GTX 770 4GB vs 2GB in SLI @ 2560x1600

[tareqjj]

I have looked endlessly for performance numbers. I saw reviews for gtx 770 4gb but I found none for an SLI setup. I want to know how much of performance advantage (if any) do a two gtx 770 4gb have over a two gtx 770 2gb. I run on 30" inch monitor with 2560x1600. Please chip in. Thanks

 

[tareqjj]

I have looked endlessly for performance numbers. I saw reviews for gtx 770 4gb but I found none for an SLI setup. I want to know how much of performance advantage (if any) do a two gtx 770 4gb have over a two gtx 770 2gb. I run on 30" inch monitor with 2560x1600. Please chip in. Thanks

 

[SolMiester]

Short answer is none IIRC..ABT has the figures if you want to go look for them.

 

[tareqjj]

Abt??

 

[OCGuy]

Unless you plan on increasing your resolution, save your money.



http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/

There isn’t a lot of difference between the cards at 1920×1080 or at 2560×1600. We only start to see minimal differences at 5760×1080, and even so, there is rarely a frame or two difference.

 

[tareqjj]

Yeah I saw that review but they didnt test it sli. In their tests the vram dont matter bc the bottleneck is at the core processing power and I wanted to see if that wasn't the case with gtx 770 what would the numbers looks like.

 

[OCGuy]

Yeah I saw that review but they didnt test it sli. In their tests the vram dont matter bc the bottleneck is at the core processing power and I wanted to see if that wasn't the case with gtx 770 what would the numbers looks like.

If the VRAM usage was exceeded, you would see it in the performance.

SLI wouldn't make a difference in that regard. The bottleneck will usually be "core processing power", not sure that is really an issue.

 

[Beavermatic]

Unless you plan on increasing your resolution, save your money.

+1

 

[FalseChristian]

Since the GTX 770 is such a powerful GPU it will still be viable for Battlefield 5, FarCry 4, Batman: Oshawa Blows Chunks etc. You'll want 2 4GB cards or you're just wasting your money. 2GB is fine for 1920x1080 and below or on a GTX 760.

 

[tareqjj]

Since the GTX 770 is such a powerful GPU it will still be viable for Battlefield 5, FarCry 4, Batman: Oshawa Blows Chunks etc. You'll want 2 4GB cards or you're just wasting your money. 2GB is fine for 1920x1080 and below or on a GTX 760.

what about this this:

"If I can veer a bit off course for a moment, the realities of today’s games and tomorrow’s applications need to be discussed before going too far into the GC 4GB’s successes and failures. With the optimizations in DX11, even the most demanding games are requiring less frame buffer capacity than ever. Next generation DX11.1 equipped console development will bring the focus towards a further streamlining of game engines, so highly detailed environments won’t require memory hogging, inefficient high resolution texture maps. As many game developers have already stated on and off the record, this will lead to an increase in the amount of raw processing power required to render a scene and a significant drop in the local memory requirements. What does a situation like this mean to cards like the GC 4GB? Now and in the future, its core processing performance will likely become a bottleneck long before more than 2GB of 7Gbps memory is required to provide a smooth gaming experience."

here's the review's link:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...-review-9.html

 

[rgallant]

well if peeps are wrong and your cards and monitor run out of vram on 4q new gen of games , what then ?
if I could of had more vram on my 780 I would have got it. but nv vram gods \[marketing] made sure that my sli gets updated before its time just the same as my 8800gts sli ,gtx 285 sli , and my 580 sli.
-note no 780Ti sli in my sig. same vram .cost $500.00 more no big deal but same vram no way.
get the 4 gb cost today will let you keep your cards for a extra year imo.


you forgot this part
There’s certainly a market for these 4GB GTX 770 cards but their true benefits will only be realized in very specific games that are either poorly optimized or have been modified to require an obscene about of memory.

and that could be every game you buy in 2014-2015

or today

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2369254

 

[SolMiester]

So
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/
this shows the 2GB is a complete waste as the bandwidth inst fast enough to use all the memory

 

[selni]

well if peeps are wrong and your cards and monitor run out of vram on 4q new gen of games , what then ?
if I could of had more vram on my 780 I would have got it. but nv vram gods \[marketing] made sure that my sli gets updated before its time just the same as my 8800gts sli ,gtx 285 sli , and my 580 sli.
-note no 780Ti sli in my sig. same vram .cost $500.00 more no big deal but same vram no way.
get the 4 gb cost today will let you keep your cards for a extra year imo.


you forgot this part
There’s certainly a market for these 4GB GTX 770 cards but their true benefits will only be realized in very specific games that are either poorly optimized or have been modified to require an obscene about of memory.

and that could be every game you buy in 2014-2015

or today

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2369254

That appears to be a bunch of people saying it runs fine on insane with 2GB cards and stuttering some people are seeing is due to a bug with vsync? There's a huge difference between allocated memory and used memory.

With VRAM it's further complicated by "paging" not being as expensive as it is for main memory (swapping stuff out over PCIe from main memory still hurts, but nowhere near as badly as disk hits).

As for the OP, the performance difference is zero right now. Whether it'll change much in the future is open to (wild) speculation.

 

[3DVagabond]

For SLI @ 2560*1600 I'd get the 4gig cards. Seems like your sense is telling you the same thing. Actually, I'd be a bit concerned that the 256bit bus would hold back those cards at that res in demanding situations, or in the near future.

 

[Carfax83]

I have two GTX 770 4GB cards myself, and my monitor is 1440p so I can definitely give you a solid opinion.

My opinion is, get the 4GB version. Here's why.. Although no game currently even comes close to using 4GB of VRAM for rendering purposes, there are some games that will use the extra VRAM you have to cache textures, shaders etcetera.

This can result in additional benefits, such as faster loading, and less stuttering and hitching during gameplay. A few games that I've played that do this are Crysis 3, BF4 and Bioshock Infinite. All of them preload and cache assets.

With even bigger games due out this year (Dragon Age Inquisition, Witcher 3, Watch Dogs etcetera), VRAM will be even more important for smooth hitch free gaming.

Another reason to get the 4GB version is mods. If you play games like Skyrim, and GTA IV (GTA V is due out this year supposedly as well), you can mod the hell out of those games with very detailed textures that eat up lots of VRAM..

 

[OCGuy]

More allocation shows no difference in performance, as shown by multiple reviews.

 

[Braxos]

Just a idea buy 780 used for the cost of 770 4gb. Or a single 780ti even I thing you need sli for that resolution.

 

[Hdgamer]

I have two GTX 770 4GB cards myself, and my monitor is 1440p so I can definitely give you a solid opinion.

My opinion is, get the 4GB version. Here's why.. Although no game currently even comes close to using 4GB of VRAM for rendering purposes, there are some games that will use the extra VRAM you have to cache textures, shaders etcetera.

This can result in additional benefits, such as faster loading, and less stuttering and hitching during gameplay. A few games that I've played that do this are Crysis 3, BF4 and Bioshock Infinite. All of them preload and cache assets.

With even bigger games due out this year (Dragon Age Inquisition, Witcher 3, Watch Dogs etcetera), VRAM will be even more important for smooth hitch free gaming.

Another reason to get the 4GB version is mods. If you play games like Skyrim, and GTA IV (GTA V is due out this year supposedly as well), you can mod the hell out of those games with very detailed textures that eat up lots of VRAM..

Really? Of course the guy who buys the 4gb card is going to try to justify it to you. Every benchmark and website is saying the same thing pretty much. Save your money and get the 2gb card. As someone who games on sli on a 1600p monitor I can tell you save your money. When 2gb becomes obsolete, buy a better card and sell the ones you have. It's the game of being a PC enthusiast.

The same situation was cropping up with system ram a few years ago. Everybody said you needed 16gb of system ram but in the past five years or more the system ram requirements has not gone up. This could be different for vRam when 4k monitors come more into the picture, but we're still years away from 4k being the norm.

 

[Carfax83]

More allocation shows no difference in performance, as shown by multiple reviews.

The 4GB of VRAM will give you higher minimums in certain games that can use the extra VRAM for caching.

Crysis 3 and BF4 are two examples.. That's a sign of things to come imo, because games this year will be even bigger, with greater accessibility..

 

[Hdgamer]

Sure that 4gb card in the review is clocked EXACTLY the same as the 2 gb card? hmmmmmm.....

 

[Carfax83]

Really? Of course the guy who buys the 4gb card is going to try to justify it to you. Every benchmark and website is saying the same thing pretty much. Save your money and get the 2gb card. As someone who games on sli on a 1600p monitor I can tell you save your money. When 2gb becomes obsolete, buy a better card and sell the ones you have. It's the game of being a PC enthusiast.

Explain the benchmark I posted above then. The 4GB frame buffer can make a difference in smoothness and maintaining frame rates in certain scenarios, and I expect this to increase this year with multiple open/semi open World massive games coming down the pipeline.

The same situation was cropping up with system ram a few years ago. Everybody said you needed 16gb of system ram but in the past five years or more the system ram requirements has not gone up. This could be different for vRam when 4k monitors come more into the picture, but we're still years away from 4k being the norm.

What? No one with any sense was recommending 16GB of ram "years ago." Also enthusiasts usually tailor their system RAM around their platform. In the x58 days for instance, most people had 6GB or 12GB of RAM due to bloomfield's triple channel capability. Same thing with the x79 chipset and the Sandy and Ivy Bridge-e processors quad channel capability.

However, with 64 bit gaming getting ready to take off, RAM usage is going to increase big time, and 16GB will no longer be considered excessive...

 

[Carfax83]

Sure that 4gb card in the review is clocked EXACTLY the same as the 2 gb card? hmmmmmm.....

The Galaxy is clocked very slightly above the stock version (1163 vs 1112 average core speed), but is also clocked lower than the Lightning and the Gigabyte OC and yet the minimum frame rate is still higher..

Try again.

 

[Hdgamer]

haha, you sound so buthurt Carafax83!!! Anyways another possiblity there is the game could be leaking memory too. Also Crysis is a memory hog, I'll give it that. Lots of people were complaining since Crysis 1 how the engine was very unoptimized... Still not perfect to this day, but your example is at least an example of using more than 2gb of vram. On the other hand going back to what I said about system ram. Yes lots of people on forums back in 2008-2010 were saying you needed more system ram. This never played out as things seemed to have plateaued. Also as more API platforms like Mantle DirectX move forward, I would hope that less resources are being used and more GPU horsepower comes into play. And vRam usage might actually plateau or go down.

Now please don't bring up modded skyrim and BF4... LOL

But anyways to this day 95% of pc gamers do not need more than 2 gb of vram. And don't bring "futureproofing" up either because I will discredit that argument in one sentence.....

Warning issued for personal attack and inflammatory language.
-- stahlhart

 

[Carfax83]

haha, you sound so buthurt Carafax83!!!

Why should I be butthurt after discrediting your "Every benchmark and website is saying the same thing pretty much," statement?

Anyways another possiblity there is the game could be leaking memory too. Also Crysis is a memory hog, I'll give it that. Lots of people were complaining since Crysis 1 how the engine was very unoptimized...

Crysis 3 is one of the most optimized games of all time. Just because it's not adhering to your ridiculous notions that games can't make use of more than 2GB of VRAM, doesn't mean anything is wrong with it.

Now please don't bring up modded skyrim and BF4... LOL

You obviously don't play BF4. It routinely uses over 2GB of VRAM.. Modded Skyrim will also use plenty of VRAM so I've been told..

But anyways to this day 95% of pc gamers do not need more than 2 gb of vram. And don't bring "futureproofing" up either because I will discredit that argument in one sentence.....

Your entire argument was discredited long ago...

 

[UaVaj]

carfax83 hit the nail on the head. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

your money - spend it as you see fit.

simply understand difference between (1) actual vram and (2) allocated/cache vram.
ideally you want enough vram to have all need textures in the vram.
otoh, if you do not have enough vram. texture will have to be swap from system ram with a penalty. too much swapping and you will induce stutter.

as with anything ram. better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

-----

the reality is. 770 sli does have enough grunt to push playable frame rate (60fps avg / 45fps min) at 2560x1440 with eye candy cranked up? so another vote for 4gb - especially when going sli.

exception is - if you are a 120hz gamer. in chasing after 120hz - even with sli - you will be force to turn down eye candy. making that 4gb useless.

exception to the exception - if you are going 770 quad sli for 120hz. you shifted the bottleneck back to the vram. now you got enough grunt for eye candy. in this case get the 4gb instead.