Old high end card or new mid range cards?

[Kanan]

Interesting; does it impact performance?
Would a 4GB Rx480 than perhaps really be enough for 1080p?

Atm it is, even 3gb on nvidia cards at least. But there are exceptions. And because you buy Gpus for 1-2 years or more you want to have more vram if it's needed. 4gb is basically the amount of Vram of last gen (besides r9 390s).

 

[Ungari]

Atm it is, even 3gb on nvidia cards at least. But there are exceptions. And because you buy Gpus for 1-2 years or more you want to have more vram if it's needed. 4gb is basically the amount of Vram of last gen (besides r9 390s).

Actually 4GB VRAM has been exceeded almost two years ago with Shadow Of Mordor's HD Texture Pack. There are several games today that unless settings are turned down, or HD textures not enabled, will exceed 4GB.
This trend is on the rise with Rainbow 6 Siege and it's 6GB HD Textures, and GTA V mods.

 

[Apocalypsee]

If it really is the delta color compression it's very impressive gain. I remember on my GTX 970 at the same setting gobs up around 3.8GB which made it stutter. 4GB isn't enough nowadays, even 6GB is edging it. I play Rise of Tomb Raider the memory exceed 6GB memory at very high texture quality, and that is on 1920x1080

 

[P4-630]

I'm not playing Rise of Tomb Raider but glad my card has 8GB vram, I play at 1080p, future proof for at least 3 years I think.

 

[Smanci]

If it really is the delta color compression it's very impressive gain. I remember on my GTX 970 at the same setting gobs up around 3.8GB which made it stutter. 4GB isn't enough nowadays, even 6GB is edging it. I play Rise of Tomb Raider the memory exceed 6GB memory at very high texture quality, and that is on 1920x1080

I think you're confusing requested amount of memory vs. actually utilized.

 

[P4-630]

I think you're confusing requested amount of memory vs. actually utilized.

Well it's easy to see in GPU-Z how much vram is used....

 

[Smanci]

Well it's easy to see in GPU-Z how much vram is used....

It only reports the requested amount.

 

[P4-630]

It only reports the requested amount.

So how do you measure it then....

 

[Smanci]

So how do you measure it then....

Comparing two otherwise identical cards with different amounts of memory and see at what point performance starts to suffer. More doesn't hurt but those reported numbers can be quite vague representation of what's actually needed.

 

[P4-630]

Comparing two otherwise identical cards with different amounts of memory and see at what point performance starts to suffer. More doesn't hurt but those reported numbers can be quite vague representation of what's actually needed.

Strange method you are using, isn't it? Now that's a little "vague"...

People are using either AB or GPU-Z to measure this.

 

[64K]

Actually 4GB VRAM has been exceeded almost two years ago with Shadow Of Mordor's HD Texture Pack. There are several games today that unless settings are turned down, or HD textures not enabled, will exceed 4GB.
This trend is on the rise with Rainbow 6 Siege and it's 6GB HD Textures, and GTA V mods.

That's true. The Shadow of Mordor upgrade lists at least 6 GB VRAM as a requirement and there are other games on the way that will require it but some games use VRAM just because it's available. For example CoD Advanced Warfare. From the Maxwell Titan X review

From same page:

"Modern games use various memory allocation strategies, and these usually involve loading as much into VRAM as fits even if the texture might never or only rarely be used. Call of Duty: AW seems even worse as it keeps stuffing textures into the memory while you play and not as a level loads, without ever removing anything in the hope that it might need whatever it puts there at some point in the future, which it does not as the FPS on 3 GB cards would otherwise be seriously compromised."

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan_X/33.html



That review was from a year and a half ago and imo 4 GB is the minimum I would look at now for high settings, mods, 2X AA etc in most games and I would say 6 GB VRAM would be a good idea if you want highest settings. No doubt there will come a day when even 6 GB VRAM won't be enough for that either.

 

[Smanci]

Strange method you are using, isn't it? Now that's a little "vague"...

People are using either AB or GPU-Z to measure this.

This is pretty basic information but often overlooked. I'd recommend reading about it.

 

[P4-630]

This is pretty basic information but often overlooked. I'd recommend reading about it.

Most people don't have a 4GB and a 8GB card of the same model laying around just to measure this...
It's just stupid IMO!!

 

[Smanci]

Most people don't have a 4GB and a 8GB card of the same model laying around just to measure this...

Maybe stupid but that's how it goes

 

[Kanan]

If it really is the delta color compression it's very impressive gain. I remember on my GTX 970 at the same setting gobs up around 3.8GB which made it stutter. 4GB isn't enough nowadays, even 6GB is edging it. I play Rise of Tomb Raider the memory exceed 6GB memory at very high texture quality, and that is on 1920x1080

It's a mix of both I guess (compression and relative usage that varies from game session to game session and gpus).
And just because 2 or a few more games use more than 2 or 3gb you can't say it's not enough (I would know as a 3GB card owner), that's basically just wrong. Average what a game needs today is about 2-3 GB, saying this I'd never recommend someone a *new* 3 or 4 GB card now, because it would be careless for the future. The average bar rises but it rises slowly as always. Nothing changed. Basically the minimum "playable amount" is 2GB now, Radeon cards it's 3GB (HD 7970, R9 280X holds itself pretty well, but R9 380 2GB has problems even with compression). I already posted evidence on this multiple times.

Call of Duty: AW seems even worse as it keeps stuffing textures into the memory while you play and not as a level loads, without ever removing anything in the hope that it might need

Call of duty is not in any way to be called bad or "worse" it's a pretty well functioning engine - I commented the same on the article and I did now again. Just because a engine uses flexible amounts of Vram it's not bad, the absolute opposite is actually true.

All in all people here are overstating things about the vram amount "needed". More is better but is only useful in a few games anyway. I'd say 4GB is perfectly fine atm, even 3GB. 2GB is where only maxwell based cards such as 960 work properly and radeons start to suffer. This is because of better compression and drivers.

 

[64K]

Call of duty is not in any way to be called bad or "worse" it's a pretty well functioning engine - I commented the same on the article and I did now again. Just because a engine uses flexible amounts of Vram it's not bad, the absolute opposite is actually true.

All in all people here are overstating things about the vram amount "needed". More is better but is only useful in a few games anyway. I'd say 4GB is perfectly fine atm, even 3GB. 2GB is where only maxwell based cards such as 960 work properly and radeons start to suffer. This is because of better compression and drivers.

I don't think it matters if CoD: AW loads up VRAM just because it's there. That was a quote from W1zzard and I don't think he meant anything bad about the game. I think he was just pointing out something that I was trying to point out too here. VRAM used isn't always the same thing as VRAM needed. If one guy has 8 GB and shows 7.2 GB VRAM usage and a smooth gaming experience on highest settings and another has 4 GB and shows 3.5 GB VRAM usage and a smooth gaming experience then it doesn't really matter much as long as the GPU has the grunt to push out enough frames.

CoD: AW is just a good example to use to make that point. iirc I have seen one member here post that he had a Maxwell Titan X and the game showed a little over 11 GB VRAM usage on 4K.

There are a few examples where more than 4 GB is required at highest settings and with mods but I'm careful to always say "in most games" when referring to 4 GB being enough for now. If money is available then I would of course recommend at least 6 GB if not 8 GB.

 

[Apocalypsee]

It's just weird that some games react with the amount of VRAM while some, even weirder, to PCIe lanes. I put my card on the second PCIe x16 slots which is x8 electrically because on top of the primary x16 slots houses my soundcard which produce quite a bit of heat.

With it being x8 lanes I begin tweaking and playing games but then when I wanted to replay Wolfenstein; The New Order it stutter like hell. Puzzled, I thought something terribly wrong with the card but it wasn't like this when I first bought it. When I tested with OCLmembench (playing with memory overclock and timing) I noticed the unbelievably low bandwidth on last few instances (it was 1.5GB/s instead of usual 5.3GB/s for x8) and opening up GPU-Z I saw the x8 lanes is stuck at 1.1 speed even under load, then I remember that one of my saved BIOS setting I forced the second and third slots to 1.1 speed for some reason. Going back to W1zzard test PCIe scaling on this game confirms my findings, but the newer GTA V I didn't even notice performance difference. I put the card back to top x16 slots and dialed back the overclock.

 

[Kanan]

Why not simply set the settings to pci-e 3.0 again and use the 2nd slot, If the 1st isn't optimal?

 

[Apocalypsee]

Why not simply set the settings to pci-e 3.0 again and use the 2nd slot, If the 1st isn't optimal?

From W1zzard testing the Wolfenstein: The New Order still get benefits from full x16 3.0.

 

[Kanan]

From W1zzard testing the Wolfenstein: The New Order still get benefits from full x16 3.0.

1% more compared to 8x 3.0? Hardly worth it to switch slots for.

Edit: okay 3%. I still wouldn't care about it, but it's your system you must know what's best.