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!

 

[psolord]

Excellent post, @Timorous ! The same GPU (4060 Ti) goes from unplayable to playable in Alan Wake 2 with path tracing by the simple doubling of VRAM. Perfect example of how nGreedia is refusing to let the masses have the full performance for the GPU that they "PAID" for.

If you think that 1080p 33fps is a playable framerate, for a 500$ card, then by all means. I would still get the 12GB 4070 for 600$ if I was at that pricing neighborhood. Gpu power is always more important.

 

[psolord]

I'm wondering how many more people will explain the topic to psolord before this thread is done.

(I'm not faulting them, I've tried twice!)

Friend, you are trying to explain things that I already know. My main beef, is that you are taking this whole thing out of proportion. For the vast majority of games, extra vram on the same chip, would be a waste of silicon.

In all next gen games, vram is doing nothing to help, in proper playable settings, that each card is meant for. I mean the guy above, in all seriousness, post a a 4k/maxed for the 4070ti, running at 4fps. Also at that graph, the also 12Gb equipped rx6700 scored 9fps. Therefore the 6700 is better than the 4070ti right? And you want me to pay serious attention to these examples?

However the poster had the decency to also include 1440p and 1080p graphs where the 4070ti is faster than the 24GB 7900XT, which where also much more playable on all cards. Which brings as to what I am saying. Use each card for its correct settings and res. When you get to playable framerates, it's the gpu power that matters, not the vram alone. Vram alone matters only when you force the benchmark to spill over, which will cripple everything into unplayability anyway, in which case it's irrelevant.

 

[Aapje]

I won't drag politics into the tech forums. Hence I will make this succinct. Godwin himself gave us his blessing to use the comparison a few years back due to the present circumstances. That suspends his law until further notice.

I don't think that 'Godwin got radicalized' is a particularly strong argument against Godwin's law.

 

[psolord]

4k/DLSS quality renders on 1440p, so you are actually using it as a 1440p card.

You are pretty much in a sweet spot, as DLSS works best for 4k, at quality settings. However, where do you go when games get more demanding and you get pushed out of your sweet spot?

I have already been pushed out of my sweespot and it was never a matter of vram. It has always been a gpu power issue, yes even for the 4070ti.

See for example this issue. Vram is at 7.3GBs. 31fps at 4k/balanced.




This is the case for all UE5 games. UE5 is the future. Vram alone aint gonna help.

The card being 800$ and already pushing users out of their comfort zone, is bad, but not relevant to the whole 8/10/12GB not enough issue. It's just newer engines are and will be, super heavy. For this example, there is no other 800/700/600 or heck even 900 card, that would do a better job.

And while we are at it, here are gamegpu's results for fort solis. 1440p and 4k only. I have marked the natives of 4070ti and 7900XT because some guys get confused. The latter has 8GB more vram. It aint helping. At this point, what matters is who has the better upscaler.

 

[igor_kavinski]

If you think that 1080p 33fps is a playable framerate, for a 500$ card, then by all means.

No. I think the 4060 Ti 8GB has no right to exist and 4060 Ti 16GB should be the only one at $400.

Seriously, Jensen, how dare you gimp a Ti card!

 

[psolord]

The chips have gotten smaller compared to last gen, so I don't know what you are on about. The x080 went from 630 to 280 mm2. The largest Navi x1 chip went from 520 to 308 mm2.

Because Nvidia has cut the bus sizes to the bone, they actually have left themselves very little room to offer different chip configs, as they can pretty much only play with the number of cores.

I meant the primary chips that drive each gen's top to bottom lineup have gotten huge. Starting from the 2000 series, they have gone way higher than what the 1080ti aimed for. They are reducing gpcs and buses according to what they aim. Sure profit is the primary factor for them.

Yes, and my old 128 MB card also had a lot of VRAM compared to the 8 MB Voodoo 2 card that I also owned. Yet either card could not run any game today.

Time moves on and VRAM demand is ever increasing. Pretending that it does not and that more VRAM is unimportant because it is not that limiting now, even though it has a very high chance of becoming (more) limiting in the 3-8 years that you intend to use the card for, is just sticking your head in the sand.

What I am saying and showing in this thread, is that gpu power needs are increasing at a higher rate, compared to vram size alone. That's why I keep mentioning my own three 8GB cards, which are nothing alike. Same framebuffer, much different performance. You need much more power, than what these 8GB cards have, for newer games, anyway.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I don't think that 'Godwin got radicalized' is a particularly strong argument against Godwin's law.

Please, no politics here. If you want to pursue it start a thread in the P&N forum. You'll get all you can handle there.

 

[psolord]

No. I think the 4060 Ti 8GB has no right to exist and 4060 Ti 16GB should be the only one at $400.

Seriously, Jensen, how dare you gimp a Ti card!

I would love that as well. Hey I have said numerous times, that my 4070ti should be a 600 card too. I am not going to be overly dramatic for 8.3 coins per month for the two years this card is going to be my primary, though. We can complain all we want, the market will correct itself. You don't like it, don't buy it. Nvidia is pricing according to the market's vibes.

Also regarding the 4060ti, once again, we can see a new AAA next gen title, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. The 4060ti 8GB is doing quite well. It is destroying the 3060ti, in a very meaningful way, since it's going to a playable 65fps from an unplayable 49fps. They both have 8GBs. Vram is not the issue.



Moreover, it's also 80% faster, than the also 8GB rx 6600 and quite faster than the 12GB 3060. These are the examples I care about. And for a 128bit card, son I'm impressed. For a tech forum, people loving money more than the underlying tech, it's just sad.


People in this thread can be posting stupid spilled over examples at 15/30/45 fps all they want. Give me something I can use, like that 60/30 example of the 4060 16gb/8gb, which was ONE game, and I'm game.

 

[Aapje]

My main beef with this thread, is that most of you, ignore the gpu power/vram ratio significance. When the dataset will have grown to the point that it will be causing real problems for 8GB cards, it will create equal problems to higher vram cards. Show me playable examples please.

That ratio only matters to some extent. Higher texture quality doesn't actually put significant demand on the shaders and has a big impact on the visual quality. Hardware Unboxed has been complaining that some new games are not taking advantage of the higher VRAM in more expensive cards and only ship with texture packs aimed at 8 GB cards. Like I said, when you get an expensive 8 GB card now, you are gambling that game developers won't decide to switch to bigger texture packs (or no texture mods come out for the game you'd like to play).

We know that the PS5 has around 12 GB available for games and the typical pattern is that early console games target the previous console as well, and only really start to fully take advantage of the hardware a little while in. So they can switch to higher quality texture packs at any time.

Ray-tracing also hurts your argument, because it uses more memory, but also uses the separate RT cores. So it is a lot more likely that your Nvidia card can achieve acceptable frame-rates with RT due to all the RT cores on the card, but is then VRAM-limited.

Historically, we see that your claim just doesn't hold, because the longevity of higher-VRAM cards is almost always better. People who had 6 GB 1060's and planned to do the typical 'skip on gen' cycle and get an Ampere card, but couldn't due to the mining boom, were way better off than those that got a 3 GB card. With the price/performance stagnation we saw with Ada, I think that you need to assume that the typical gamer will use their card for longer, so longevity issues like low VRAM will become more important, not less.

 

[psolord]

Looks like he finally got tired of getting dunked on and took his 8GB ball and went home.

With the kind of aggressive hard sell attitude he should really look into hawking time shares.

See you all seven or eight years from now in the 16 GB vs. 32 GB thread.

Far from it. I am just juggling 100 things at the same time. Forums are not a real time affair, last time I checked.

I am only saying, that gpu power is more important. For example 4070>>>>4060ti 16GB. By the time more vram is truly required, the cards that had it will have run out of steam anyway.

If I see any REAL problems with 8GB cards, I will admit it.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I think the logical progression in this thread should be that we post examples where 8GB is not enough and then psolord shows us his hard work on why 8GB is not an issue and we all go hmmmm and that's about it. No point in arguing either way. In a year or two, psolord should run out of games to brag about on all his 8GB cards

 

[Aapje]

The card being 800$ and already pushing users out of their comfort zone, is bad, but not relevant to the whole 8/10/12GB not enough issue.

It doesn't push me out of my comfort zone, but out of my spending zone. I did consider splurging on a card that is twice the price of any card I've bought before, but not when there is a significant risk that it will be like the 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti again. Cards that got rave reviews when they were released, but that in hindsight, we say, "great, but the VRAM..."

Especially since I want a fast card for VR flight simming, which seems more VRAM hungry than the average game.

 

[igor_kavinski]

View attachment 90032

There is something really wrong with that game's engine because in the TPU review of 4060 Ti 8GB FE, 4060 Ti beats 3070 Ti in Doom Eternal at 4K and then in Forza Horizon 5 at 1080p and 1440p but gets defeated at 4K. Otherwise, the 3070 Ti stays comfortably above the 4060 Ti 8GB in the rest of TPU's games roster. I wouldn't take the Avatar game seriously because it might be driver optimization propping the 4060 Ti above the 3070 Ti and nGreedia may have deliberately neglected to do that for the 3000 series of cards.

 

[psolord]

That ratio only matters to some extent. Higher texture quality doesn't actually put significant demand on the shaders and has a big impact on the visual quality. Hardware Unboxed has been complaining that some new games are not taking advantage of the higher VRAM in more expensive cards and only ship with texture packs aimed at 8 GB cards.

Yes, to some extent, but so does vram. Texture quality is important sure, but look at what current games are showing us. Baldur's Gate 3 is a beaut and has no vram problems. Same goes for Starfield, Avatar, Alan Wake II, you name it. The reason for that, is that good textures, really good textures, can fit within 8GBs. Also lets not forget what happened with TLOU's medium preset. When they fixed it, it pretty much looked like the High preset. So yes IT IS also on the dev to no do stupid things, as is forbidden to use from the OP's mandate.

Like I said, when you get an expensive 8 GB card now, you are gambling that game developers won't decide to switch to bigger texture packs (or no texture mods come out for the game you'd like to play).

This may be true, but only matters in the degree of how better the new texture pack would look, compared to how the overall image would look, with higher post processing or shadows or whatever. I mean a 12GB 6750XT could use higher textures than a 4060ti 8GB, but the 4060ti could use all other settings higher. You cannot know for sure which would look better. It depends on the game.

Ray-tracing also hurts your argument, because it uses more memory, but also uses the separate RT cores. So it is a lot more likely that your Nvidia card can achieve acceptable frame-rates with RT due to all the RT cores on the card, but is then VRAM-limited.

Ray tracing is a double edged sword, I will give you that. It is a very high end feature that burdens the whole system, not just the graphics card. It is a feature for the few, I will give you that. Unless we are talking about the cheap RT reflections, which are not a real problem.

Historically, we see that your claim just doesn't hold, because the longevity of higher-VRAM cards is almost always better. People who had 6 GB 1060's and planned to do the typical 'skip on gen' cycle and get an Ampere card, but couldn't due to the mining boom, were way better off than those that got a 3 GB card.

Sure the longevity is better, but you are talking about a 3GB 1080p card, while there were 8GB 1080p cards back then. It was expected to happen. Today things are different. Things are moving more towards higher gpu demands. And the texture size per scene cannot go to infinite, while the gpu power can. The higher you go in texture size, you get even more diminishing returns. Also there is the issue of distance. You don't need extreme LOD textures as they get furhter away. Good LOD management is more important, than going over 9000 in textures too. If you keep a 4096X4096 texture on vram, while the object is 20m away, then you are an idiot (not you, the dev).

On the PC we also have an infinite amount of RAM and an infinite amount of storage. With 8GB assets ON SCREEN, you can do marvels. The only problem that might occur in 8GB cards, is in games, like Ratchet and Clank, where you have to swap everything instantly. Then the PCIe bus will not be enough. But form small incremental adjustments, it is fine. This is how PC gpus have been used since ever. Now we have the added benefit of direct storage too.

We know that the PS5 has around 12 GB available for games and the typical pattern is that early console games target the previous console as well, and only really start to fully take advantage of the hardware a little while in. So they can switch to higher quality texture packs at any time.

The PS5 may have 12 but the XSX has 10 and XSS has 8. It's not like 12 is the default. And we did see what good that extra vram did on Alan Wake II....Baldur's Gate is also 1080p Ultra on PS5. The same can be done on a rx6600. I am not impressed. Only Ratchet and Clank impressed me and that's because it was specifically tailored for that hardware. Actually only Sony's native games, may cause some problems on 8GB cards. And these should also be fixable, by using the PC's better upscalers.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Especially since I want a fast card for VR flight simming, which seems more VRAM hungry than the average game.

Depends on the game.

VR Wars: The Red Devil RX 6600 XT Showdown with the RTX 3060

VR Mainstream Wars: The Red Devil RX 6600 XT & the RTX 3060 Showdown in VR with a Valve Index The RX 6600 XT is ... Read more

babeltechreviews.com

Game​	6600 XT​	3060 12GB​
Assetto Corsa Competizione​	117​	126​
Borderlands 2​	104​	106​
Boneworks​	149​	148​
Elite Dangerous​	141​	128​
Half Life: Alyx​	114​	114​
No Man’s Sky​	76​	103​
Pavlov​	165​	175​
Project CARS 2​	100​	77​
Skyrim VR​	128​	129​
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners​	120​	115​

3060 12GB gets a win in No Man's Sky due to the VRAM but falters badly in Project Cars 2 and slightly in Elite Dangerous and Walking Dead. Overall, though, it seems you don't really need that fast a card, unless your target is hitting 90 fps minimum in any game. For that, I guess even a 4060 Ti 16GB or 4070 should work fine for you.

 

[mikeymikec]

Friend, you are trying to explain things that I already know. My main beef, is that you are taking this whole thing out of proportion. For the vast majority of games, extra vram on the same chip, would be a waste of silicon.

In all next gen games, vram is doing nothing to help, in proper playable settings, that each card is meant for. I mean the guy above, in all seriousness, post a a 4k/maxed for the 4070ti, running at 4fps. Also at that graph, the also 12Gb equipped rx6700 scored 9fps. Therefore the 6700 is better than the 4070ti right? And you want me to pay serious attention to these examples?

However the poster had the decency to also include 1440p and 1080p graphs where the 4070ti is faster than the 24GB 7900XT, which where also much more playable on all cards. Which brings as to what I am saying. Use each card for its correct settings and res. When you get to playable framerates, it's the gpu power that matters, not the vram alone. Vram alone matters only when you force the benchmark to spill over, which will cripple everything into unplayability anyway, in which case it's irrelevant.

You're not saying anything new here, and you're still arguing a point which isn't what the topic is about.

Also, your use of the term "correct settings" is a glaring misnomer. It's as horrible a use of a term as if an autistic person declared what should be the "correct texture" for clothing for everyone based on their own personal preference. It's wrong on so many levels.

 

[igor_kavinski]

All of us wearing T-shirts that say "Friends don't let friends buy 8GB cards" and psolord wearing a T-shirt that says "Correct Settings".

 

[Aapje]

Depends on the game.

DCS and MSFS are missing from your list, both popular VR-enabled simming titles that are quite VRAM hungry.

And this is all assuming that the current situation is static. Who know what the new MSFS will bring, the new IL-2 engine, Combat Pilot, etc.

 

[blckgrffn]

DCS and MSFS are missing from your list, both popular VR-enabled simming titles that are quite VRAM hungry.

And this is all assuming that the current situation is static. Who know what the new MSFS will bring, the new IL-2 engine, Combat Pilot, etc.

Yup, my one VR enabled flight sim build was 5800x3D and a 3090ti and the fastest nvme we could reasonably get, oversized and under provisioned so the world cache could be as large as possible but not destroy the drive with write amplification. 64GB of ram.

It’s actually nice to build a rig aimed a fixed target. It’s a lot easier to justify specific parts.

The bigger problem was headset compatibility. No matter what motherboard model I picked, I could find a reddit thread bemoaning the HTC being picky about USB ports. The MSI X570S that bought had little news because it was newer, but one guy said it worked for him. It worked for me too, but I was really sweating that detail.

 

[DeathReborn]

You're not saying anything new here, and you're still arguing a point which isn't what the topic is about.

Also, your use of the term "correct settings" is a glaring misnomer. It's as horrible a use of a term as if an autistic person declared what should be the "correct texture" for clothing for everyone based on their own personal preference. It's wrong on so many levels.

As someone who is autistic I have never met anyone with Autism that does that. It is often very important to the person with Autism to have the correct texture, colour, or style for their own clothes, not the clothes of others. What's wrong is people pushing stereotypes like this.

Also correct settings is subjective to the Card, Game, Resolution, FPS targeted etc. Saying 8GB is just useless is only applicable in certain circumstances, which people should rightly be informed about, without the "blah, blah" and other associated nonsense found in this thread.

Lastly, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora seems to not really care about VRAM much, guess my 3080 10GB is where I will play it over the 16GB RX 6800 (albeit with tweaked settings for 1440p 60FPS+).

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Performance Benchmark Review - 30+ GPUs Tested

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features stunning visuals that recreate the movie franchise's unique universe. There's also support for AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation and NVIDIA DLSS. In our performance review, we're taking a closer look at image quality, VRAM usage, and performance on a wide selection...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[mikeymikec]

Saying 8GB is just useless

Has someone said that? Because I haven't. Maybe you should argue with them about it.

 

[Mopetar]

By the time more vram is truly required, the cards that had it will have run out of steam anyway.

Don't you mean other than all of the games in this thread where it's been shown to be the opposite?

The 3060 performing better than several beefier 3000 series (and even some 4000 series) cards due to having more VRAM is a direct contradiction to your claim.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Lastly, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora seems to not really care about VRAM much, guess my 3080 10GB is where I will play it over the 16GB RX 6800 (albeit with tweaked settings for 1440p 60FPS+).

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Performance Benchmark Review - 30+ GPUs Tested

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features stunning visuals that recreate the movie franchise's unique universe. There's also support for AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation and NVIDIA DLSS. In our performance review, we're taking a closer look at image quality, VRAM usage, and performance on a wide selection...

www.techpowerup.com

Whatever blows your skirt up.

I have reservations -
Increased texture pop-in is not an acceptable compromise. W1z thinks so, I am among those that don't.

His test runs, like almost every other major review outlet, are also far too short to make any definitive statements concerning what the real cost of vram is. I'll watch extended gameplay elsewhere and see what happens to 8GB cards. Perhaps the conclusion is dead on accurate. Then again, it may be a case of as the game goes on for a while, things go to hell as with certain other titles.

That said, it does seem like this new Snowdrop engine is pimptastic. When DF Alex is praising an AMD sponsored game you know it's exceptional.

 

[Ranulf]

It certainly looks good, a nice upgrade to the engine that started with the Division games.

 

[cebri1]

Not the most profesional review, but love this guy:

TLDR:

For raster:

1. UE5 at 4K Ultra setting, 8GB doesn't seem to be enough. For High or lower quality settings not much of a difference between 8GB and 16GB.
2. At 1440p you can play on Ultra with 8GB without issues for the most part, although it may require some tweaks.
3. At 1080p Ultra, average framerate is mostly within error margin, but 1% lows can benefit from additional vram in some games.

My take on this is 8GB is going to be fine at least until PS6/Next-gen XB are released for 1080 and 1440p gaming (maybe it will need some res scaling). 6GB is done, so RIP my 2060.

12GB seems like it's going to be fine for at least 4-6 years unless you want to play at 4K ultra, maxing all settings.