Why more Vram is always better

[Shehriazad]

Hm... I'm not sure if I can agree completely. It's kind of like driving a V10 car around in normal city traffic. In most cars, you're still powering all 10 cylinders (unless the car has the ability to shutdown cylinders, which some have), which aren't really necessary. So, how does this relate to GPUs? If you're using a nVidia card and are trying to overclock, that memory is still powered regardless of whether you're using it. The video cards are also limited to a certain power threshold, which means that memory eats into your available power and potentially limits your OC.

Which is where HBM comes into play. I'm not entirely sure about the numbers anymore...but I think HBM was somewhere around 40% to 50% less power consumption than GDDR5 at the same amount.

That frees up quite a bit of power...now imagine a Titan X with 12GB of HBM gen 1 instead of GDDR5 .

But then again...Nvidia is waiting for Gen 2...maybe that consumes even less power...not sure...some people on this forum still have all the data flying around, I'm sure.


But 1st Gen HBM GPUs will be available this year and 2nd gen next year. And since 4GB is pretty much going to be the minimum, anyway as no one will put HBM on slow GPUs, 8GB will probably be somewhat of a standard in 2016...now this isn't official...that's just my gut feeling.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I always hear people say no games today take advantage of higher vram so go for this lower vram model. But do most people buy video cards just for today's games? They buy a video card so it could also run games coming out 2-3 years later just as much as current games. . . .

Sure, if money is no object then a Titan X1 is the best single-card choice.

Most people have a budget, so they buy less. Then "more VRAM" is not the only consideration.

 

[Tugrul_8192bit]

When self-bootable gpus come, pci-e bandwidth bottleneck will be unimportant and more vram will be very important. Because even hdd/solidstate drives will be slapped near gpu for faster game loadings/savings. Directly to vram from hdd in a ramdisk manner.

 

[h4rm0ny]

I always hear people say no games today take advantage of higher vram so go for this lower vram model. But do most people buy video cards just for today's games? They buy a video card so it could also run games coming out 2-3 years later just as much as current games.
I will give a brief history of my video card purchases over the years and how getting model with more vram has always benefited me.
My first video card was Geforce Ti4200 128mb.Most said you don't need the extra 64mb but guess what later games like Doom3, HL2, Far Cry1 etc ran better with 128mb vram.
My Next video card was Geforce 6800GS 512mb instead of the 256mb model. This really helped me in future games where some games required minimum 512mb vram to run. Games like Crysis, Dead Space, Bioshock etc all benefited from this extra vram.
Then my next card was 6950 2gb which was clearly better buy than the 1gb model which I am still using.
And my next card will be a 4GB card which many of you feel is overkill but again its going to last me longer than the 2gb and 3gb models.
So its better to get the extra vram because the extra price is offset by more longevity and better performance in future games. Unless you have evidence contradicting this theory please enlighten me.
Its not hard to imagine AAA games in 2020 will run better on an 8gb video card than in 4gb or 6gb models.
That's why i feel its better to buy a video card with the extra vram because of more futureproofing. You can ask the owners of gtx 680/770 2gb how they feel about this matter and they would tell you they should have gone for the 4gb model instead.
This only applies to mid range and high end cards as cards like R7 240 2gb or GT 740 4gb are not going to show any performance difference now or even 5 years in the future.

I like to future proof. But a graphics card is a package of multiple elements. If I want that card to still be viable in 2017 it's not a case of making sure that one element of it is still viable, they all have to be.

I don't need 8GB of VRAM right now, 4GB of VRAM is plenty. In two years time that might not be true so having bought the 8GB of VRAM might seem a good idea. However, in two years time the GPU itself will be out of date as, probably, will the speed or latency of that VRAM. Therefore I will have to upgrade anyway and the advanced purchase will have been of no benefit.

Additionally, by buying ahead of the curve, I am not getting value for money. Paying £100 for 8GB today is not as good as paying £50 for 8GB two years from now. It is better than paying £150 in total by paying twice, but this at least illustrates why paying extra to get early is not as good value as it seems.

 

[3DVagabond]

I like to future proof. But a graphics card is a package of multiple elements. If I want that card to still be viable in 2017 it's not a case of making sure that one element of it is still viable, they all have to be.

I don't need 8GB of VRAM right now, 4GB of VRAM is plenty. In two years time that might not be true so having bought the 8GB of VRAM might seem a good idea. However, in two years time the GPU itself will be out of date as, probably, will the speed or latency of that VRAM. Therefore I will have to upgrade anyway and the advanced purchase will have been of no benefit.

Additionally, by buying ahead of the curve, I am not getting value for money. Paying £100 for 8GB today is not as good as paying £50 for 8GB two years from now. It is better than paying £150 in total by paying twice, but this at least illustrates why paying extra to get early is not as good value as it seems.

I'd still go for the extra RAM. Look at how long the prior gen to this was relevant. 2 years isn't expecting too much if you buy top tier.

 

[xthetenth]

I think there's an element of where cards' VRAM amount stacks up to their chip's power and also one of where they sit relative to the gaming market.

If the card simply isn't going to be able to perform well at a given setting, does it really matter if it doesn't have the VRAM to run it well? I'd cheerfully take 6 GB VRAM on a 290(X) or a 9(7/8)0 if it were offered, but much more than that I'd question the value of because that's starting to be an imbalanced design.

Low VRAM isn't nearly as big a deal for longevity once console ports are on a platform where development is mature, as compared to the current situation where they're expanding in a big way to use the resources afforded by the new generation of consoles.

Kepler was playing with fire though, and it's gotten badly burned.

 

[R0H1T]

I'd still go for the extra RAM. Look at how long the prior gen to this was relevant. 2 years isn't expecting too much if you buy top tier.

Didn't anyone mention DX12 here, if you can add mismatched cards in SLI or (XDMA) crossfire & still get decent performance then buying extra VRAM now is of no real use. HBM2 will become a commodity much like SSD's are now & DDR3 was a couple of years back, granted it'll take at least a year or two to get'em cheap but I fully expect the price premium on this extra VRAM to go down substantially as & when HBM2 replaces GDDR5 in the mainstream GPU market.

 

[kasakka]

I think there's an element of where cards' VRAM amount stacks up to their chip's power and also one of where they sit relative to the gaming market.

Agreed. There's also a huge disparity in VRAM use vs visuals in some new games. For example Crysis 3 still looks pretty fantastic yet it consumes far less VRAM at 1440p than many newer but not better looking titles. GTA V is also not all that VRAM hungry considering how much stuff it crams on the screen at times.

The original, two year old Titan seems to barely hang with a 300 euro GTX 970 these days even though it has more VRAM at 6 GB. Since the Titan X is roughly two GTX 970 power when overclocked it remains to be seen how long it keeps bringing the goods.