2GB VRAM not enough for BF4?

[5150Joker]

.. if gaming @1440p (27" monitor) with all settings at max (including an expensive SSAA). Based on the Guru3D link, it appears that even 2GB is adequate for most people. Though I'd agree a 3GB would be a better buy for future proofing.

Anyone in the market for a new display/gpu should be aiming for 1440p+, not 1080P. At 1440P, you really need SLI with current GPUs to max out a game's settings. That's why I posted the settings I did above that included SSAA. It provides the absolute best image quality + 60+ fps constantly while in game and it eats up 3GB of vram while doing so.

If someone plans to run at 1080P and isnt concerned about image quality, then sure 2-3GB of vram is fine. But even 2GB is being pushed to the limit at this point.

 

[Chumster]

Anyone in the market for a new display/gpu should be aiming for 1440p+, not 1080P. At 1440P, you really need SLI with current GPUs to max out a game's settings. That's why I posted the settings I did above that included SSAA. It provides the absolute best image quality + 60+ fps constantly while in game and it eats up 3GB of vram while doing so.

If someone plans to run at 1080P and isnt concerned about image quality, then sure 2-3GB of vram is fine. But even 2GB is being pushed to the limit at this point.

Personally I don't think 1080p and image quality are mutually exclusive. In order to spot the differences between MSAA and SSAA you essentially have to compare screenshots. The fact is 2-3GB of vram is going to be completely sufficient for 95%+ of gamers.

Completely agree with you once you start getting into the 27"+ range (1440p+) but they represent such a small segment, most will be satisfied with a mid range card with <4GB. And even then, I'd hardly call Ultra + 4 x MSAA "poor image quality".

 

[Xarick]

I remember this argument when I bought my 5850.... yet it lasted me for 4 years... 2Gb is plenty.. just expect as time goes on to turn down a few things here or there. Honestly those are usually ancillary things you don't miss much anyway.

 

[amenx]

The TweakGuides dude playing the game with a GTX580 on ultra. A couple settings lowered though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhaVRaDvJ0c

The 64-bit version of the game is running at 1920x1200 with Ultra settings, with the exception of MSAA at 2x, Motion Blur Off and Post-process AA set to Medium to reduce blurring. Framerates average around 40-50 FPS on a stock GTX 580 / i7 920 system. However my FPS briefly falls into the teens during the scripted "levolution" destruction effect at the end of the video.

The FPS downturn near the end almost certainly has more to do with the weakness of his GPU than the vidmem. FPS imo has little to do with vidmem, but more to do with stuttering, loading texures and therefore smoothness of play.

Whatever GPUz or similar apps report on vidmem usage is not necessarily an indication that your game will flop with less vidmem. Some games I would think may make use of any spare vidmem you have just because its there. I've seen it personally with a gtx570 reporting far less vidmem usage than a 660ti/770 in some games, yet still enjoying a very playable smooth experience.

 

[5150Joker]

Personally I don't think 1080p and image quality are mutually exclusive. In order to spot the differences between MSAA and SSAA you essentially have to compare screenshots. The fact is 2-3GB of vram is going to be completely sufficient for 95%+ of gamers.

Completely agree with you once you start getting into the 27"+ range (1440p+) but they represent such a small segment, most will be satisfied with a mid range card with <4GB. And even then, I'd hardly call Ultra + 4 x MSAA "poor image quality".

Who are you quoting with regards to "poor image quality" because it's clearly not what I stated. At 27" with a 1440P, I've found that the best image quality is obtained using SSAA + Ultra settings. FXAA causes everything to become blurry so it's not a good option to use, even Hard|OCP's Brent thinks so. 4X MSAA looks fine but the alpha testing benefits immensely from SSAA for things like foliage and fences for maximum IQ whereas TXAA/FXAA create nasty blurs.

1080P is a dying standard and to build a new system today based on that would be very foolish. So for anyone who wants a system that isn't set to be obsolete the day it's built, a 1440P+ target resolution should be kept in mind. With today's GPUs, you really need SLI/Crossfire using top end cards to pull that off if you want the best image quality and that will require more 3GB+ of vram.

If you are on a budget, then a single top end card with AA turned down would easily suffice and keep vram usage under 3 GB. So to be clear, anyone who wishes to pursue maximum image quality at 1440P+ will likely see 3GB+ used in newer games like BF4 as I've demonstrated.

 

[blackened23]

SGSSAA isn't representative of how most people play games. If you want to get a higher VRAM configuration for such use or for surround/4k gaming, you have that option, but I don't necessarily agree with making a case for 6GB of VRAM with SGSSAA. This is not how most people play games. SGSSAA makes practically every modern game unplayable anyway, so until GPU power reaches that level to where it can be comfortably used at 1080p, much less 1600p, then it may be relevant.

SSAA takes up a ton of VRAM. Aside from that, SGSSAA uses a ton of GPU horsepower and most cards and even most mGPU setups don't have the required grunt for it in triple AAA modern titles. Most people using FXAA or MSAA will be fine with 3GB, IMO. In fact, ultra + MSAA x4 benchmarks on the net show that 3GB is enough for BF4. Heck, at 1080p ultra / MSAA x4 2GB is enough. I feel like 3GB will be the sweet spot for the next year or so. You can, of course go nuts with SGSSAA and mods to make 6GB usable but stuff like that isn't really required nor is usable a lot of the time. Especially SSAA.

Of course, this changes for 4k gaming or surround. I would always recommend more VRAM for such setups. For single screen 1080p-1600p, though? I really think 3GB is the sweet spot for some time to come. Like I said before if this changes in the next year, I welcome it. I hope i'm wrong, I would love VRAM use to be accelerated. Doubt it though. I don't think VRAM usage will change that fast - maybe two years from now. We'll be well into 20nm by then.

 

[5150Joker]

SGSSAA isn't representative of how most people play games. If you want to get a higher VRAM configuration for such use or for surround/4k gaming, you have that option, but I don't necessarily agree with making a case for 6GB of VRAM with SGSSAA. This is not how most people play games. SGSSAA makes practically every modern game unplayable anyway, so until GPU power reaches that level to where it can be comfortably used at 1080p, much less 1600p, then it may be relevant.

SSAA takes up a ton of VRAM. Aside from that, SGSSAA uses a ton of GPU horsepower and most cards and even most mGPU setups don't have the required grunt for it in triple AAA modern titles. Most people using FXAA or MSAA will be fine with 3GB, IMO. In fact, ultra + MSAA x4 benchmarks on the net show that 3GB is enough for BF4. Heck, at 1080p ultra / MSAA x4 2GB is enough. I feel like 3GB will be the sweet spot for the next year or so. You can, of course go nuts with SGSSAA and mods to make 6GB usable but stuff like that isn't really required nor is usable a lot of the time. Especially SSAA.

Of course, this changes for 4k gaming or surround. I would always recommend more VRAM for such setups. For single screen 1080p-1600p, though? I really think 3GB is the sweet spot for some time to come. Like I said before if this changes in the next year, I welcome it. I hope i'm wrong, I would love VRAM use to be accelerated. Doubt it though. I don't think VRAM usage will change that fast - maybe two years from now. We'll be well into 20nm by then.

In BF4 because of the usage of so much foliage on some maps, using just MSAA makes everything look very jagged and rough. Employing FXAA gives it a blurry look as if you smeared vaseline all over your screen. So the only real option is to use SSAA which does incur a large hit but improves the IQ drastically.

Now if someone is using 1440P with max IQ, then an SLI system like I mentioned is needed for the necessary GPU power. I maintain 100+ fps most of the time with SSAA turned on so the GPU power is definitely there for SSAA.

I also understand most people don't have the budget or inclination for max IQ (console sales are a testament of that) but even with 4X MSAA + Ultra at 1440p, I see VRAM usage spike to 2GB+. Now as you mentioned, if someone goes with a multimonitor setup, that vram usage will spike even further and at that point there's no choice but to move up to a card that has 6GB or more of VRAM.

IMO that makes top end cards like 780 3GB pretty useless for anything above 1080P in upcoming games. They have the horsepower to push 1440P+ with max IQ in SLI but barely enough VRAM as is evident in my BF4 testing. So then you either have to drop IQ (despite having the GPU power to push higher) unnecessarily to cope with the VRAM bottleneck.

So why waste $550+ on a card with such limitations? The smart move would be to get an R9 290x, 780 Ti + 6GB or used Titan. I guess those that never plan to use SLI or max IQ could get by with a single 780 3GB with reduced image quality settings but if I were spending that kind of $$ on a new build, I would want to maximize my IQ.

 

[Owls]

I'll tell you what. I feel utterly stupid for getting a 3rd 680 to put in my system for BF4. 2GB of VRAM, even 3GB is NOT going to cut it any longer. Once some AIB 290x cards come out I will be selling my setup.

So does anyone know if you can have 3x 290x?

 

[escrow4]

I bought a 280X as an upgrade. I'd rather spend $500 on 20nm than on an old gen, and although the 290X is pretty new, I'd rather wait for a more mature version (GCN 1.2?). I'd agree, 2GB now even for 1080p isn't enough. You want more breathing room.

 

[horza]

..

 

[5150Joker]

I think that's the comment Chumster was referring to.

Yet he quoted "poor image quality" which was never said. If you're going to attempt to quote someone, at least quote something they actually wrote rather than make stuff up.

So everyone should be "aiming" for SLI/CFX and a 1440p+ monitor? I don't get the point you're trying to make here. Everyone should be "aiming" for a yacht and a summer home but it doesn't mean it's a practical reality. 1080p is a popular resolution because you can get affordable monitors and you don't need multi-GPU solutions to get decent frame-rates.

Just because you decide on 1080p doesn't mean you aren't concerned about image quality as Chumster said I don't think "Ultra + 4 x MSAA" is "poor image quality".

Everyone building a new system with a $550+ card should absolutely be targeting a resolution higher than 1080P (a dying standard). That's not the same as building a budget system with a middle of the road GPU which is fine for 1080P. I made it absolutely clear the type of setups I'm referring to and those are high end ones using cards in the Titan, 780 and R9 290X class.

 

[horza]

..

 

[poohbear]

The thing ppl arent realizing is the frostibe 3 engine caches all available VRAM, so just because it uses 2~3gb doesnt mean it NEEDS 2~3gb, its merely cacheing it the way Win7 OS caches regularly used programs into free system memory to load faster in the future. With my system it runs @ 60fps 2gb vram @1440p on ultra (but no AA).

Food for thought.

 

[horza]

..

 

[5150Joker]

The thing ppl arent realizing is the frostibe 3 engine caches all available VRAM, so just because it uses 2~3gb doesnt mean it NEEDS 2~3gb, its merely cacheing it the way Win7 OS caches regularly used programs into free system memory to load faster in the future. With my system it runs @ 60fps 2gb vram @1440p on ultra (but no AA).

Food for thought.

If the bold part were true, it would cache 6 GB of my VRAM which it never does. In fact my VRAM usage varies based on the map.

I was just informing you of what I thought he meant so I'll leave it at that.

Speaking of accuracy though I don't recall "building a new system with a $550+ card" being any part of the post I quoted in fact you said "Anyone in the market for a new display/gpu". I would like to see more than your opinion that 1080p is a "dying standard", to me it seems like you're looking at this from on high. Sorry it wasn't clear to me.

A few posts up I refer to purchasing these new high end cards which cost $550+.

 

[horza]

..

 

[Mastercommander]

2gb is fine for 1080p in BF4. Though will not be the case in games in 2 years

I'd go 120 fps before 1440p especially in FPS

 

[theprodigalrebel]

If you are someone like me, still rocking a four-year-old card (5850 1GB), you would want to get the 4GB version. I don't really mess around a lot with high-res texture packs and whatnot with the games I play (I have tried a few with HL2 and GTA4 with less than ideal results) but I would not want to buy a 2GB card today, knowing that this new console generation will likely cause PC games to also increase their VRAM requirements for optimal quality.

 

[guskline]

I won't argue. More than 2 GB Vram is preferable for BF4 at 1440. But my SLI rig still runs extremely well even at Ultra setting.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Wouldn't buy anything less than 4GB cards. Sitting on 670 SLI 2GB, I'm hoping nVidia lets OEM's put out 780's with 6 GB as I'm interested in large amounts of video RAM on the cards of the future and if they do that now as a gimmick, they'll do it seriously next year, too.

 

[BrightCandle]

I suspect a lot of people were expecting the next gen of consoles to really change the situation to needing much more VRAM. We have a dramatic increase in available shared RAM on the consoles so in theory at least they could be using up to 6GB of VRAM.

BF4 is the first example we really have, and it isn't the case that it needs large amounts of VRAM, no more than any other deferred rendered PC game anyway. I don't think there is too much we can infer from this game but as we see COD: Ghosts and others come out they might also start to give us some data points suggesting that actually the next gen console games are or are not going to push the amount of VRAM up.

BF4 however doesn't need more than 2GB, we have no real evidence that it even benefits from more, all we do know is that a level streams some assets in and those are cached in the video cards memory. We can't predict the future but its a fair bet to assume that VRAM usage will climb in the future, that is kind of inevitable. But the question is always "is it worth getting a 4GB version of this 2GB card?" and the answer to historically has always been no. The reason is simple, by the time the VRAM is usable the card is too underpowered to utilise all that VRAM anyway. This is one of the reason I suspect the consoles wont use all of their RAM for assets, because the GPU isn't quick enough to utilise it all anyway.

 

[toyota]

I assume we will eventually start getting some high res textures in games that are next gen only. if that happens then we can finally start using some vram. plus high res textures have no impact on performance as long as there is enough vram there.

 

[5150Joker]

I suspect a lot of people were expecting the next gen of consoles to really change the situation to needing much more VRAM. We have a dramatic increase in available shared RAM on the consoles so in theory at least they could be using up to 6GB of VRAM.

BF4 is the first example we really have, and it isn't the case that it needs large amounts of VRAM, no more than any other deferred rendered PC game anyway. I don't think there is too much we can infer from this game but as we see COD: Ghosts and others come out they might also start to give us some data points suggesting that actually the next gen console games are or are not going to push the amount of VRAM up.

BF4 however doesn't need more than 2GB, we have no real evidence that it even benefits from more, all we do know is that a level streams some assets in and those are cached in the video cards memory. We can't predict the future but its a fair bet to assume that VRAM usage will climb in the future, that is kind of inevitable. But the question is always "is it worth getting a 4GB version of this 2GB card?" and the answer to historically has always been no. The reason is simple, by the time the VRAM is usable the card is too underpowered to utilise all that VRAM anyway. This is one of the reason I suspect the consoles wont use all of their RAM for assets, because the GPU isn't quick enough to utilise it all anyway.

You keep saying BF4 doesn't need more than 2GB VRAM but where do you come up with that data? It certainly isn't caching over time because my results are completely contradictory to that. The amount of VRAM it uses varies depending on the resolution/settings/level and it is more than 2GB, even without SSAA. In fact, when I adjust the resolution, it drops the amount of VRAM used dynamically (rather than keep a steady state 2 GB):

 

[blackened23]

I assume we will eventually start getting some high res textures in games that are next gen only. if that happens then we can finally start using some vram. plus high res textures have no impact on performance as long as there is enough vram there.

Yeah, this is why more VRAM use is a good thing - higher resolution textures don't cause a large hit in performance, generally speaking. The other thing which can potentially use a ton of VRAM is MSAA and especially SSAA. Both of those have huge VRAM hits as well.

Basically, higher resolution textures up to 16k would be a fantastic use of VRAM with a negligible performance hit. I do feel like devs will cater to lowest common denominator hardware, though, so it may be a while before this comes to fruition. I do hope i'm wrong.

 

[blackened23]

You keep saying BF4 doesn't need more than 2GB VRAM but where do you come up with that data? It certainly isn't caching over time because my results are completely contradictory to that. The amount of VRAM it uses varies depending on the resolution/settings/level and it is more than 2GB, even without SSAA.

I'd have to agree with this in one respect - there is no evidence that this is a caching issue. Honestly, and no offense BC, but it sounds like confirmation bias - this "caching" is contrary to what devs have stated and it is completely speculative. I haven't seen any such proof of this, and from what I see in afterburner it doesn't seem to be caching at all. What we do know is that MP BF4 uses way more VRAM than single player, and there are benchmarks showing high VRAM usage at 1600p in BF4, beyond 2GB. VRAM use in single player does not match MP - and who the heck plays battlefield for single player? The large majority of BF players are there for the competitive MP aspect.

That said I do think 2GB is more than fine for 1080p, but there's no way in hell i'd buy a 2GB as a new purchaser for a resolution such as 1440/1600p. Now I don't know if I'd go as far as to recommend 6GB for higher than 1080p, but I can recognize 6GB as being useful for someone who wants to push the limits with image quality via SGSSAA. Or if they're playing at 4k resolutions. Regardless, I'd want a minimum of 3GB of VRAM on a 780 or a 770 with 4GB instead of 2GB. Again, no way I would ever get a 2GB card as a new purchaser - I would want a minimum of 1 year of use out of a GPU and that one year becomes questionable with only 2GB one year from now, especially higher than 1080p.