Would a 2GB card be worth it in my case?

[Jeffredo]

Hey guys. Got a GTX 560 Ti 1GB last week and even with my 1680x1050 monitor I'm able to fill its frame buffer with my textured modded Oblivion and Fallout 3. I've even been able to do it just by forcing a good amount of AA and AF in the Nvidia control panel while playing Fable III. Even with my smallish monitor do you think it would be a good idea to return it and get a 2GB card (such as a GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950)? As far as CPU and GPU horsepower goes the FPS was fine until it hit the 1GB memory wall.

I've always heard with 1920x1080 on down you don't need more than 1GB but obviously that much can be used with a smaller monitor (will lots of eye-candy cranked up). I'm just concerned my CPU and midrange GPU won't support much more detail even with a 2GB card.

[JrRacinFan]

Couldn't hurt. Your CPU is fine with a single card, just our Phenom II CPU's can't hang(against other current day cpu's, Sandy Bridge & Llano for example) with multi gpu. I remember not too too long ago you asking about upgrading your cpu or gpu. Remember what i posted? My thoughts were that sooner or later you would need to upgrade the CPU anyways. That's a totally different thread though.

EDIT:

Just throwing some numbers, I can fill my 768 buffer to about 650MB with 4xAA but seeing you do texture modding of course it will be more.

[Jeffredo]

I checked it with Afterburner and its definitely maxing at 1024MB of memory being used (and the game slowing down or getting choppy about then).

[LifeOnMars]

Yep it always makes me laugh when I see people saying that a 2GB card is not needed at lower resolutions, well, it depends what you do with it doesn't it?

In your case I say go for it, modding games is part of the PC gaming experience and the fact that it allows improved visuals means you are going to need all the vram you can get. I also like to mod my games when I have finished with the vanilla experience.

I aim to get a card with more memory when BF3 comes out, primarily to get a card that will play the game well but also to enable maxed out modding for my older games.

[crazyeyesreaper]

yes indeed it does depend on what you do

Shogun II uses up to 4000mb of Video Ram

ive seen it max my 2048mb of onboard and use nearly 1.8gbs of system ram for dynamic vram,

thats unmodded lolz people forget mods texture packs etc jump vram usage up rather high, but it comes down to user and there personal taste, that said 2gb would help but probably not a whole lot,


with Fallout 3 Oblivion etc,

when you TRULY hit the vram wall you will know because your game will drop to 1FPS constant

you can try this yourself but changing the shadow map sizes and turning on self shadowing since it improves the shadows look self shadowing dosent look like shit and it takes a bunch of vram, it will cause a vram buffer overload that drops the framerate to a crawl, that said about 1200mb of vram is all thats needed to run Oblivion smoothly when mods, aka gtx 470s didnt encounter the problem back then but 5850s did and there was 240mb of vram difference so keep that in mind,

a true vram limit will drop your frame rate down to 1fps where as if its swapping but not completely used it will still run, as some of the vram used is to just store data, so keep that in mind, eitherway you might see a performance boost, i couldnt really tell you for certain.

[Jeffredo]

Yeah, I used FRAPS as well and when Fallout 3 (especially in Point Lookout with all its shadows on water) hit the max it was instant slideshow (1-5 fps). Well, back to shopping for a more appropriate card! Thanks guys for confirming this.

[LDNL]

I say go for it. You should also take a look at a new cpu/mobo aswell if you do decide to go for a more "powerful" card.

[RevengE]

Originally Posted by LifeOnMars

Yep it always makes me laugh when I see people saying that a 2GB card is not needed at lower resolutions, well, it depends what you do with it doesn't it?

In your case I say go for it, modding games is part of the PC gaming experience and the fact that it allows improved visuals means you are going to need all the vram you can get. I also like to mod my games when I have finished with the vanilla experience.

I aim to get a card with more memory when BF3 comes out, primarily to get a card that will play the game well but also to enable maxed out modding for my older games.

+1 I Mod my games as well. Running a ASUS 6950 2gb and it does a great job. GTA IV is the game I am currently modding right now. OP I think an upgrade to 2gb would be worth it, it also adds room for future upgrades.

[Delta6326]

I would say 2GB card would help out some. If your maxing buffer out

[MainframeTM]

Originally Posted by Jeffredo

Hey guys. Got a GTX 560 Ti 1GB last week and even with my 1680x1050 monitor I'm able to fill its frame buffer with my textured modded Oblivion and Fallout 3. I've even been able to do it just by forcing a good amount of AA and AF in the Nvidia control panel while playing Fable III. Even with my smallish monitor do you think it would be a good idea to return it and get a 2GB card (such as a GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950)? As far as CPU and GPU horsepower goes the FPS was fine until it hit the 1GB memory wall.

I've always heard with 1920x1080 on down you don't need more than 1GB but obviously that much can be used with a smaller monitor (will lots of eye-candy cranked up). I'm just concerned my CPU and midrange GPU won't support much more detail even with a 2GB card.

I have a similar issue thou I'm running 2 GTX580s with 1.5MB each. oblivion is the one that freaks out fast & crashes if my vram hits around 1.3ish. Thou thats part of the program from my understanding even trying to use various tweaks & whatnot to avoid it..still crash happy over 1.0MB of vram. Fallout3/NV seems alot more stable with it. So far any crashes I've had have mostly been my fault. Bad mod installs and the most recent one..lost my 88hr character due to hitting the mod limit..not knowing it and corrupting my saves. The worst part was I had deleted all my old saves and was running off the phones that were getting more & more corrupted as time went on..then bam..no more loading. But to OP a 2gb card should be good just watch the memory usage with your taskmanager to see what it looks like when it crashes.

-edit
wow i really need to update my system specs when I get home!

[therealslimgamey]

I just went for 2 Gb 6950 at the time as it seemed the best option as the 1Gb cards were not out. I only play at 1920 1080 resolution. The CPU does limit it a touch so it must be overclocked (955 BE). I di get a performance improvement when I unlocked it to 6970 BIOS so the CPU is not too limiting in some games. With battlefield 3 coming out for quad core I think I will be good for another year.

[Darkleoco]

A 2 gb 6950 would be great especially at your resolution, btw slim how much of a performance upgrade did you get unlocking the BIOS to 6970?

[timma]

6950 2gb oc+1

[wizard23]

i thing it is the cpu that botlneck the system. i founded out in my last upgrade i was runing on 955@4000 + gtx295 no problems in games no mater the game i upgraded first the cpu and for a sort period of time i got 2600k@4200 + gtx295 the games ware the same no problems but in benches the card got very very beter resolts. so good in fact that if it supported dx11 i was going to buy a second one for some quad fun. i thing the cheapest thing to do is wait and get a buldozer.

[therealslimgamey]

Originally Posted by Darkleoco

A 2 gb 6950 would be great especially at your resolution, btw slim how much of a performance upgrade did you get unlocking the BIOS to 6970?

I do not know, as I havent done benchmarks yet. However using gpuz it reads 6970 spec (its a powercolor reference card). Just by experimenting playing bad company 2 I can basically have everything on max and get about 60fps (so basically can keep v-sync on) whereas the 6950 spec I needed to reduce AA to x2 or x4 and turn off HBAO to get the required 60 fps to enable v-synch for my monitor (if it drops below 60 then v-sync would have dropped it to 30 by default). The difference is definately noticeable so I am sticking with my unlocked bios. The GPU is getting up to near max temps so the CPU is giving a fair workout. No problem, the only game thats an issue is GTA4 but then it is for most CPU's. The 955 is still a high spec CPU it may not be perfect but its still good. It will do for me for now.
N.B I play 1920 x 1080 resolution
The main issue in unlocking the card is that if you max out the power to the card using CCC you will in theory be overloading the card, also temps and noise are a major issue if unlocked in crossfire.