1440p and vram

[Robster]

Hey all.

So I'm thinking of adding another GTX 770, but after reading on various forums regarding future of vRam usage I'm starting to feel unsure whether investing in another 2GB card is wise or not.

I've checked a few sites' tests where they've concluded that 2GB is merely differentiating with ~0.5 fps in most cases from 4GB. Example: http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/ .

My gaming happens on a 27-inch 1440p monitor and right now, another 2GB GTX 770 feels like the best upgrade for me graphics/money-wise but I just don't want to be regretting that investment if games are gonna be exceeding the 2GB that I have in the near future.

Opinions..?

 

[blake0812]

Save your money and see, first. That's what I'd do.

 

[Unoid]

I'm sure I ran into 2gb wall playing on my 1440p wth SLI 680's, however performance was always great.

No reason why not to try a second 770 for a while. You'll be happy with performance for another year+ or until you buy a 4K monitor.

I just sold my two 680's for $400 and when OC'd ran faster than 770's. hard to find better performance than that.

 

[bystander36]

When you do run into Vram issues, turning down AA almost always fixes it, but of course games are starting to use more vram, so what happens in the next year could change.

 

[Bateluer]

I have a similar monitor set up to the OP, with a pair 27in 1440p. With my 4GB 290X, I can break the 2GB barrier in multiple games. Whether it would directly be impacting frame rates if I had a 2GB card, I can't say.

 

[BrightCandle]

A bundle of websites have done reviews of 770x2 compared to say 780 ti x2 in resolutions from 1080p up to 4k. What I gathered from all those reviews and tests was the following:
1) 2GB is basically enough for all games given the performance level of a pair of 770's in any resolution except 4k. At 4k there are at least a couple of games where performance drops off dramatically due to lack of VRAM. But at 3k its almost every game and 2k is basically fine with every game (exception Titanfall with its extreme textures that don't really look very good anyway).
2) 2x 770's produce a surprisingly close performance level to a pair of 780 ti's, its dramatically better performance than a single 780 ti and cheaper as well, I am surprised so few people consider this option considering the price and performance disparity that exists.
3) Heavily modded games like Skyrim can exceed the VRAM limit as the assets can be enormous and poorly optimised. You can get that game to mod to use more than 6GB VRAM if you like, but it'll also just perform poorly as well. If Skyrim modded or some other game with VRAM sucking mods is your thing then a higher VRAM card would be worth it.

All in all the 2GB VRAM has been a non issue for me even at eyefinity/surround resolutions. The cards run out of performance before they run out VRAM. Most games I have measured come in around 1-1.2 GB of actual VRAM usage, although the modern games are really hard to measure as they seem to cache a lot in VRAM and appear to use everything you have, so a lot of people are interpreting that as 3GB or 6GB as being necessary, but it appears to have no performance detriment not to have the assets cached. BF4 is one example such game.

I know only a few things about the future. At some point 2GB will be too little, there is no doubt about that. VRAM usage has always gone up, it will continue to do so. Typically what has happened in the past is that when the VRAM runs out so does the performance of the card, the game developers tend to balance things out that way for the most part so you aren't unnecessarily hampered in one aspect. That might break in the future, the new consoles might dramatically change VRAM usage, but it hasn't happened yet, so far my PC has far exceeded the consoles despite its "low" VRAM.

 

[blastingcap]

Truly next gen games haven't come out yet. We'll know more by next year if 2GB is enough for next-gen console ports at 1440p or not. I prefer 3+ GB as a cheap insurance policy.

 

[RaulF]

2GB is not enough.

Anyone who claims otherwise has not ran into a VRAM wall and experience the hitch that you get.

As long as you know that will have to lower AA and terrain to compensate for it you might be ok.

Remember that the new consoles have 8GB of VRAM. Developers are going to be hitting for that and then tunning for PC.



A 780Ti and a 290.

Guess which one runs COD Ghost better.

And by better I mean smoother and more consistent.

 

[Throckmorton]

I am tired of the myth that VRAM has something to do with resolution. It just doesn't. The frame buffer is a very small portion of graphics card memory.

2560*1440*24 = 88473600 bits = 10 megabytes

Even if you anti-alias every pixel (supersampling) 8x that's 80 megabytes.

It's textures and geometry that use most of your graphics card memory! For resolution what matters is GPU computing power

You can prove this yourself. Use a program to monitor GPU mem usage and switch between resolutions. You'll see very little change

 

[Deders]

Someone did some testing recently and found they got much lower minimum framerates with the 2GB cards in more demanding games with max details.

 

[BrightCandle]

I am tired of the myth that VRAM has something to do with resolution. It just doesn't. The frame buffer is a very small portion of graphics card memory.

2560*1440*24 = 88473600 bits = 10 megabytes

Even if you anti-alias every pixel (supersampling) 8x that's 80 megabytes.

It's textures and geometry that use most of your graphics card memory! For resolution what matters is GPU computing power

You can prove this yourself. Use a program to monitor GPU mem usage and switch between resolutions. You'll see very little change

A modern game uses multiple frame buffers. IIRC BF4 uses at least 8 in all. One example of this is what is used for HDR. The game initially renders the game world in higher bit colour than your screen could support, which it does to a frame. Then a post process program goes through the scene determines how bright overall it is, compares that to the users current iris brightness and then determines what colours to actually render that lighting as.

We also have frames in different colour depths, frames based on depth or movement and a variety of other things. The modern game pipeline is effectively a series of frames and post processing that takes those information frames and uses it to produce the final image.

So yes while its true textures and such are a large part, actually what you are going to find is a significant amount of memory also goes into the multiple frame buffers that make up a games rendering pipeline. Memory usage definitely increases with resolution, its not linear (because textures and object space doesn't increase) but it is still significant.

 

[Rakehellion]

I am tired of the myth that VRAM has something to do with resolution. It just doesn't. The frame buffer is a very small portion of graphics card memory.

2560*1440*24 = 88473600 bits = 10 megabytes

Even if you anti-alias every pixel (supersampling) 8x that's 80 megabytes.

It's textures and geometry that use most of your graphics card memory! For resolution what matters is GPU computing power

You can prove this yourself. Use a program to monitor GPU mem usage and switch between resolutions. You'll see very little change

This is true, but a game will have multiple framebuffers and there's plenty of data in memory that doesn't make it directly to the screen.

But on the other hand, a modern game engine will stream data in and out of memory as necessary.

 

[Skott]

Well I plan on grabbing a LG 34UM95 3440x1440 monitor soon. Today I ordered a 290x for it. Supposedly the extra vram comes into use at the uber high resolutions. I figure 4GB is enough to do the job in my situation. I'm coming from a single 6950 2GB vram card though. I would think dual 770s would be fine for a while.

 

[toyota]

I am tired of the myth that VRAM has something to do with resolution. It just doesn't. The frame buffer is a very small portion of graphics card memory.

2560*1440*24 = 88473600 bits = 10 megabytes

Even if you anti-alias every pixel (supersampling) 8x that's 80 megabytes.

It's textures and geometry that use most of your graphics card memory! For resolution what matters is GPU computing power

You can prove this yourself. Use a program to monitor GPU mem usage and switch between resolutions. You'll see very little change

it depends on the game and the actual settings but resolution most certainly makes a difference in many cases. and yes I have tested this...

 

[Robster]

Well... this escalated quickly

I see that there are various opinions regarding the usage of vRAM in this thread, as I had expected.

I've found that the vRAM amount used in specific games varies strongly depending on the user's hardware; mostly the gfx-card. While playing Metro 2033 yesterday, if my memory serves me right, I noticed that 2033 MB was being used, which is my max. While Metro may not be the most ideal game to compare whether a game would be affected any differently had I been using a 3 GB card as it's game engine in general is very unbalanced in my opinion, it's just an example as I've heard others reporting lower numbers with similar graphic settings.

If I'd have had a 3 GB card I wouldn't be "concerned" about this issue. However, with regards to adding another GTX, I do feel uncomfortable if my video memory is constantly at 2033 MB and making an identical investment yet again. So I thought of the following...

What if I buy a second GTX 770, but a 4 GB variant. I would still be using 2 GB in total vRAM when coupled with my current card but would have the chance of selling my old 2 GB card and pairing it with a 4 GB card IN CASE/WHEN THE TIME COMES that I would experience games demanding such a change. It's the only scenario I can come up with right now. GTX 780ti is still slower, yet around the same prices as 2 x GTX 770's in my area so that's a no go for me.

Does this sound reasonable at all in this case? Or should I just buy another 2 GB, and hope it will last me 2 years (that's what I'm aiming for here)? I'd simply just have to sell them if games would elevate the vRAM in that time frame.

 

[SlickR12345]

I just read recently I don't know if it was guru3d or some other website, but they said that the max memory current games use right now is 2GB, but that few games are starting to use slightly more than 2GB and that for future proof gaming, as in the next year or two you should be looking at 3GB card for optimal performance.

Again they found that most games use on average only 1GB or vram. I think 2GB is a safe bet though at resolutions of up to 25xx for the conceivable future.

 

[Denithor]

What if I buy a second GTX 770, but a 4 GB variant. I would still be using 2 GB in total vRAM when coupled with my current card but would have the chance of selling my old 2 GB card and pairing it with a 4 GB card IN CASE/WHEN THE TIME COMES that I would experience games demanding such a change. It's the only scenario I can come up with right now. GTX 780ti is still slower, yet around the same prices as 2 x GTX 770's in my area so that's a no go for me.

Does this sound reasonable at all in this case? Or should I just buy another 2 GB, and hope it will last me 2 years (that's what I'm aiming for here)? I'd simply just have to sell them if games would elevate the vRAM in that time frame.

What is the price difference between 2GB and 4GB? If not too large, I would choose that first option, buy a 4GB second card now to run alongside your current 2GB card. If/when 2GB begins to noticeably limit performance, sell that card and pick up a second 4GB card.

Of course, this may not happen for 2+ years, in which case you would need to refresh both cards to whatever is available at that time. But at least you will have the option of swapping a 2GB card for 4GB if, say, a really great game comes out next year that needs 3+ GB to function properly at your chosen resolution.

 

[OCGuy]

OP do your own research on VRAM usage, or read an entire thread that has actual statistics.

At 1440p you do not need more than 2GB now, or in the near future. Developers don't write games that leave them 20% or less of the PC market intentionally. (Although some poorly-coded games such as Skyrim and the Titanfall Beta did fail to properly utilize memory).

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Most people you find giving VRAM utilization numbers are actually giving you the amount that the game allocates based on the available amount on the card. That is why you can find someone with a 3GB card claiming 2900MB "usage" on their system, and someone with identical monitors and settings on the same game seeing 1900MB usage on a 2GB card.

 

[Robster]

What is the price difference between 2GB and 4GB? If not too large, I would choose that first option, buy a 4GB second card now to run alongside your current 2GB card. If/when 2GB begins to noticeably limit performance, sell that card and pick up a second 4GB card.

Of course, this may not happen for 2+ years, in which case you would need to refresh both cards to whatever is available at that time. But at least you will have the option of swapping a 2GB card for 4GB if, say, a really great game comes out next year that needs 3+ GB to function properly at your chosen resolution.

The price difference between the 2 and 4 GB model is the thing...

A Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB costs 262€, while the 4 GB costs 328€. Thats a difference of 66€ (~90$). Do you think it's worth it?

 

[Robster]

OP do your own research on VRAM usage, or read an entire thread that has actual statistics.

At 1440p you do not need more than 2GB now, or in the near future. Developers don't write games that leave them 20% or less of the PC market intentionally. (Although some poorly-coded games such as Skyrim and the Titanfall Beta did fail to properly utilize memory).

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

I've done and am doing my own research, it's in fact the only thing I've been obsessed about these past 3 days. I appreciate you giving me the inspiration to look, I however rather not only research but communicate with other users as well and therethrough
exchange links/research that might be useful that I might not have found, as you did just now. Thank u.

 

[Denithor]

The price difference between the 2 and 4 GB model is the thing...

A Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB costs 262€, while the 4 GB costs 328€. Thats a difference of 66€ (~90$). Do you think it's worth it?

For me personally, no, but I find myself not gaming much these days, only have a GTX 650 Boost presently, not even in the same league as the cards you are considering.

The thing is, you're considering paying $90 extra basically as insurance against limited future need. When paired with your current 2GB card, the extra 2GB on the 4GB card will not be used at all, so it's basically waste. IF you need to swap within less than the next two years, you will be glad you spent the extra $90, but otherwise it won't help anything. Except possibly resell value when you upgrade both cards.

 

[OCGuy]

I've done and am doing my own research, it's in fact the only thing I've been obsessed about these past 3 days. I appreciate you giving me the inspiration to look, I however rather not only research but communicate with other users as well and therethrough
exchange links/research that might be useful that I might not have found, as you did just now. Thank u.

I wasn't suggesting you shouldn't have posted here, sorry if it came off that way. ^_^

I just wanted to point out that there is a lot of misinformation about VRAM usage that gets tossed around, due to a double-whammy of lack of basic understanding of how it works, as well as some brand-bias. There are differences in standard VRAM amounts between cards who compete in the same performance and price brackets, which can bring some politics into it.

 

[BrightCandle]

Typically what I have seen is that once you start getting games that use more than the base VRAM that a card comes with (so 2GB for a 770) they also tend to use more performance than the card has for those settings. So the extra VRAM for the purpose of future proofing turns out to be a waste, because actually by the time we see games really using it your card can't use those settings either. You can probably point to 1 or 2 games where that hasn't been true, but 99% of the time that VRAM is going to sit idle for the entire life of the card.

In many ways I would probably buy the extra VRAM just for those 1-2 games (like titanfall) to get the extra quality textures if it wasn't such a rip off. 2 GB of GDDR5 should not be setting us back $70, that is a massive price gouge which really doesn't add up. Its already a premium addition but I can't help but feel they would sell a lot more of the higher VRAM cards if the price was closer to the actual realistic cost of the components.

I just don't see the point of the extra VRAM, historically its been worthless and I don't see that anything has changed in recent years to change the relationship. Most cards sold today are still <=2GB, lots of people are still buying 1GB cards. Games are going to work well at those VRAM amounts for a long time to come. I think its better to save the money and plan to buy a replacement card earlier in the future, on average you'll have better performance at the same long term cost. For those that upgrade relatively frequently anyway its a completely moot point because the moment you can't access the settings you want in your new shiny game you'll probably go out and buy a 880 with 4GB VRAM or a 300 series with 6GB (or whatever) anyway. I doubt most SLI owners are all that budget constrained or conscious.

Just one last thing though - I have been running 2x 680's for like 1.5 years now. I am fully expecting to be adding a lot more performance and VRAM in the near future, a pair of 770's is really 2 year old technology. Makes me uneasy that people are buying right now as I consider it a really bad time to be buying just based on what is out there in the market.

 

[Face2Face]

Games @ 1440p

All playable settings for my setup

Metro 2033 - AAA - Maxed out - 1557MB
Crysis 3 - FXAA on Very High - 1950MB
BF4 SP - 2XMSAA on Ultra - 2153MB
GTA 4 - Modded textures and ENB - Maxed out - 1500MB
Batman AO - Ultra with Max TXAA - 2100MB
Metro LL - AAA - Maxed settings - 1200MB
Skyrim - with 2K and 4K Texture mods with 2XMSAA - 2300-2500MB
Assetto Corsa - 4XMSAA - Ultra - 2450MB

 

[Robster]

Hehe. No worries, OCGuy. I'm just glad people are joining in on the conversation as I find this topic to be, as many ppl pointed out, misinformed or twisted yet interesting. I checked out the link you provided, truly eye-opening as it wasn't what I had expected TBH.

Future proofing is pretty much impossible, I stand by that. Investing however can be done smartly, as my last build lasted 5 years (good old GTX 295 was a part of it) and yet managed to sell it and buy my current one with some cash added. Now that I think of it, I guess I was hoping to somehow do that just now, invest, but in terms of vram, hehe And it just makes sense, as BrightCandle said, by the time the +2 GB vRAM will be standardized the time for upgrade will already have taken place.

I've decided to sit on it and see how things turn out. Only if i catch a crazily reduced price on a 770 i'll take it. So far I'm very pleased with how this card handles 1440p. More firepower would be nice, but then again the Maxwell lineup is not far away..