 on the 1080p ultra preset with textures on "high", not the ultra textures you can download, and it maxed out the Vram at 4GB on my 980 - with just the high textures. Fortunately it was the case with this game where it didn't cause hitching which is nice. Now, with this game, I'm not even going to try running the ultra textures because the game runs in the 45-55fps range, which is barely playable for me and looks good enough as is.

[Soundsystem90]

480P low.

[Lord Nicoll]

Look at the GTX 970, it can easily max out the 3.5Gb of full speed VRAM, the second it accesses the slower 512MB block is tanks the FPS, just like when the card would have to access system RAM if it runs out. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 12/4/2016 at 1:01 AM, Lord Nicoll said:

I have the R9 380 4Gb from Sapphire, which is overclocked to 1170MHz, on ultra maxed settings in Fallout 4 it pushes upward of 40 FPS even in heated situations, 60 otherwise, the most amount of Vram is ever used was 3.6GB, which is a lot for 1080p, but goes to show even at 1080p, if the memory is there the game can use it, even with a weaker GPU core that you wouldn't think could use it. 

 

At least Fallout 4 has a reason for it. I've recently discovered that Civilization 6 can easily go to 5gb of VRAM, which I assume means it offloaded to normal RAM, as I only have 3gb (unless it got messed up with crossfire, but  it always reported correctly in the past, and it was showing max VRAM at 3), which makes it the highest usage I ever had. I mean, it's a freaking turn-based strategy game, wtf are they trying to do? Why would I need such a texture detail, sun reflection and what not here more in let's say Metro?  Together with the mess they made to the UI, and to some extent gameplay, I think someone needs to sit in the corner and play Europa Universalis for a long while, until they remember what this was all about. 

 

But I digress, back on topic: if games that don't depend on visuals (after dialing settings back till vram was 3-4gb, I still can't tell the difference, and I wouldn't even notice if they used Civ 3 graphs at 1920x1200) can do that, I imagine FPS and action games in general will be there as well, unless civ is just a poor coding anomaly or something. 

[MEC-777]

10 hours ago, Soundsystem90 said:

480P low.

Well that would be why it didn't need 3GB. 

 

Just for future reference, make sure you quote the person you're answering so they get a tag notification and know that you replied.  

10 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

At least Fallout 4 has a reason for it. I've recently discovered that Civilization 6 can easily go to 5gb of VRAM, which I assume means it offloaded to normal RAM, as I only have 3gb (unless it got messed up with crossfire, but  it always reported correctly in the past, and it was showing max VRAM at 3), which makes it the highest usage I ever had. I mean, it's a freaking turn-based strategy game, wtf are they trying to do? Why would I need such a texture detail, sun reflection and what not here more in let's say Metro?  Together with the mess they made to the UI, and to some extent gameplay, I think someone needs to sit in the corner and play Europa Universalis for a long while, until they remember what this was all about. 

 

But I digress, back on topic: if games that don't depend on visuals (after dialing settings back till vram was 3-4gb, I still can't tell the difference, and I wouldn't even notice if they used Civ 3 graphs at 1920x1200) can do that, I imagine FPS and action games in general will be there as well, unless civ is just a poor coding anomaly or something. 

From what I understand, some games will use as much Vram as is available, even if it's more than it requires. 

 

Where it becomes a problem is when there's not enough Vram to store the necessary data. 

[Aytex]

the 1060's 6gb is pretty overkill, never used more than 3.8 in GTA 5, or Lord knows how much in my skyrim modded.

 

From my personal opinion 3gb is fine for 1080p gaming.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

5 hours ago, MEC-777 said:

 

From what I understand, some games will use as much Vram as is available, even if it's more than it requires. 

 

Where it becomes a problem is when there's not enough Vram to store the necessary data. 

But civ was using 2gb more than available  And usage (and performance) responded to settings, meaning it was related to graphic options. What I mean is, I'm sure there was a difference, it's just that for a strategy game I find that level of graphics complexity pointless.

[othertomperson]

On 05/12/2016 at 3:38 AM, MEC-777 said:

What settings?

No, I would never say an RX 460 would benefit from 12GB Vram. That's just silly and you and I both know that. I'm saying cards like the 980 could benefit from a little more Vram (even just 2 more would help). Have you noticed Nvidia and AMD have started increasing the Vram on all of their cards from the lower-mainstream segment to the top enthusiast cards? Because they know it's necessary as games increase in detail moving forward.

 

RX 460 4GB

RX 470 4GB

1050Ti 4GB 

1060 6GB

RX 480 8GB

1070 8GB

1080 8GB

 

The 1060 3GB is a bit of an odd-ball product and doesn't have enough Vram for it's performance bracket, IMO. It's borderline enough. It will run most games fine, for the most part, but it would be better off with a bit more.

 

That's all I'm saying. I think you're reading way too much into this and into what I've been trying to say. 

 

Just to throw it out there; I was playing Watch Dogs 2 on the 1080p ultra preset with textures on "high", not the ultra textures you can download, and it maxed out the Vram at 4GB on my 980 - with just the high textures. Fortunately it was the case with this game where it didn't cause hitching which is nice. Now, with this game, I'm not even going to try running the ultra textures because the game runs in the 45-55fps range, which is barely playable for me and looks good enough as is.

It has nothing to do with need and everything to do with AMD's marketing being a pure numbers game. They doubled the RAM on the 290X, called it a 390X. They claimed that their power hungry 512-bit bus made their card better than Nvidia's, despite actually worse memory performance due to a complete lack of compression optimisations, they claim that their 8-core CPUs make their CPUs beasts, despite performing on par with Intel's dual cores even in heavily multithreaded workloads. They then go on to advertise those i3-class CPUs based on 4-5GHz boost clocks at "stock" because a 4GHz 8-core MUST be better than a 3.3GHz dual core, right?

 

The memory compression is another thing you're ignoring too, the 3GB of the 1060 will go further than Maxwell's 4GB, even on its 192-bit bus.

 

If a 980 can benefit from more vram so it can load arbitrarily higher res textures, then why not put more vram on an RX 460? It's not absurd at all. Your argument is that textures do not load the GPU, so where do you decide where to stop? Why is at absurd to say that since textures don't load the GPU the 460 would benefit as much as the 980?

 

It's the same reason, isn't it? It's because it doesn't make sense to put extreme textures on an otherwise low resolution, medium quality game. You've just said that for Watchdogs 2 4GB is absolutely fine. Vram is used dynamically, the game uses what's there. This is why 770 owners never had issue with having 2GB usage when 780 owners saw usage going over 2GB but didn't have any increased performance as a result. This is why the GTX 970's slower 500MB didn't present any performance degradation in games, even at 4K.

 

Here's a question. Since the 3GB 1060 seems to be missing a memory controller compared with the 6GB version, hence less vram, it would have been feasible for Nvidia to just do what they've done in the past in this scenario on at least two occasions: put the full amount of vram on fewer memory controllers, and run a small section of it at lower bandwidth than the rest. Last time Nvidia were raked over coals for giving as much vram as they could on the cut-down card. Would you still prefer the 3GB 1060 had more vram if it meant that a small section of the additional vram didn't have the same bandwidth as the rest?

[MEC-777]

8 hours ago, othertomperson said:

It has nothing to do with need and everything to do with AMD's marketing being a pure numbers game. They doubled the RAM on the 290X, called it a 390X. They claimed that their power hungry 512-bit bus made their card better than Nvidia's, despite actually worse memory performance due to a complete lack of compression optimisations, they claim that their 8-core CPUs make their CPUs beasts, despite performing on par with Intel's dual cores even in heavily multithreaded workloads. They then go on to advertise those i3-class CPUs based on 4-5GHz boost clocks at "stock" because a 4GHz 8-core MUST be better than a 3.3GHz dual core, right?

 

The memory compression is another thing you're ignoring too, the 3GB of the 1060 will go further than Maxwell's 4GB, even on its 192-bit bus.

 

If a 980 can benefit from more vram so it can load arbitrarily higher res textures, then why not put more vram on an RX 460? It's not absurd at all. Your argument is that textures do not load the GPU, so where do you decide where to stop? Why is at absurd to say that since textures don't load the GPU the 460 would benefit as much as the 980?

 

It's the same reason, isn't it? It's because it doesn't make sense to put extreme textures on an otherwise low resolution, medium quality game. You've just said that for Watchdogs 2 4GB is absolutely fine. Vram is used dynamically, the game uses what's there. This is why 770 owners never had issue with having 2GB usage when 780 owners saw usage going over 2GB but didn't have any increased performance as a result. This is why the GTX 970's slower 500MB didn't present any performance degradation in games, even at 4K.

 

Here's a question. Since the 3GB 1060 seems to be missing a memory controller compared with the 6GB version, hence less vram, it would have been feasible for Nvidia to just do what they've done in the past in this scenario on at least two occasions: put the full amount of vram on fewer memory controllers, and run a small section of it at lower bandwidth than the rest. Last time Nvidia were raked over coals for giving as much vram as they could on the cut-down card. Would you still prefer the 3GB 1060 had more vram if it meant that a small section of the additional vram didn't have the same bandwidth as the rest?

Yes, it does have to do with need. Just look at modern games vs 5-10 year old games and Vram usage/requirements comparison. Modern games and new games moving forward with ever increasing detail will require more Vram in the future. That is a fact. Both AMD and Nvidia have been increasing Vram across their mainstream to high-end cards for this reason.

 

Like I've said before, the 1060 3GB is an odd product in an odd placement on the performance stack. Regardless if it had more Vram at lesser bandwidth like the 970, I still don't think I could recommend it because the RX 480 presents a better value at that price point.

[Zodiark1593]

Given recent trends, I'm on the side of "if you have to ask, it's not enough".