[Gamepur] 2GB not enough for Watch_Dogs 1080p

[toyota]

Just took a look at your screen shots, and yeah, Medium looks like crap. The difference between High and Ultra may look minimal to the human eye, but those textures in Ultra take up a lot more space. Not necessarily worth it, but its better to have the Ultra setting in than to just shrug and take it out because people complain their 4 year old hardware can't run the game at Ultra.

yeah but even on ultra the textures are not impressive. Crysis 3 blows that completely away and does not need more than 2gb of vram.

 

[blastingcap]

I apologize if you find words on the internet offensive. In this politically correct world we live in, the last thing we want to do is offend anyone when talking about video card performance, especially on the internet.

Apology accepted.

I didn't know we were talking about a pair of cards, though. Wait, we weren't.

Please show me where in OP it said we're talking solely about single GPU?

I understand the point that some weak card with 3GB or 4GB or even more GB of VRAM is still going to bottleneck due to insufficient GPU processing power rather than VRAM. However, that's not always true, and also the premium for that +1GB VRAM is small to nonexistent these days (R9 290X costs about the same as GTX770). Even if it's $10 or whatever, that's a small price to pay for ensuring that you have an upgrade path (if you want to add another same-GPU card later) or at least have more resale value (for others who may want to do so).

One of the reasons why I went with R9 290.
If you have the grunt, just turn on AA/SSAA, without having to worry.

Sure 2GB will be "fine" for foreseeable future, but 4GB gives you something more than just fine, and that's peace of mind.

And you can't really blame Nvidia for going with 2GB standard.
4GB GK104 has been available for quite some time, so the option had been there for those who demanded longevity.
Besides if they went with 4GB, then 780 should come with 6GB standard.
Somehow they always hit the refresh cycle much better than AMD does.

NV went with 2GB for GK104 because it was a midrange card that outperformed expectations. Yes it's true, GTX680 should really have been called GTX660. You see it in the numbering (GK104 = successor to the GTX560, not the GTX580). You see it in how cheaply the GTX670/680 cars were built, with relatively modest PCBs and coolers. NV designed and built that card in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. They made a lot of money selling midrange cards with all the corners cut (GTX670/680) at $400+. AMD sold a lot of cards, too, but with significantly higher costs: larger GPU, more VRAM, more PCB layers, bigger cooler, etc. all adding to a higher materials costs, and not even that much more money ($550 only for a few months, then big price cuts across the board in spring 2012, followed by even more price cuts and video game bundle deals that no doubt cost them in other ways).

Since GTX680 wasn't supposed to be NV's high end, it got only 2GB of VRAM. The REAL NV high-end was GK110. That GPU got put into TITAN/780/Ti with 3GB of VRAM, as appropriate for the true high-end NV GPU.

 

[Bateluer]

yeah but even on ultra the textures are not impressive. Crysis 3 blows that completely away and does not need more than 2gb of vram.

Agreed. There's 2K mods in Skyrim that also look better. I'll attribute the Watch Dogs details to a combination of pre-release code and stripping things down to run on the Xbox One.

 

[tviceman]

Please show me where in OP it said we're talking solely about single GPU?

Your post wasn't responding to the OP, it was in response to me. And I was clearly talking about single card setups and providing links to those specific situations. But I humored you anyways, so no need to feel even more offended or defensive.

I understand the point that some weak card with 3GB or 4GB or even more GB of VRAM is still going to bottleneck due to insufficient GPU processing power rather than VRAM. However, that's not always true, and also the premium for that +1GB VRAM is small to nonexistent these days (R9 290X costs about the same as GTX770).

It's not always true but overwhelming more often than not it is. And surely you mean 280x (not the 290x) being similar in price to the gtx770, correct?

 

[tg2708]

Well if this is anything like the unoptimized mess AC4 is I would not be surprised if watch dogs ran like trash. If arkham knights and witcher 3 plays nicely with my 770 I'm good. Also I hope FC4 runs good.

 

[blastingcap]

Your post wasn't responding to the OP, it was in response to me. And I was clearly talking about single card setups and providing links to those specific situations. But I humored you anyways, so no need to feel even more offended or defensive.



It's not always true but overwhelming more often than not it is. And sure you mean 280x (not the 290x) being similar in price to the gtx770, correct?

I don't feel defensive at all--perhaps you're projecting? And as for offense, I faux accepted your faux apology, yet you want to keep talking about it. Why?

If you want to make it single vs single that's fine, I'm bringing up other points some of which include multi-GPU. If you don't want to talk about those other points, that is fine. If you think bringing a card to 39 fps = "raping" the card (once again, your term, not mine), that's fine, too, just don't expect everybody else to agree.

I don't agree that it's "overwhelmingly" the case that a game that requires >2GB VRAM would crush the GPU too. It really depends on the game, optimizations, etc. and one classic and VERY popular example is Skyrim with mods. Hi-rez texture and other mods can push the VRAM use over 2GB yet still provide decent framerates. You may say "so what it's just one game" but as the Ars article on game popularity shows, only a handful of games account for a huge proportion of actual game time played, and Skyrim is one of those massively popular games.

It bears mentioning that some game devs actually lock you out of their highest option if they detect 2GB or lower VRAM--even if your GPU would be strong enough to run at Ultra or whatever they call their highest setting. Apparently this is the case for Wolfenstein as just one example.

Yes, typo, I meant the 280X is around a gtx770 in price.

 

[Enigmoid]

And here is comes, the next generation of poorly optimized games and artificially inflated requirements.

Studio's are very quick to tack on all sorts of performance hungry catchy features and effects without simply improving the baseline of the game. Its quite frankly lipstick on a pig in some cases.

Best example: Bioshock Infinite

Seriously those roses. All these fancy DX 11 lighting effects and the roses are from 10 years ago (even the texturing is crap), the facial animations are seriously lacking, and the balloons are clearly polygonal. The apples appearing in the game are also crap.

Yet the raindrops look very pretty. The game is unbalanced in this respect.

Don't get me wrong, Infinite is quite pretty and I enjoyed it but the static NPCs and stock character bodies broke a lot of immersion. I would rather have had more dynamic NPCs and an interactable environment than some of the pretty lighting.

It appears that the trend with recent games is to blow the budget on visuals and then not optimize anything. And of course include features and effects that have no noticeable IQ difference but cut framerate in half because the game has to be hard to 'max out'.

Areas of games that tend to be poor and generally need improvement include AI, story, physics and environmental interactions, level design, and character design and animation (metro LL was pretty bad with respect to facial animation). These are areas that tend to dramatically need improvement.

 

[f1sherman]

Since GTX680 wasn't supposed to be NV's high end, it got only 2GB of VRAM. The REAL NV high-end was GK110. That GPU got put into TITAN/780/Ti with 3GB of VRAM, as appropriate for the true high-end NV GPU.

There was not much options to begin with.
For 256 bit it's either 2GB, 4GB or that NV asymmetrical memory technique with bus width mixing.

2GB GK104 was a nobrainer rly
Some people having to refresh (due to 2GB insufficiency) is just an added bonus for NV.

 

[Silverforce11]

Sometimes one doesn't need to run with every settings on Ultra, as typically shadows, lighting, HDAO etc are features that crush GPUs.. but textures? Hardly. If you have the vram, you can afford to set textures to max and enjoy a much nicer looking game, even if the other features are set on med/high.

It is an advantage to have extra vram on top cards as long as the $ premium for the vram bonus isn't ridiculous.

 

[Granseth]

I think it's great if they add texture for GPUs with 3+GB VRAM. I would be happy if they added texture maps for 6GB of VRAM as well even if I can't use it in a few years.
The only problem I would have is if they take shortcuts and makes bad texures for low VRAM cards.

And I very much agree with Enigmoids sentiments on most modern games.

 

[moonbogg]

Hmm. Not looking good for 2gb cards from here on out, that's for sure.

 

[SPBHM]

the PS4 is aiming at 1080P for most games and have easily something like 5GB of very fast memory that can be used for GPU, so it's not surprising that games are going to start taking advantage from more video memory, and now PC gaming is moving to even higher res, and have less efficient software, I wonder if 4-8GB is going to be the standard even for midrange cards quite soon.

 

[Mondozei]

From the PC trailer that I saw, the water and grass was made really nice, as well as the illumination. But the textures of the buildings, roads and the structures like bidges themselves were poorly made and looked like they were made for the last-gen consoles.

And the screenshots we've seen have more or less confirmed this:

Compare the water with the textures in the background(above photo). One part of the photo looks like next-gen, the other, not so much.

And finally, a screenshot only of buildings.

These were taken from the PC version.

 

[Majcric]

Something I've been thinking about are the users with 1440p monitors and higher using single 780/290/x 's. They have the Vram for the Ultra settings but will Ultra settings have to be compromised anyway because the single780/290 lacks the grunt in performance for the 1440p and higher rez.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Doesn't bother me, i know my 770 is a stinker for maxed out settings anyways so i will keep on trucking at 1080p till i can't no more with respectable settings then like all other things just move on.

The biggest settings pushing vram is ssaa and msaa and well i never run these period, if ultra looks like high i run this as well like in BF4 for example.

 

[SlickR12345]

I think Sleeping Dogs is rather unoptimized, since they had to create the game for xone and ps4, but x360 as well, so they literally had to create a mess of the code to make it work on all platforms.

This is why PC centric games always perform best and look the best, since its one code and there is no limitations on PC's like there is on consoles, so ultra quality is really ultra quality, while lower quality is significantly lower quality.

 

[2is]

I'm looking forward to Watch Dogs, hope it doesn't disappoint. My backlog is plenty large enough for me to wait until some user reviews are out. Might have to play a step below Ultra settings, but that's fine with me. Normally I always want to play my games maxed out, but I don't game as much as I used to so I can't really justify the cost of an upgrade as often as I used to. Once I have to start settling for Medium with no AA to get acceptable frame rates, an upgrade will come.

 

[OCGuy]

LOL. The sad part is people will actually believe this....

 

[tolis626]

Really, all I want for 2014 is a good experience for Crysis 3, Battlefield 4 and, most importantly, Witcher 3. These are the games I'm gonna play long. Everything else is an extra. With that said, I'm really starting to reconsider the 780 because of the 3GB of VRAM. Not because 3GB of VRAM is suddenly not enough, but because everything may go wrong and it may be a while before I can upgrade my GPU. I'd be depressed if my beast of a machine chokes on high res textures.

I do think that RAM requirements will go up though. The fact that they have so much memory available on new consoles will only contribute to that. Devs will get lazy, and money will start getting spent on marketing.

 

[OCGuy]

Recommended:

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Processor: Eight core - Intel Core i7-3770 @3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 X8 @ 4 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850
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Hard Drive: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers




Yea, it RECOMMENDS a GTX560, but you cant play 1080p without 3GB :biggrin: Hopefully the thread title gets changed.

 

[toyota]

LOL. The sad part is people will actually believe this....

there are people that have the game and does require 3gb for ultra textures.

 

[OCGuy]

there are people that have the game and does require 3gb for ultra textures.

I'll keep an eye out for the reviews which show performance with an array of cards, to see if there is a hit for not having 3GB.

If you have seen one post it, I have been looking but it looks like the embargo is actually being adhered to.

 

[Techhog]

I'll keep an eye out for the reviews which show performance with an array of cards, to see if there is a hit for not having 3GB.

If you have seen one post it, I have been looking but it looks like the embargo is actually being adhered to.

The game leaked. People who have... "obtained" it have found that even 3GB is nearly maxed out on ultra at 1080p. If you want 4K, you probably need 2-3 Titan Blacks.

 

[RussianSensation]

Yea, it RECOMMENDS a GTX560, but you cant play 1080p without 3GB :biggrin: Hopefully the thread title gets changed.

Is this post supposed to be taken seriously on a Tech forum? The last time any recommended GPU per the game requirements actually provided sufficient power to max the game out is....oh right, that hasn't happened since the 90s!

No offense but NV got greedy and overcharged for 4GB versions of 680/770 when 7970Ghz/280x hit the sweet spot of 3GB free of charge. Heck, the $649 780 came with 'only' 3GB when 7970Ghz was $380!

There is no need to make excuses. It is completely illogical to pay $300+ for a GPU with only 2GB of VRAM in 2014. Even if you don't believe that this game will cripple texture quality on 670/680/770 2GB versions, in 6 months some other next gen game will. The same thing happened with 570/580 1.28-1.5Gb cards. They are pretty much crippled now wrt texture quality in newer games.

Right now NV is out to lunch with 770's 4GB pricing. PowerColor 290X can be purchased for $430 after mail in rebate which makes 770 4GB look like a joke. Now, it is probably true that "next gen" games with crap textures like Watch Dogs do not justify using more than 2GB of VRAM but those who followed GPUS for a long time knew from the beginning that sooner or later texture quality would be compromised on 2GB 680/770. Luckily for these owners the difference between ultra and high textures is not very noticeable.

 

[OCGuy]

The game leaked. People who have... "obtained" it have found that even 3GB is nearly maxed out on ultra at 1080p. If you want 4K, you probably need 2-3 Titan Blacks.

People don't know how to read VRAM usage, and GPU horsepower isn't in question, so multiple cards doesn't give you more memory.

Can't wait for reviews showing 60FPS on every mainstream card.