how much VRAM do you need? (1080p)

[EarthDog]

Why not a 960 outside of being slow?

 

[P4-630]

Why not a 960 outside of being slow?

Yeah that was the card I was looking at first but I decided to wait a little longer(while was using intel graphics at that time).....
Also I was able to save some more cash till the 1070 came out and so I went for it!

 

[EarthDog]

Gotcha.. good info in a vram thread.

 

[P4-630]

Gotcha.. good info in a vram thread.

Hehe

 

[Frag_Maniac]

No... this started by you saying there was only 3.5gb on the 970 without qualifying your statement. It has 4gb... just some is notably slower.

Lol, just because they opted in doesnt mean they had a problem. It just means they bought the card and can. Its a class action lawsuit, only a purchase was required.

I think you're splitting hairs to on the one hand admit that 512MB is quite a bit slower, yet act like it's normal VRAM. Whether they can legal even CALL it VRAM is debatable, since they DID lose that lawsuit. One thing is certain though, at least they know now they're not allowed legally to not clarify that a portion of the VRAM is significantly slower when they indulge in such idiotic designs.

And no, not all noticed problems with it right away, but there's been many games made since where 4GB VRAM is the minimum requirement, and I've seen bench tests on them showing how the 970 can start stuttering when the frame buffer starts exceeding 3.5GB, where 4GB VRAM cards don't. So for all intents and purposes, effectively it's not the same as having an actual 4GB of full speed VRAM. That's all that matters really.

I also think it's rather disingenuous, and even contradictory of those whom sought the $30 if they claimed they had no issues with the product. It's called being a hypocrite.

 

[EarthDog]

You consider it not even there and Im splitting hairs? Nice.

Its VRAM. That was never in question. Just the speed was not disclosed, and if you believe nvidia (...) by mistake. As time goes on games use more and more vram. If there is frequent swapping over the 3.5gb threshold, hitching and slow downs can be noticed in some titles. Its not a card that matures well, that is for sure.

Its curious to me how you believe the ram isnt really there, and people should/should not participate in the class action lawsuit based on performance and if they are seeing the problem instead of the merits of the case...the fact that it did not disclose the significant speed difference of the last 512MB. Misleading specs effects everyone, regardless of who it actually effects in-game.

Anyway... good talking.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

It's "there" per se, but really not in performance when you consider by the time it does it's job it's too late to avoid problems in games that require 4GB VRAM. What part of that is so friggin hard to get? Would you settle for an 8 core CPU that has one notoriously slow core? I don't think so. I get the feeling you don't even know what splitting hairs means. If you were a car salesman and you had an 8 cylinder car on your lot that you knew had one cylinder that was always misfiring, would you claim it ran as well as any other 8 cyl rig? If so you'd be a con artist.

The only reason Nvidia got away with this for a short time was the games that released when the 970 came out didn't require nearly as much VRAM as they do now. Now that people know the design of this card, no one wants it.

I would think you'd get that by now, but all you do is drone on like an Nvidia sycophant claiming this thing has a legit 4GB VRAM, when it's obvious over 12% of it functions nowhere near as well as normal VRAM.

The way it should have been advertised is 3.5GB VRAM + 512MB cache RAM, and we all know by now cache RAM does not perform anywhere NEAR the speed of VRAM. When it comes to video memory, speed is of the utmost importance. You're acting like it's only about capacity.

So again, for the slow to conceptualize, I'm not saying it's not there physically, I'm saying it's not there in performance, which is more important, and that's what I mean by your splitting hairs. Who gives a shit if it's there if it's slow as molasses?

It's a crippled card plain and simple Dog. Don't see how you don't get that because you're usually up on things. Only shit lawyers that enjoy making money off crooks would defend Nvidia on this, which is why they got sued. The suit wasn't about lying about capacity, no, but it WAS about not divulging how slow that part of the memory was, ergo speed is just as important as capacity.

At any rate, I'm glad they blundered this way, because they deservedly wound up with a lot of egg on their face, and probably know now they won't be able to get away with it again, not that they really got away with anything to begin with. More like it damaged their reputation.

 

[EarthDog]

For the most part, im with you. I suppose im too literal of a person. After all, this is the post i responded to...

Keep in mind that regarding 4GB, the 970 doesn't really count because it really only has 3.5.

Too my literal mind, well, thats what got us here. Its also clear we differ on the severity of the issue, but, im already dizzy from our circles.

Again, cheers.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

For the most part, im with you. I suppose im too literal of a person. After all, this is the post i responded to...


Too my literal mind, well, thats what got us here. Its also clear we differ on the severity of the issue, but, im already dizzy from our circles.

Again, cheers.

I think the problem is you're misinterpreting that post.

I could have said ..."because it only has 3.5GB VRAM". I instead said "...because it really only has 3.5GB VRAM".

I think you know by now what I meant by that after explaining it several times, and for the record, I could just as easily misinterpret what you mean by agreeing with me "for the most part". Your clarification on that is no more clear than the part I said that you misinterpreted.

Anyways, I think we've both had our say on the matter. I see no sense in derailing an entire thread over it.

 

[Vario]

I think right now the gaming consoles having a lot of VRAM, many $300 mainstream graphics cards having 6GB and up, it is reasonable to expect that going forward 4GB is the absolute minimum one should have and you should aim for 8GB+ if you want to keep your system relevant for high end gaming (AAA games, 1080+ resolution, high settings) beyond a year. Also the current crop of cards are all at-least 1 year old technology including the 2016 released Geforce 1060 and its competitor the Radeon RX 580 which is essentially a binned and slightly improved RX 480. Next update cycle we may find all budget cards having at least 4GB, mainstream cards having at least 8GB, and extreme cards having beyond 8GB. Seems like it increases 2GB per generation.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I think right now the gaming consoles having a lot of VRAM, many $300 mainstream graphics cards having 6GB and up, it is reasonable to expect that going forward 4GB is the absolute minimum one should have and you should aim for 8GB+ if you want to keep your system relevant for high end gaming (AAA games, 1080+ resolution, high settings) beyond a year. Also the current crop of cards are all at-least 1 year old technology including the 2016 released Geforce 1060 and its competitor the Radeon RX 580 which is essentially a binned and slightly improved RX 480. Next update cycle we may find all budget cards having at least 4GB, mainstream cards having at least 8GB, and extreme cards having beyond 8GB. Seems like it increases 2GB per generation.

I'm kinda surprised they're selling as many 1060 3GB cards as they are. People seem fooled by the fact that they perform well on most games at 1080p, but going forward there are going to be a lot more games that you can't use max textures on with only 3GB VRAM. Hell, even 4GB is a risky choice going forward.

My 3GB 7970 is quickly becoming more and more inadequate. I have the funds to get the TV and 1080 Ti I want, but I'm waiting for a drop in price on the TV, and hoping to get a good price on the 1080 Ti in the same time frame.

I just saw the triple fan MSI 1080 Ti Duke for $690 though, so things are heading that direction finally.

 

[StefanM]

Just a tidbit: i tried to run the new Wolfenstein demo on a 2 GB GPU (because i didn't RTFM).
The game tries to allocate 4 GB even at 1280x720

NVIDIA device detected, defaulting GPU triangle culling to off
enabling image dropmip as device has less than 4000 MiB vramInitializing Vulkan subsystem
ShowGameWindow: (0, 0) 1280 x 720, full screen

 

[jboydgolfer]

my GTX 970 has 3.5Gb's of Vram, and .5Gb's of Maple Syrup.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

my GTX 970 has 3.5Gb's of Vram, and .5Gb's of Maple Syrup.

The best maple syrup that you have ever licked in your entire life (coming from a former 970SLi user/owner)

 

[Splinterdog]

This is Forza Horizon 3 on my GTX 970, with an 8320 and 16Gb RAM and game settings at Ultra. Nearly 4 Gb Vram used. Most of the time I play at high settings because the FPS dip to around 20 on Ultra.
I'm pretty sure the Asus RX580 8Gb that I'm getting from Santa will do better than this.

 

[John Naylor]

At 1080p, 3 GB is enough ... while you oft will see claims that this game needs more, it's almost always based upon a false assumption. You remeber all the fake hoopla about the 970's 3.5 GB ... despite all the ranting, any game that gave the 1070 problems (and this only happened at 4k), the 4 GB 980 provided no improvement The reason fpor this sis simply that there is no utility which actually measured VRAM usage.

As an analogy I'll use a credit card account. You have a Visa card w/ a $5,000 limit, abd you spent $500 on it, meaning you owe $500 and gave $4500 in credit remaining. Yet when you apply for a car loan and the bank asks for a credit report , that report contains a credit liability for Visa of $5,000. When a game installs, it looks at the amount of VRAM avalable and based on that "allocates" a certain % of that to be available. So if you have 8 GB, it might allocate 3.5GB...if you have 4 GB, it might allocate 2.5 GB. And it's highly unlikely that actual usage gets anywhere near that level. There is one way you can see whether VRAM has any impoact and that is to run the game with different amounts and look for chnages in qualitu, user experience of fps.

Alienbabeltech did this with some 40+ games with twin 770s (2GB + 4GB). They observed no significant in performance in any game at 1080p. They then did it at 5760 x 1080 and they did fond differences... but the thing is, for those games with differences, the games were simply unplayable... If having 4 GB gets you to 19 fps when the 2GFb gets 16 fps, the game is still unplayable. The kicker was, Max Payne wouldn't even install w/ the 2 GB card installed at 5760 x 1080. After installing and testing it with the 4GB card, they swapped cards ... and since the game was already installed, it didn't go thru the VRAM allocate step ... it ran at the same fps, with the no change in graphical quality.

Here's some links with other test data
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,12.html
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/

The most recent one is this where they had to go to 4k and highest settings to observe any issues with 4 GB
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...y-x-faces-off-with-nvidias-gtx-980-ti-titan-x

GPUz is a great tool but, as indicated there, using it to measure VRAM usage is not really what it does. Here's how it ties into the credit card analogy

"GPU-Z claims to report how much VRAM the GPU actually uses, but there’s a significant caveat to this metric. GPU-Z doesn’t actually report how much VRAM the GPU is actually using — instead, it reports the amount of VRAM that a game has requested. We spoke to Nvidia’s Brandon Bell on this topic, who told us the following: “None of the GPU tools on the market report memory usage correctly, whether it’s GPU-Z, Afterburner, Precision, etc. They all report the amount of memory requested by the GPU, not the actual memory usage. Cards will larger memory will request more memory, but that doesn’t mean that they actually use it. They simply request it because the memory is available.”

So there is simply no way to **see** VRAM usage when playing any game because there's simply no tool capable of measuring actual usage.

One great way to see the impact is to use techpowerups test results. Compare the 3 GB and 6GB 1060s which TPU reviewed. Ya can't make a direct comparison because the 6 GB model's GPU has about 10% more shaders. So even w/ the same amount of VRAM, it would be about 7% faster. So if VRAM was an issue at 1080p, we would expext it to be an even bigger issue at 1440p. But the fps performance advantage (due to the shaders) does not vary in any significant way between the 6GB and 3 GB card which indicated that the extra 3GB isn't doing anything for you. You need to get above 1440p for it to matter.

Now with 76.4% of those hitting Steam servers @ 1080p, it's a lil hard to say ypou must plan for more. But I think any purchase today should keep where ya might be in next cupla years in mind, and my recommendation would be plan for at least 1440p. We recommend ..... ** as a minimum** ...getting as close as ya can to. More will provide a cushion.

1080p => 3 GB
1440p => 6 GB (1440p has 1.8 times as many pixles as 1080p)
2160p => 12 GB (1440p has 4.0 times as many pixles as 1080p)

 

[Splinterdog]

The so called missing 512Mb on my 970 has never really bothered me, especially since I upgraded from a Sapphire Radeon 7950 and was blown away by the improvement.
Anyway, Forza Horizon 3 is a very graphically demanding game at full settings and although the Geforce driver updates have improved the performance noticeably, the 970 still struggles at Ultra, in a real world meaning.

 

[EarthDog]

At 1080p, 3 GB is enough ...

Many would disagree... i would call this a MINIMUM these days with 4gb being strongly preferred.

FPS doesnt tell you much with regards to vram. Hitching can be observed when its swapping out data when vram is full.

See post 6.

 

[Batou1986]

4gb of vram is not enough for 1080p, whoever came up with the idea that resolution is absolutely tied to how much vram a game can use should be shot.

I don't even have to make any arguments here just fire up total warhammer and try to play on ultra @1080p with 4gb of vram or less.
The game will actually tell you on the loading screen that it does not have enough vram and is reducing settings.

 

[Vayra86]

4gb of vram is not enough for 1080p, whoever came up with the idea that resolution is absolutely tied to how much vram a game can use should be shot.

I don't even have to make any arguments here just fire up total warhammer and try to play on ultra @1080p with 4gb of vram or less.
The game will actually tell you on the loading screen that it does not have enough vram and is reducing settings.

This.

4 GB bare minimum these days and the 1060 3GB is a pointless card to begin with. Yes, in the bench hierarchy they look to be great price/perf, theoretically the 3GB 'should be enough'... and then there is actual practice when you have used a 3GB GPU on recent games, which paints the real picture of hitchy, stuttery gameplay.

Another issue with 3GB cards is resale value. It is going to be as nonexistant as any 2GB GTX 680 or 770 today. Nobody buys those cards anymore, because 2GB simply isn't enough. For anything anymore.

At 1080p, 3 GB is enough ... while you oft will see claims that this game needs more, it's almost always based upon a false assumption. You remeber all the fake hoopla about the 970's 3.5 GB ... despite all the ranting, any game that gave the 1070 problems (and this only happened at 4k), the 4 GB 980 provided no improvement The reason fpor this sis simply that there is no utility which actually measured VRAM usage.

As an analogy I'll use a credit card account. You have a Visa card w/ a $5,000 limit, abd you spent $500 on it, meaning you owe $500 and gave $4500 in credit remaining. Yet when you apply for a car loan and the bank asks for a credit report , that report contains a credit liability for Visa of $5,000. When a game installs, it looks at the amount of VRAM avalable and based on that "allocates" a certain % of that to be available. So if you have 8 GB, it might allocate 3.5GB...if you have 4 GB, it might allocate 2.5 GB. And it's highly unlikely that actual usage gets anywhere near that level. There is one way you can see whether VRAM has any impoact and that is to run the game with different amounts and look for chnages in qualitu, user experience of fps.

Alienbabeltech did this with some 40+ games with twin 770s (2GB + 4GB). They observed no significant in performance in any game at 1080p. They then did it at 5760 x 1080 and they did fond differences... but the thing is, for those games with differences, the games were simply unplayable... If having 4 GB gets you to 19 fps when the 2GFb gets 16 fps, the game is still unplayable. The kicker was, Max Payne wouldn't even install w/ the 2 GB card installed at 5760 x 1080. After installing and testing it with the 4GB card, they swapped cards ... and since the game was already installed, it didn't go thru the VRAM allocate step ... it ran at the same fps, with the no change in graphical quality.

Here's some links with other test data
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,12.html
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/

The most recent one is this where they had to go to 4k and highest settings to observe any issues with 4 GB
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...y-x-faces-off-with-nvidias-gtx-980-ti-titan-x

GPUz is a great tool but, as indicated there, using it to measure VRAM usage is not really what it does. Here's how it ties into the credit card analogy

"GPU-Z claims to report how much VRAM the GPU actually uses, but there’s a significant caveat to this metric. GPU-Z doesn’t actually report how much VRAM the GPU is actually using — instead, it reports the amount of VRAM that a game has requested. We spoke to Nvidia’s Brandon Bell on this topic, who told us the following: “None of the GPU tools on the market report memory usage correctly, whether it’s GPU-Z, Afterburner, Precision, etc. They all report the amount of memory requested by the GPU, not the actual memory usage. Cards will larger memory will request more memory, but that doesn’t mean that they actually use it. They simply request it because the memory is available.”

So there is simply no way to **see** VRAM usage when playing any game because there's simply no tool capable of measuring actual usage.

One great way to see the impact is to use techpowerups test results. Compare the 3 GB and 6GB 1060s which TPU reviewed. Ya can't make a direct comparison because the 6 GB model's GPU has about 10% more shaders. So even w/ the same amount of VRAM, it would be about 7% faster. So if VRAM was an issue at 1080p, we would expext it to be an even bigger issue at 1440p. But the fps performance advantage (due to the shaders) does not vary in any significant way between the 6GB and 3 GB card which indicated that the extra 3GB isn't doing anything for you. You need to get above 1440p for it to matter.

Now with 76.4% of those hitting Steam servers @ 1080p, it's a lil hard to say ypou must plan for more. But I think any purchase today should keep where ya might be in next cupla years in mind, and my recommendation would be plan for at least 1440p. We recommend ..... ** as a minimum** ...getting as close as ya can to. More will provide a cushion.

1080p => 3 GB
1440p => 6 GB (1440p has 1.8 times as many pixles as 1080p)
2160p => 12 GB (1440p has 4.0 times as many pixles as 1080p)

The problem with your sources indicates exactly why you say what you say. Your sources date back to 2012 and 2015.

Its 2017 now, we have a PS4Pro and Xbox Scorpio, and mainstream cards now push 4 GB as a standard VRAM amount. 4GB is the new '2GB' that was all hot and true in 2012. If you buy a 3 GB card for 1080p or as a sensible VRAM amount, it will lose its value fast. Its a different story from, for example, the positioning of a 780ti 3GB. That card ALSO suffers from VRAM shortage but it just doesn't have the core to push more. Todays GPUs do, and 3GB means it'll hamstring that core performance. There is a good reason AMD doesn't even touch it in its midrange offering.

As for the 970 and its 3.5 GB - like the 780(ti) which is quite similar in core capabilities, a single card 970 setup never needed 4 GB and the driver handles that well. In SLI, you do run the risk of touching on those limitations.

 

[ViperXTR]

i remember Resident Evil 7 consuming a lot of vram if you enable that one setting (i forgot what it is) and it causes minor stutter on some cards when not enabled

 

[Vayra86]

i remember Resident Evil 7 consuming a lot of vram if you enable that one setting (i forgot what it is) and it causes minor stutter on some cards when not enabled

Something with dynamic resolution?

 

[ViperXTR]

Something with dynamic resolution?

ah found it, shadow caching. When enabled on low vram cards, it will stutter but runs fine on 6-8gb ones

 

[Toothless]

Starting to think the words "need" and "want" are getting blurred in this thread. "Need" would be more "I need x amount minimum to get by" in which IMHO 2-3GB is minimum. "Want" is more on the side of 4GB+ because people are all about pretty textures.

 

[EarthDog]

Well, who buys a computer and WANTS to run with lowered textures? If thats ok, then yeah, 3gb or less is ok.. otherwise, 4gb.