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]

And continuing the UE5 analysis, I have done some UE5 testing myself. For example the conifer forest demo, run on a 6600 and a 3060ti. No need to watch them, I will describe them for you. Just posting them for proof of concept.

The 3060ti can do 60fps vhigh easily, the 6600 has framedrops to the 30s at high. Both have 8GBs and it has nothing to do with it. The 6600 could have a handicap here, due to the old platform, but trust me, the 3060ti is much faster. I need to do this on the 1070 to highlight this better.

 

[psolord]

And don't get me started on starfield.

Look at these old 8GB cards performance. (from www.gamegpu.tech)




Wow, they are NOTHING alike. Who'd have thunk it?

30fps lock on the XBOXes, with more than 8GBs vram tho. See how much it helped them...

And boy look at that 6GB 5600Xt go. xD

edit

Let's see the higher grade cards, while we are at it.




The slowest 8GB card is at 25fps at 1080p and the 4060ti, which is incidentaly the fastest 8GB card is at 49fps, double the performance. And the 4060ti is faster than the 11GB 2080ti too, no help from the vram here.

Aside from the game liking AMD cards more, I don't see the vram being relevant here. After Baldur's Gate 3, we have another hyper AAA game, that doesn't care about vram, hmmmm


No quick, lets pay attention to Deliver us Mars at 1440p with maxed RT to show how 8GBs are bad. fml

 

[mikeymikec]

So these are the examples that are getting people rallied up in this thread? They used settings that make all cards useless, they all fall below 30fps, but the crawling of the 4060ti is the highlight here? Put them all on the proper settings and retest sir.

It seems to me like you're trying to argue that ~30FPS is just as unplayable as ~3FPS. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant percentage of gamers would agree that ~30FPS is playable (with maybe a "under specific circumstances" caveat). I would be extremely surprised if >1% of gamers thought that ~3FPS is playable.

The 4060Ti costs £100 more than the other two according to a quick google, it's designed for the same job as the other two, so logically it should be better than the other two, right? Let alone getting beaten by its cheaper and lower in its range predecessor.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@psolord

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to type out a detailed response.

I state this as clinically as is possible for such a thing. No emotion or ego involved. I cannot further debate with you because you rely on the worst of the debating fallacies. You promote your opinion as though you are spitting facts. They are nothing of the sort. We are not going to come to any agreement on this. Making any attempt to find more common ground futile. You have every right to promote your views, and speaking for myself, I encourage you to do so. Readers need to decide for themselves. I have put forth my opinion on the matter. 🤙<------ That's hang loose. The default emoji meanings are trash.

 

[Jaskalas]

Yes but they WILL play the newer games, with proper settings, as I do on all three of my 8GB cards, which I will repeat, they are nothing alike. This whole thread, makes 8GB look like it's the no1 metric for a graphics cards performance, while it is not.

The topic would be a demonstration that 8GB cards often no longer deliver adequate performance and or texture quality.
Via consoles, games are no longer built with or optimized for these restrictions.
Sure, some titles have optimized post-launch. But the dynamic reduction in texture quality is kinda trash for an expensive GPU.

Average FPS is one thing, but the stuttering and the muddy textures kills the experience. Something we repeatedly see resolved with 12GB and (preferably) 16GB cards.

 

[psolord]

It seems to me like you're trying to argue that ~30FPS is just as unplayable as ~3FPS. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant percentage of gamers would agree that ~30FPS is playable (with maybe a "under specific circumstances" caveat). I would be extremely surprised if >1% of gamers thought that ~3FPS is playable.

The 4060Ti costs £100 more than the other two according to a quick google, it's designed for the same job as the other two, so logically it should be better than the other two, right? Let alone getting beaten by its cheaper and lower in its range predecessor.

Speaking for myself, as Dapunisher said, anything below 45fps gets scrapped, not just 30. And I mean 45fps as the occasional framedrop with 60fps average. So these examples do not apply to me. The may not be equally unplayable, but they are equally useless. The last game I played at 30fps, was From Dust and that, because it was such a fantastic game, that framerate mattered little.

Videocards have always had, strong and weak points compared to their competition, even if that competition came from the same vendor. It's not the first time a more expensive card, falls short at something specific, compared to a cheaper one. That's why an individual should do his research, before buying.

The Deliver Us Mars test, would be very different if it was done at 1080p. Case in point, gamegpu's findings.



The 3060ti is faster than the 6800 with RT for example and we see cards with double the vram, that are slower compared to others with half the vram. Yeah start increasing resolution and things could change dramatically. But that's why we have the freagin settings, to setup our game correctly.

 

[psolord]

The topic would be a demonstration that 8GB cards often no longer deliver adequate performance and or texture quality.
Via consoles, games are no longer built with or optimized for these restrictions.
Sure, some titles have optimized post-launch. But the dynamic reduction in texture quality is kinda trash for an expensive GPU.

Average FPS is one thing, but the stuttering and the muddy textures kills the experience. Something we repeatedly see resolved with 12GB and (preferably) 16GB cards.

Things progress at a steady pace and surely 8GB will be an entry level framebuffer at some point. If you can prove to me, that a 16GB video card is verified better at 51% of the cases, compared to its 8GB competition, at healthy framerates, I will say yes, now 8GB is useless. We still have a long way to go, to reach this place.

I am using a 4070ti at 4k/dlss as a primary gaming system and I continue my cloud saves on the 3060ti at 1080p, with the same settings. Aside from Forspoken, I saw no real problems. Certainly not to the extent that is presented here. Sorry but my personal experience suggests otherwise. I certainly would not play Deliver Us Mars at 1440p/maxed/RT on the 3060ti. Heck even the 4070ti cannot do that properly.

My base argument towards this topic, is not that higher than 8GB cards are better. It's the artificial targets that are being aimed, for cards that were not designed for that workload.

 

[psolord]

And a couple more examples, from my side. I can defend my opinion in this thread, with examples, like you do, right?

Here is Armored Core 6, on the 4070ti 4k maxed. Pretty fun game, runs very well and noone makes a peep in this thead, as is the case with countless other games that are OK with 8GB. Less than 8GB vram used.

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And here are gamegpu's findings. Not a problem with 8GB cards, whatsoever.



And here is a run on my 6600 with the 2500k. It gets cpu limited at some points, but that's beside the point. The vram usage is at 5Gb maxed 1080p. No problem whatsoever

 

[psolord]

And if you want to cry a little, let's see another UE5 game I tested recently. Fort Solis. zomfg.

Screenshots from 4070ti 4k/balanced/high, which is the highest preset. Dlss balanced means even lower than 1440p.

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Video ram usage is at ~7GBs and the game has drops to the 30s. And you guys are worried about the 8GBs? xD UE5 is coming and all gpus will cry regardless.

 

[coercitiv]

Video ram usage is at ~7GBs and the game has drops to the 30s. And you guys are worried about the 8GBs? xD UE5 is coming and all gpus will cry regardless.

So your opinion is the new $400 8GB cards are fine, since all current cards will burn in a big GPU extinction event brought about UE5?

Sounds to me like you can't really make up your mind on whether to openly disagree with this thread or become one of it's most extreme supporters.

 

[psolord]

So your opinion is the new $400 8GB cards are fine, since all current cards will burn in a big GPU extinction event brought about UE5?

Sounds to me like you can't really make up your mind on whether to openly disagree with this thread or become one of it's most extreme supporters.

I never mentioned 400$ 8GB cards are fine for 2023. Last 8GB card I got was more than two years ago for 1080p. It still performs admirably.

I am only saying 8GB cards have quite a lot of juice, with correct settings.

The UE5 examples I mentioned, show no relevance between vram and the disaster that is coming. They show gpu processing power relevance.

 

[Mopetar]

And a couple more examples, from my side. I can defend my opinion in this thread, with examples, like you do, right?

Here is Armored Core 6, on the 4070ti 4k maxed. Pretty fun game, runs very well and noone makes a peep in this thead, as is the case with countless other games that are OK with 8GB. Less than 8GB vram used.

Picking one example does nothing to disprove the central premise of this thread that 8 GB is an issue in a growing number of modern titles and that the trend is likely to continue.

I've got an uncle that smokes like a chimney and drinks like a sailor. He's almost 80 years old. His existence does not disprove that drinking as smoking as much as he does will probably kill you before 60.

So yes you might be able to get by with an 8 GB card. You might also live to be 80 despite trying to outdo Keith Richards. 8 GB is on the way out.

 

[Jaskalas]

I am only saying 8GB cards have quite a lot of juice, with correct settings.

I would suggest that describes entry level.
Which, to our great dismay, is not what they have been sold as recently.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I would suggest that describes entry level.
Which, to our great dismay, is not what they have been sold as recently.

-This is really the central thesis of this thread. 8gb for $200 would be just fine today. Hell even $250 an argument could be made.

But when 8gb cards are being pitched for $400+, that's where the issues crop up.

I'll turn down settings at $200 and I won't bat an eye about it. But turning down settings for $400 to get a stable frame rate when similar cards with more VRAM don't encounter the same issues? That's a problem and that's what this thread is about.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Correct settings is gaslighting for reduced settings. It's simple: Textures are the most important to visuals. If you have to turn those down on a $400 card when people that paid less for 50-100% more vram don't have to, you goofed. Huff all the copium you want, but no one sober is buying it.

 

[psolord]

Picking one example does nothing to disprove the central premise of this thread that 8 GB is an issue in a growing number of modern titles and that the trend is likely to continue.

I've got an uncle that smokes like a chimney and drinks like a sailor. He's almost 80 years old. His existence does not disprove that drinking as smoking as much as he does will probably kill you before 60.

So yes you might be able to get by with an 8 GB card. You might also live to be 80 despite trying to outdo Keith Richards. 8 GB is on the way out.

In just five posts I have given you five examples. Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield, Armored Core 6, Fort Solis and Immortals of Aveum, all current releases. The UE5 ones, are particularly important, yet you guys chose to ignore them. Fine.

There have been posted 24 games in this thread, since July 2021. Wow, really? Do I have to go back to July 2021 releases and start posting what games are OK with 8GBs?

Sure 8GB is on its way out. When 8GB is not enough for 51% of the games at 1080p, I will accept the thread's title.

BTW I just tested Baldur's gate 3 on the 8GB 6600. It runs fine at 1080p Ultra. (non monetized channel, just for fun)

 

[psolord]

-This is really the central thesis of this thread. 8gb for $200 would be just fine today. Hell even $250 an argument could be made.

But when 8gb cards are being pitched for $400+, that's where the issues crop up.

I'll turn down settings at $200 and I won't bat an eye about it. But turning down settings for $400 to get a stable frame rate when similar cards with more VRAM don't encounter the same issues? That's a problem and that's what this thread is about.

As a defender of the 8GBs, I can accept that. Personally I never suggested to anyone to go get a 4060ti 8GB, since that seems to be the main focus of this thread. But this really belongs to the "all Nvidia cards have become more expensive and some AMD ones too". Maybe the acceptable price should go on the title and I am only half joking here.

I know people were not super happy with the 3070/ti and some looked funny at the 3060ti too. Well, I didn't suggest anyone to get a 3070/ti either and my 3060ti at its 399 price point two years ago, was ok for me at least. Still gets the job done.

Also I will repeat myself. I have three 8GB cards and they are not the same in terms of capabilities and/or features. I cannot agree with the flat 200$ price for the top 8GB card however.

It's really sad that the 4060ti's price was so poorly chosen by Nvidia though. This card is a technological marvel. I mean they cut the 3060ti's bus in half and still get the same performance give or take? That's bonkers! For me it should be 100$ cheaper and that's it.

 

[Ranulf]

It's really sad that the 4060ti's price was so poorly chosen by Nvidia though. This card is a technological marvel. I mean they cut the 3060ti's bus in half and still get the same performance give or take? That's bonkers! For me it should be 100$ cheaper and that's it.

Yes, but I'd argue that even at $300 that isn't a great improvement and cards with lower bandwidth typically do not have longevity in gaming. BG3 is a pretty game but its based on solid foundations (DivinityOS2) and its min specs are for hardware that is 8-9 years old.

 

[Mopetar]

BG3 has also been in development for a long time. I don't know if they intended for it to take as long as it did, but they probably started with targeting then current console hardware which had 8 GB of memory split between CPU and GPU. Starfield started development back in 2015, so I don't find it surprising that it's in a similar boat.

I'm not as familiar with the other titles but Armored Core VI has a PS4 release, and Wikipedia says it entered development in 2016. I can't find much in terms of specific information about the other two, but they both use UE5 so either they're very recent or started as UE4 (or something else) and we're later ported. They seem to be smaller titles as well so there's less data out there regard them.

As some of the in-depth reviews from sites like HUB have shown, you actually need to manually inspect the visuals of the game, because the issues with 8 GB may not show up in benchmarks if the game just downgrades the textures. The quality drops, but the frametime graph looks good and so a number gets reported. I suspect most gamers would prefer ugly textures over a stuttering mess, but if a game is degrading quality on 8 GB cards than the results are not comparable to other cards where that doesn't happen.

 

[Kaluan]

Anyone else think with the mid-gen console update/upgrade coming up pretty soon (which I'm almost sure might get memory pool bump), we're in for even more pain for VRAM-stricken GPUs next year and beyond?

I can see a 12GB redux of this thread not too far off lol

 

[Mopetar]

It depends on what the consoles do. One possibility is that they lean heavily on FSR or some custom variant of it and just beef up the shader count so they can spit out a high 1080p frame rate and then upscale. Or worse they generate a bunch of fake frames if they get the newest tech that's essentially AMD's version of DLSS3.

If that's the case, there's not a lot of need for additional RAM and keeping the bus size down and needing fewer RAM chips helps keep costs under control. Just throw in some faster RAM and it can keep up with the added shaders, especially if there's infinity cache in sufficient quantity.

I don't think they'd double the RAM to 32 GB since that's pointless for a console and even 24 GB isn't really going to be needed because the GPUs are still going to be midrange at most. Maybe we get to 20 GB which is just a slight increase to the bus size. The main benefit of that would be keeping more of the OS in memory while a game is running. Faster RAM over more RAM is probably still a better overall decision though.

 

[CakeMonster]

I can't imagine why they would increase the memory size with a possible mid-gen refresh, except if the Series S 10GB was refreshed (which I doubt). The 16GB consoles are doing just fine.

The resources would probably be spent on a new node with slightly beefier cores and shaders to do slightly better in raster and upscaling, while still keeping the chip very small and cheap to mass produce. Possibly also bumping the SSD size since nand is cheap now, that could be marketing win.

 

[A///]

And if you want to cry a little, let's see another UE5 game I tested recently. Fort Solis. zomfg.

Screenshots from 4070ti 4k/balanced/high, which is the highest preset. Dlss balanced means even lower than 1440p.

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Video ram usage is at ~7GBs and the game has drops to the 30s. And you guys are worried about the 8GBs? xD UE5 is coming and all gpus will cry regardless.

This looks amazing. Fun game?

 

[Mopetar]

I looked at some of the rumors and the GPU seems to be at about 7800XT level in terms of hardware. That sounds about right as consoles usually have a GPU equivalent to current/previous generation mid-range around the time of release.

I suspect that there would be a price increase for that though. The N5 node isn't cheap, so even just a pure node shrink for the existing design wouldn't save all that much money. Adding more CUs just eats up any savings they might have and probably results in a more expensive SoC.

The CPU side isn't as interesting, but I wonder if they sneak in some upgrades there. Zen 3 was a decent upgrade over Zen 2 and seems like a natural fit. You'd also have to wonder if either Sony or Microsoft has talked about v-cache at all, given one of the biggest benefactors of that technology is gaming.

 

[psolord]

This looks amazing. Fun game?

It's very decent, if you're into that sort of presentation.

It's one of the better UE5 showcases. Needs really good hardware tho.

These are....1080p benchmarks, from gamegpu.tech. lol