8GB VRAM not enough (and 10 / 12)

[BFG10K]

8GB

• Dying Light 2, Battlefield 2042, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Starfield, Forza Horizon 5, Horizon Forbidden West, Alan Wake 2, The Last of Us, Tekken 8, FC 24, Detroit Become Human, Death Stranding, Alone in The Dark, Overwatch 2
  3060 12GB higher 1% low than 4060 8GB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIfz57wmywg
• Cyberpunk 2077, Diablo 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Microsoft Flight Sim 2020, Witcher 3, Watch Dogs Legion skip to 4K + DLSS for each game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPiaWWd0xGc
• Ratchet & Clank, Plague Tale Requiem, Last Of Us, Jedi Survivor, Far Cry 6, Hogwarts Legacy, Forza Horizon 5, Cyberpunk 2077 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3MckDxMfE&pp=ygUTMTZnYiB2cyA4Z2IgNDA2MCB0aQ==
• Far Cry 6, Godfall, Hogwarts Legacy, Forza Horizon 5, Forspoken, Doom Eternal, Watchdogs Legion https://youtu.be/fJc--C01P90?t=268
• Last Of Us, Resident Evil 4, Callisto Protocol, Plague Tale Requiem, Halo Infinite, Forspoken https://youtu.be/2_Y3E631ro8?t=429
• Last Of Us, Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4, Forspoken, Plague Tale Requiem, Callisto Protocol https://youtu.be/Rh7kFgHe21k?t=288
• Hogwarts Legacy, Last Of Us, Spider Man Remastered, Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon 5 https://youtu.be/R943CbDTq_s?t=1473
• Horizon Forbidden West 4060 has issues @ 1080p + DLSS unless you switch off frame generation and reduce settings to high https://youtu.be/3AyKvI23VGw?t=233
• Horizon Forbidden West 3070 requires reducing textures 2 notches https://youtu.be/xTwEGy6HHKo?t=351
• Deathloop https://youtu.be/lu_XHyO-6zY?t=918
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint https://youtu.be/iUGppQVpXzU?t=529
• Resident Evil 2 https://youtu.be/Aa-gsgRjMII?t=796
• Talos Principle 2 https://youtu.be/K6FATQAuEwI?t=337
• Spider Man Remastered https://youtu.be/vRVR_plVSlc?t=1060
• Witcher 3 https://youtu.be/vRVR_plVSlc?t=1240

Horizon Forbidden West 3060 is faster than the 2080 Super despite the former usually competing with the 2070. Also 3060 has a better 1% low than 4060 and 4060Ti 8GB.

Spoiler

Resident Evil Village 3060TI/3070 tanks at 4K and is slower than the 3060/6700XT when ray tracing:

Spoiler

Company Of Heroes 3060 has a higher minimum than the 3070TI:

Spoiler

10GB / 12GB

• Plague Tale Requiem 3080 10GB tanks if you enable ray tracing, would be fast enough if it had more VRAM because if you stop moving, the framerate stabilizes to >60FPS https://youtu.be/7zjrMww3fAc?t=496
• Hogwarts Legacy 4K + RT, 4060Ti 16GB is faster than 4070 12GB https://youtu.be/X-h_R488Mq8?t=191

Reasons why still shipping 8GB since 2014 isn't NV's fault.

Spoiler

1. It's the player's fault.
2. It's the reviewer's fault.
3. It's the developer's fault.
4. It's AMD's fault.
5. It's the game's fault.
6. It's the driver's fault.
7. It's a system configuration issue.
8. Wrong settings were tested.
9. Wrong area was tested.
10. Wrong games were tested.
11. 4K is irrelevant.
12. Texture quality is irrelevant as long as it matches a console's.
13. Detail levels are irrelevant as long as they match a console's.
14. There's no reason a game should use more than 8GB, because a random forum user said so.
15. It's completely acceptable for the more expensive 3070/3070TI/3080 to turn down settings while the cheaper 3060/6700XT has no issue.
16. It's an anomaly.
17. It's a console port.
18. It's a conspiracy against NV.
19. 8GB cards aren't meant for 4K / 1440p / 1080p / 720p gaming.
20. It's completely acceptable to disable ray tracing on NV while AMD has no issue.
21. Polls, hardware market share, and game title count are evidence 8GB is enough, but are totally ignored when they don't suit the ray tracing agenda.

According to some people here, 8GB is neeeevaaaaah NV's fault and objective evidence "doesn't count" because of reasons(tm). If you have others please let me know and I'll add them to the list. Cheers!

 

[Brainonska511]

Gotta say, given the new requirements, I picked perhaps the absolute worst time to try and move on from 1080p to 1440p.

Having just put together a new machine in January (using some BF pickups like a cheap RX 6600), I get how you feel. I was tempted to also pick up a 1440p monitor to replace one of my 24" 1080p, but given my penchant to only slowly play games and some of the latest developments, I think I shall wait and only get a new monitor when it comes time to upgrade my GPU again.

I guess as a bonus, at least I didn't pay for TLOU part 1 - it came free with the RX 6600 I put in my wife's computer (which replaced an RX 570).

 

[Jaskalas]

A youtube reviewer saying at 7m40s that TLOU ran quite well on 3060 and he thought it was well optimized, only to see stutters on 3060Ti.

"1080p can even max out 12gb"
Uhh....

Good lord, so even a 3080 might not be viable for a good 1080p experience.

 

[DeathReborn]

"1080p can even max out 12gb"
Uhh....

Good lord, so even a 3080 might not be viable for a good 1080p experience.

Funny thing is quite a few people saw the "16GB" on the consoles and said more VRAM was the future, Nvidia didn't get the memo. I have a 3080 10GB & was planning on skipping this gen but will treat myself to a 4090/7900XTX for my birthday I think.

 

[Jaskalas]

That 16GB on the console is a shared memory.
I expected maybe a 50/50 split there between RAM and VRAM use. Not dumping 12GB+ into the GPU.
It is shocking how little they used that 16GB for system memory.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It is shocking how little they used that 16GB for system memory.

On the Xbox Series S/X, it's a stripped down version of Windows with only the essential stuff so I'm sure it can fit easily within 2GB RAM. On PS5, since it's Unix based, they may be able to fit the OS within even 1.5GB RAM. Plus the high speed SSD ensures that they can page to disk without much worry, if the need arises. Though not sure if that is actually implemented.

 

[blckgrffn]

That 16GB on the console is a shared memory.
I expected maybe a 50/50 split there between RAM and VRAM use. Not dumping 12GB+ into the GPU.
It is shocking how little they used that 16GB for system memory.

Series X has too different speed memory pools on its 16GB total vram so it was always assumed that at *least* the faster 10GB pool would be fully dedicated to graphics. For me, that has signified the high tide line rising to at least 10GB for the last few years.

As igor said, they've long been minimizing the OS foot print to the point where the Xbox One X even had a small memory pool (1GB?) added for apps to ensure that they would load responsively rather than being ejected from main memory like the OG Xbox One, and indeed the One X is much smoother in operation in my experience. 2GB of reserved memory for OS is probably a safe guess. They can swap so much faster now too if needed.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Gotta say, given the new requirements, I picked perhaps the absolute worst time to try and move on from 1080p to 1440p.
Though the move did free me from GSync exclusivity and will allow AMD to be an option. Perhaps the now sorely needed upgrade from my 3060Ti will be something from team red.

-Is turning down settings not an option? I am beating a dead horse at this point, but I got Hogwarts Legacy running pretty well while looking pretty darn good on my 2200G + 980ti (3050-equivalent) secondary rig at 1080p native.

I was a little stunned because the general narrative around the game is that its an absolute dog, but I'm a pretty steady 30 FPS in heavily wooded areas and common areas of Hogwarts and a steady 60 FPS in any kind of solo corridor mission.

I have to imagine your 3060Ti and likely much newer CPU will be able to handle modern games at 1440p without much sweat, so long as you turn some of the goofy post processing crap down, and drop texture res from Ultra to High.

 

[Panino Manino]

I honestly don't understand why games are needing so much memory.
I'm not seeing any significant improvements to texture quality that justifies this.

 

[jpiniero]

I honestly don't understand why games are needing so much memory.
I'm not seeing any significant improvements to texture quality that justifies this.

At least for TLOU pt 1, it was a PS5 only game so presumably they designed the remake around not having to worry about texture streaming.

It'll be less of an issue once developers start using DirectStorage... maybe... or maybe GDDR7 will be 4 GB/chip so things will be less of an issue in a year or two.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

At least for TLOU pt 1, it was a PS5 only game so presumably they designed the remake around not having to worry about texture streaming.

It'll be less of an issue once developers start using DirectStorage... maybe... or maybe GDDR7 will be 4 GB/chip so things will be less of an issue in a year or two.

Yeah, the lack of dedicated hardware for asset decompression and streaming on PC requires more CPU horsepower.

I honestly don't understand why games are needing so much memory.
I'm not seeing any significant improvements to texture quality that justifies this.

I was listening to an art director talk about some of the issues while cooking, and he mentioned; Geometry, textures, shaders, and collision, are intense. There are layers and layers of high res textures being used with various "materials". And a lot of stuff being done to make the presentation look the way you want it in game.

Though I don't fully understand why you are confused about it here in 2023? Shadow of Mordor came out in 2014 and required a minimum of 6GB of VRAM for the high res texture pack. Since then, we have seen many high res packs, mostly mods, that have pushed VRAM limits. Now games are coming with those hi res packs included already, that's all. If you have a 4GB card? you get the Playstation 2 textures, 6GB - PS2 or PS triple, 8GB - triple or PS4. More than that and you are in PS5 territory. Want to push beyond console? Better have 16GB from the looks of it. Yes I am being a bit facetious here.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I was listening to an art director talk about some of the issues while cooking, and he mentioned; Geometry, textures, shaders, and collision, are intense. There are layers and layers of high res textures being used with various "materials". And a lot of stuff being done to make the presentation look the way you want it in game.

- Was going to say this. A modern "texture" is really more like a dozen different high res textures all layered on top of each other with variable and compute data for PBR etc.

Compression can help, but I'm sure the basic uncompressed texture files can get pretty huge.

Its definitely not some 5Kb JPEG.

 

[jpiniero]

Yeah, the lack of dedicated hardware for asset decompression and streaming on PC requires more CPU horsepower.

Even just the additional latency from having to send the assets from disk to memory and then to dGPU is an issue.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Even just the additional latency from having to send the assets from disk to memory and then to dGPU is an issue.

Disk you say?

 

[KompuKare]

Funny thing is quite a few people saw the "16GB" on the consoles and said more VRAM was the future, Nvidia didn't get the memo. I have a 3080 10GB & was planning on skipping this gen but will treat myself to a 4090/7900XTX for my birthday I think.

Nvidia's VRAM choices are not about being future proof.
Quite the opposite.
Aside from the cost of more VRAM - any added costs to the total BOM of a GPU is less margins for Nvidia at the end of day - when you are sitting on nearly 90% marketshare, you have to worry about future sales. Hence planned obsolescence.

No, Nvidia's motivation is easy to see.
What is puzzling is the huge amount of what can be football fans for the green team cheering it on and basically managing to shut down any of the countless "Is X GB enough for card Y?" threads in countless forums.
If they are not shareholders, then that's a classic "capital of Sweden" syndrome.

 

[Ranulf]

Joel with DLSS on

I didn't know Nvidia had released a DLSS_AI art bot program. Must be a new Geforce Experience thing, Ansel v2 or whatever perhaps.

 

[Golgatha]

Disk you say?

Maybe slower than volatile, non-volatile memory, to slow volatile memory, to volatile memory on the video card?

 

[Golgatha]

Nvidia's VRAM choices are not about being future proof.
Quite the opposite.
Aside from the cost of more VRAM - any added costs to the total BOM of a GPU is less margins for Nvidia at the end of day - when you are sitting on nearly 90% marketshare, you have to worry about future sales. Hence planned obsolescence.

No, Nvidia's motivation is easy to see.
What is puzzling is the huge amount of what can be football fans for the green team cheering it on and basically managing to shut down any of the countless "Is X GB enough for card Y?" threads in countless forums.
If they are not shareholders, then that's a classic "capital of Sweden" syndrome.

Disclosure - I have 35 shares of SOXX.

That said, I want 16GB+ of vRAM on any cards I buy now. That also said, I'm willing to budge on the 16GB want when the price is right.

 

[Panino Manino]

At least for TLOU pt 1, it was a PS5 only game so presumably they designed the remake around not having to worry about texture streaming.

It'll be less of an issue once developers start using DirectStorage... maybe... or maybe GDDR7 will be 4 GB/chip so things will be less of an issue in a year or two.

I don't think there's an excuse, specially in this case.
If this was the PS4 version with the engine from 1 I could understand, but this is the PS5 version with the engine of the 2. Who this game ends being a DirectX 11 hack? Makes no sense.
Sometimes is not the card at fault.

 

[jpiniero]

Again, Naughty Dog might be able to fix the streaming but that would require using DirectStorage.

 

[VirtualLarry]

4050 with 6GB? In 2023?

 

[KompuKare]

4050 with 6GB? In 2023?

An even higher price than the overpriced 3050 and less VRAM?

See how reviewers spin that one. I'm sure the spin will match the logic of "the 6500 XT is junk [at $150], buy an RTX3050 instead [at $300]”.

 

[BFG10K]

I honestly don't understand why games are needing so much memory.

Ah yes, #13. So how much memory should games use? And do you decide the amount, or does someone else decide?

I'm not seeing any significant improvements to texture quality that justifies this.

It's not just texture quality, BVH structures also use a lot of memory (ironically).

Sometimes is not the card at fault.

So who's fault is it that 8GB was released in 2014, and nine years later in 2023 nVidia still ships cards with the same amount?

 

[A///]

that new harry potter game looks terrible. How is it using so much vram or is it poorly threaded?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Some of the VRAM memes are great -

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Steve has his Last of Us testing up. RIP 8GB Cards.