So is the 10 gb vram on rtx 3080 still enough?

[Vayra86]

Tessellation has far far smaller performance hit than it had in the beginning and there have been improvements even relatively recently. It is used sparingly but it does see constant use where needed, it is all over the place.

This is true - and that is in my view also a good place for RT effects. In many situations you can do similar with a much less costly raster effect. And since we don't have unlimited graphics power on tap... choices always have to be made, as they always have been made. Its about how budget is divided, and I think AMD is seeing things in a much more conservative - better - balance that way.

 

[Vya Domus]

Tessellation has far far smaller performance hit than it had in the beginning and there have been improvements even relatively recently. It is used sparingly but it does see constant use where needed, it is all over the place.

If it has a smaller performance hit then why should I expect that something which is way more computationally expensive will fair any better ?

 

[londiste]

In many situations you can do similar with a much less costly raster effect. And since we don't have unlimited graphics power on tap... choices always have to be made, as they always have been made. Its about how budget is divided, and I think AMD is seeing things in a much more conservative - better - balance that way.

There are effects that are pretty darn difficult to do with rasterization, at least to the same level. Reflections in Watch Dogs Legion - especially on cars - is the first that comes to mind from recent examples.

There is definitely performance budgeting going on. Approaches to it vary wildly, scene for RT is usually simplified (for example DF's Spiderman video), if not simplified it is distance limited (different RT settings), amount of reflecting surfaces is reduced (different settings, BF5 RT patches videos have good examples) in many if not most cases the scene used for RT is not updated every frame, there are different temporal tricks going on etc. The part about RT itself is also tested and optimized but it is far more known and straightforward - the way rays are cast, they are distributed, how many bounces, distance limiting etc.

The thing with RT effects is that they are rarely in your face. In most cases the result is a relatively subtle difference but performance hit aside they usually bring a good improvement in immersion. They are also somehow more impressive in motion.

 

[Vayra86]

There are effects that are pretty darn difficult to do with rasterization, at least to the same level. Reflections in Watch Dogs Legion - especially on cars - is the first that comes to mind from recent examples.

There is definitely performance budgeting going on. Approaches to it vary wildly, scene for RT is usually simplified (for example DF's Spiderman video), if not simplified it is distance limited (different RT settings), amount of reflecting surfaces is reduced (different settings, BF5 RT patches videos have good examples) in many if not most cases the scene used for RT is not updated every frame, there are different temporal tricks going on etc. The part about RT itself is also tested and optimized but it is far more known and straightforward - the way rays are cast, they are distributed, how many bounces, distance limiting etc.

The thing with RT effects is that they are rarely in your face. In most cases the result is a relatively subtle difference but performance hit aside they usually bring a good improvement in immersion. They are also somehow more impressive in motion.

Cyberpunk seems to suffer a similar fate for some areas and scenes then. Less complexity to cater to RT.

Not sure if that's a win...

 

[anachron]

OK I'll try one more time But I'll start by saying YES, you are correct. It is a personal consideration - we all try to crystal ball ourselves out of this, its never going to be conclusive until its too late

- RT performance is early adopter territory. Next gen may turn things on its head altogether and make current day perf obsolete straight away. You can check Turing > Ampere RT perf for proof. Remember, AMD is having a lite-version of RT in RDNA2. It can go either of both ways - the industry goes full steam on it and RDNA3 or beyond will push it far more heavily, or they really don't and focus goes back towards better raster perf while RT takes a similar place as, say, Tesselation - just another effect to use. The supposed 'RT advantage' of Nvidia can also dwindle faster than you might blink if devs start optimizing for consoles first. The additional die space Nvidia has for it, won't be used properly unless Nvidia keeps using bags of money like they have so far to get RTX implementation.

Its far too early to determine RT is 'here to stay' in the projected way as a 'major part' of the graphics pipeline. If the market doesn't eat it, it'll die. Its a very expensive effect. Look at the price surges, demand issues... They are related.

RT is also not efficient at this time. Its the same thing as enabling overly costly AA that barely shows an advantage. Yes, you cán... but why? In a large number of situations it really doesn't add much. You can still count the examples where it does, on one hand - and you'll have fingers left.

You are right that we can't know for sure what will happen in the future, this is why there is no "perfect" answer as none of the offer of AMD or NVIDIA cover all the possibilities.
While i have run into an issue with 8Gbs of VRAM on a single specific game, 10Gbs may be still enough for a few years... or not. But regarding RT, if i buy a 6800XT right now, i don't need a crystal ball to know that i will have worse performance in the few RT game i play or intend to play soon, which would be quite sad after spending that much money on a new GPU. So, for someone who appreciate RT like me, NVIDIA seems to be a better choice. If you don't care about RT at all, or don't mind waiting for it to mature, then indeed AMD offers may be a better choice.

- 10GB VRAM is not resale-worthy. Its just not. Its yesterday's capacity. Past two gens already had more. The fact we're already discussing it at launch speaks volumes.. You buy this to use it for a few years and then it gets knocked down the product tiers very fast. I haven't seen anyone disagree with that, by the way, even in this topic. We ALL draw the conclusion that 10GB will impose limitations pretty soon. The idea that this somehow 'scales with the core power' has absolutely no basis in the past - in the past, we've always seen an increase or equal capacity with increasing core power. You can't ignore that disbalance. Its there and it'll show.

- 16GB VRAM is very resale-worthy, especially given the fact that there is lots of core power on tap and the balance with the core power relative to past gen is also kept intact. Well balanced GPUs last longest. Its just that simple. When they run out of oomph, they run out of all things at the same time, and that tends to take a long while. Until they do... you can resell them. A GPU without such balance doesn't resell like that - you can only resell it on 'conditional' situations, ie specific use cases. '3080's a great card for 1440p now', is probably the punchline. You'll insta-lose all potential buyers with a 4K panel or even UWs - your niche got that much smaller.

To be honest, i don't buy a GPU on the resale value. I mean, i may compare it if everything else would be equal, but it's at the bottom of the list. But once again it may depend on personnal situations.

- VRAM is used everywhere. If you're short, you'll be tweaking your settings every time, not just in the games that may or may not have RT worth looking at. So going forward in time, say you'll be buying a 4K monitor 3 years from now... with a 3080 you might also feel the urge to upgrade the GPU. With a 12-16GB card, you most certainly won't have to.

I may agree with you in 4k, in 1440p it seems that there is still room with 10GB for some times. But the 16GB of vram will not be of much use either if you have to reduce image quality because the card is not fast enough for the game that require that amount. But as you said, we have no crystal ball.

As for a hundred DXR titles... yeah. In a similar vein we also have 'hundreds' of DX12 titles... that we still prefer to run in DX11 because its the same thing but better.

TL DR what it REALLY comes down to... is how keen you are to early adopt RT. Except now its not the Turing days where the competition has nothing to place against that consideration - the competition has a technically more durable product - and it even does RT too! That's a pretty steep price tag to keep going green if you ask me.

Well i agree with you that the price tag is steep, but as i said, i would feel worse with buying something that perform worse in a game i already played with similar settings. Especially since the only reason i would realistically have to change my GPU is for performance on RT games as I have no issues with non RT games so far.

In the end, it seems to me that the good thing is that we at least have choice now

 

[EarthDog]

Yep I agree most people will be satisfied with 5700XT or 2070 Super at 1440p, even 5700 non-XT and 2070 non-Super would do fine for 99% of people at this res



2070 Super can easily do 1440p/144Hz if you tweak settings, unless your CPU/Memory are turds

Most people that aim for 120+ fps are playing multiplayer titles and cares alot less for image quality anyway, performance is key and without maxing games out, spotting enemies becomes way easier

This was, of course, under the assumption of ultra settings...we're nkt talking about esports titles and competitive games where turning settings down is key. Talking about joe blow gamer who strives for ultra.

 

[anachron]

The funny thing about the whole dispute in this thread is that, given the non existent availability of both brand, people vouching for AMD should be happy that people vouching for NVIDIA don't buy the card they want and vice versa. It's a win win situation...

 

[nguyen]

The funny thing about the whole dispute in this thread is that, given the non existent availability of both brand, people vouching for AMD should be happy that people vouching for NVIDIA don't buy the card they want and vice versa. It's a win win situation...

Well I'm sure that some people who are vouching for AMD in this thread are not buying the RX6000 at all, or even actually playing today games...kinda pointless discussion really.

But hey I found some upcoming new game that will make good use of RT, it's Riftbreaker, sponsored by AMD

And turning RT on is crushing performance on AMD hardware

 

[Vayra86]

The funny thing about the whole dispute in this thread is that, given the non existent availability of both brand, people vouching for AMD should be happy that people vouching for NVIDIA don't buy the card they want and vice versa. It's a win win situation...

Comment of the day Shame we can't upvote

So, let's start a poll? 'Which GPU are you not buying this year?'

Well I'm sure that some people who are vouching for AMD in this thread are not buying the RX6000 at all, or even actually playing today games...kinda pointless discussion really.

But hey I found some upcoming new game that will make good use of RT, it's Riftbreaker, sponsored by AMD

And turning RT on is crushing performance on AMD hardware

The penny really has to drop sometime, but is the plank on your forehead this thick? Many people DO. NOT. CARE.
Gaming isn't about graphics you know. Its about games. If you need graphics teasers to buy into games, man... you're far gone IMO. The visual aspect is just that: one aspect - with varying relevance.

That also applies to the 'not early adopting' part. Most people don't give a rat's behind about what's new. They look at what's nice to have and easy to get. I fall in that category, for example - and guess what, I'm still a hardcore gamer nonetheless. Its a very diverse target audience.

 

[Chomiq]

This is kind of a pointless discussion, both sides are arguing over "what if" scenario in 2-3 years.

In 2-3 years 3080 won't be enough to run at 4K at ultra anyway, that's expected.
16 GB of VRAM won't bottleneck you at 4K but GPU performance is based on more than just VRAM.
In 2-3 years Nvidia will be on Gen 3-4 of RT implementation, AMD will probably be on Gen 2-3. The odds are that GPU's from early gens will be useless for anything above 1080p medium RT.
If both Sony and MS release mid-gen variants of consoles then what's achievable by XSX/PS5 with RT will become a baseline for "RT LOW" setting.

 

[Calmmo]

3080 is a great short to mid term GPU, i doubt it will age well but that's beside the point. People who look to buy a high end gpu and keep it for 4-5 years.. well just wait for the more vram versions

 

[londiste]

The penny really has to drop sometime, but is the plank on your forehead this thick? Many people DO. NOT. CARE.
Gaming isn't about graphics you know. Its about games. If you need graphics teasers to buy into games, man... you're far gone IMO. The visual aspect is just that: one aspect - with varying relevance.

For this particular audience the end of days is already here. Midrange from last generation has more power than they need and probably high end from generation before as well

 

[Vayra86]

For this particular audience the end of days is already here. Midrange from last generation has more power than they need and probably high end from generation before as well

Correctamundo! The thing is, if you look at overall marketshare per tier, the vast majority is in that group. Its shifting a little, but not by much.

I'm missing some FPS now with this new res, but other than that... everything's plenty playable.

 

[Vendor]

AMD RX 5500XT 4GB still easily outperforms the PS4

actually, ps4 gpu (non-pro one) is even slower than a gtx 950

 

[londiste]

actually, ps4 gpu (non-pro one) is even slower than a gtx 950

Closest match PS4 GPU has from cards is probably Radeon 7850. PS4 Pro GPU is between RX470 and RX480.

 

[budgetgaming]

Yesterday nvidia launch 3060ti....what does it mean? My guess which we have talk about it is correct next year u will see a 3070ti and 3080ti in the market....

 

[Mussels]

Yesterday nvidia launch 3060ti....what does it mean? My guess which we have talk about it is correct next year u will see a 3070ti and 3080ti in the market....

of course, and probably super models after that. there will always be a better model coming along.

 

[vincat84]

What about the new RTX IO technology? I believe this is going to fix the VRAM lack in the card (if needed it) by accessing faster to the M2 pcie 4 SSD card

 

[lexluthermiester]

Its enough.

For now.

I don't expect the 20GB version to really boost performance in games right now.

That's just the thing really, adding more VRAM is never about a "boost performance" thing as much as it is a "make sure you have enough VRAM so that performance doesn't degrade when a game needs more and is forced to swap data out to system RAM" situation. In this respect, having more RAM is always good. It's always better to have more than you need then to have not enough. This applies to system RAM as much as VRAM.

 

[Mussels]

resizable BAR + NvIO (and AMD's variant) will probably change how things work as far as game loading goes.

 

[Chrispy_]

IMO 10GB is enough for now. It probably won't be enough at some point next year, but people who splurge on flagship vanity cards at 3x the cost of anything in the performance/$ sweet spot aren't likely to give a shit about their card next year, because they'll be buying the new model that comes out then, anyway.

If you care about longevity or performance/$ then 10GB is too little for a long-term card. 12GB is probably going to become the new baseline for Ultra settings, (it's been on 8GB for some games since 2019) and with the competition including 16GB and the inevitable PS5/XBSX refresh in 12-18 months, you can expect the GPU power and VRAM quantities to increase, just like One X did. My guess is that the XBSX refresh will come with 20GB RAM to take advantage of developers targeting 16GB GPUs cross-platform whilst still having 4GB RAM for the OS and game code to run on the CPU.

As always, this discussion is entirely subjective opinion because if anyone could accurately predict the future, the human race would be in a much better position than it is right now

 

[EarthDog]

It's a good thing 10GB will be fine for a generation's worth of time (really, one year won't suddenly change anything). Sure, we all want more there, but as good as it is to have a buffer, it's a waste of money when you aren't using close to its capacity. If you play at 4k/ultra perhaps it's good to have towards the end of its life in a few years...

In theory, the xbox can use up to 13.5GB. In reality, it's a shared pool with the system ram that also shares bandwidth and it will use less. I highly doubt this generation of console will push up RAM use past 10GB. I doubt they'll add more system RAM to an updated console...there's no reason to in a closed ecosystem.

As was mentioned... this is an opinion as well...

 

[Rei]

and the inevitable PS5/XBSX refresh in 12-18 months, you can expect the GPU power and VRAM quantities to increase, just like One X did. My guess is that the XBSX refresh will come with 20GB RAM to take advantage of developers targeting 16GB GPUs cross-platform whilst still having 4GB RAM for the OS and game code to run on the CPU.

Why do you think that there will be a refresh of PS5 & Xbox 4 in less than 2 years? The only reason that there was a refresh of last gen console was to take advantage of the sudden demand in 4K market segment while maintaining status quo for 1080p. I highly doubt that there will be a 6K market while I don't see 8K content becoming commonplace in the next 4-5 years that there will be a need for mid-gen refresh. By that time, both (or all 3) companies would have already been working on the next-gen console.

I doubt they'll add more system RAM to an updated console...there's no reason to in a closed ecosystem.

Why not? They did that for Xbox One X with 4 GB of additional RAM & 1 GB for the PS4 Pro. Though the PS4 Pro's RAM was DDR3 for OS use meaning GDDR5 RAM allowance for games usage went up from 5.5 GB RAM to 6.5 GB RAM.
If this gen's refreshed console would have to support higher rez output without impacting graphical fidelity or game performance, they would have to increase RAM as well otherwise it'll be a half-baked refreshed console.

 

[EarthDog]

Why do you think that there will be a refresh of PS5 & Xbox 4 in less than 2 years? The only reason that there was a refresh of last gen console was to take advantage of the sudden demand in 4K market segment while maintaining status quo for 1080p. I highly doubt that there will be a 6K market while I don't see 8K content becoming commonplace in the next 4-5 years that there will be a need for mid-gen refresh. By that time, both (or all 3) companies would have already been working on the next-gen console.

Why not? They did that for Xbox One X with 4 GB of additional RAM & 1 GB for the PS4 Pro. Though the PS4 Pro's RAM was DDR3 for OS use meaning GDDR5 RAM allowance for games usage went up from 5.5 GB RAM to 6.5 GB RAM.
If this gen's refreshed console would have to support higher rez output without impacting graphical fidelity or game performance, they would have to increase RAM as well otherwise it'll be a half-baked refreshed console.

I forgot they did that in the past. But as you said earlier in that post, requirements for monitors won't be going up so there's that. We'll see if 13.5GB for all isn't enough.

That said, I wonder how much that did for either console... how many titles could take advantage of it and what the difference is between versions fps wise.

 

[Rei]

That said, I wonder how much that did for either console... how many titles could take advantage of it and what the difference is between versions fps wise.

This is just my observation from watching too many Digital Foundry comparison videos but there were few misses such as better graphics and/or rez but worse frame rate than the original console. Sure enough, that was in quality mode, not performance mode. My guess is, it depends on how well each game is optimized as well as developer choice of prioritizing rez/graphics over frame rate & vice-versa.