Just some random scenes (not necessarily the most stressful):

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: 710MB



Alice Madness Returns: 1032MB



BFBC2: 1314MB



Crysis Warhead: 2003MB



Crysis 2: 1873MB



Dragon Age 2: 1550MB



Metro 2033: 1934MB



Napoleon Total War: 1802MB



Shogun 2: 1916MB



Unigine Heaven Benchmark: 1522MB



The Witcher 2: 1322MB



World of Warcraft Cataclysm: 1135MB




Conclusions: to maximise everything under 2560x1600, 1.5GB isn't affluent any longer. Whenever the vram usage is slightly above the dedicated vram available on each GPU, lag spikes/stuttering occur. Unless an enthusiast of 30" monitor/multiscreen is insensitive to lag spikes/stuttering, I recommend staying away from multi-GPU solutions with less than 2GB vram per GPU.

However, keep in mind that 2-way GTX580 SLI does not have sufficient GPU computing power under 2560x1600 for some games like Metro 2033, Shogun 2 etc. It is recommended to have at least 3 GTX580s or equivalent power from 28nm cards.

Useful information, thanks

I'm using SLI GTX480s at 2560, so it's good to have a reference. I've only seen full (1500mb+) VRAM usage in Crysis2 and metro2033, but I haven't played Napoleon or Shogun 2.

Out of interest, did you have Windows aero enabled during these tests? That eats 150-200Mb of VRAM, so is well worth disabling when VRAM usage is a concern.

Duff-Man said:

Out of interest, did you have Windows aero enabled during these tests? That eats 150-200Mb of VRAM, so is well worth disabling when VRAM usage is a concern.

Click to expand...

Bloody hell that's a lot if you have a 1Gb card or less. Thanks for the tip.

You've opened it again! lol

Look at them crappy FPS.....LOL

Alice Madness Returns = 24fps
Dragon Age 2 = 20fps
Metro 2033 = 20fps
Shogun 2 = 30fps
Unigine Heaven Benchmark = 34fps
World of Warcraft Cataclysm = 39fps


Who gives a crap how much Vram is being used when your getting them super low FPS

Shogun 2 is more then playable at 30FPS.

You have to remember that going over the VRAM on a GPU doesn't automatically equally any performance impact at all - it depends on the nature of the VRAM useage - the system memory->bus->GPU is still quite fast even tho nothing like as fast to access or as fast to transfer as direct VRAM access.

my 480 SLI handles 2560X1600 easily.

i dont have an fps counter running though.
what i do is put the game on and max everything out.
if it isnt playable then i investigate why.
i dont look at the numbers to tell me if what i am seeing on my screen is playable to me.

£800+ worth of GFX cards and your'e getting those frames?

Madness.

that's the price you pay for gaming at a high resolution

For the mean time I am staying put with 1920x1200. Once you go much above that you evidently need some serious graphics horse power.

well them fps are very poor indeed, i just tested dragon age 2 with fraps running, turned off vsync, turned all settings to very high, aa x8, af x16, and still get 60-70 fps with 2x gtx480's sli, and at a res of 2560 x 1600

480 tri sli runs everything at higher FPS than those screenies at 2560 (40-50 in shogun 2 etc), although metro and shogun cant have more than 2 or 3 x AA without seeing large drops in FPS, so a lot of the above is purely caching of textures etc which isnt "needed", just beneficial. One good thing about 2560 is the fact that you dont need so much AA though, as the pixels are that much smaller in the first place.

Duff-Man said:

Useful information, thanks

I'm using SLI GTX480s at 2560, so it's good to have a reference. I've only seen full (1500mb+) VRAM usage in Crysis2 and metro2033, but I haven't played Napoleon or Shogun 2.

Out of interest, did you have Windows aero enabled during these tests? That eats 150-200Mb of VRAM, so is well worth disabling when VRAM usage is a concern.

Click to expand...

I don't think AERO still occupies vram as long as the game is running in fullscreen mode. Proof:

chaparral said:

Look at them crappy FPS.....LOL

Alice Madness Returns = 24fps
Dragon Age 2 = 20fps
Metro 2033 = 20fps
Shogun 2 = 30fps
Unigine Heaven Benchmark = 34fps
World of Warcraft Cataclysm = 39fps


Who gives a crap how much Vram is being used when your getting them super low FPS

Click to expand...

Alice Madness Returns: PhysX killing fps. Most of the time it stays at 60 fps with vsync.
Dragon Age 2: See the GPU usage. Need more explanation?
WOW: You only get the same fps in Orgrimmar even if you run it under 1024x768 unless you are on a ghost server.

The only problematic games are Metro 2033 and Shogun 2.

Would be good if what AA is being used was mention.

If your system is generally fast then you shouldn't really notice any difference as my friends tell me their 1500MB 580/1280MB 570 or 1GB 5870 is very playable and similar performance to what I'm getting with a 5970 at 1920x1200 despite Nvidia's having more VRAM. As for Metro, I play on Very High settings with PhysX on Advance/High (using GT440), AA, No Tessellation, DOF and achieve averages of 75, max of 135fps, lows of 43fps with VRAM usages at 1240MB and reaches highs of 1500MB - nearly as much as playing at 2560 which was a surprise.

People must have broken computers, my 480 sli system handles anything I throw at it.

rjkoneill said:

my 480 SLI handles 2560X1600 easily.

i dont have an fps counter running though.
what i do is put the game on and max everything out.
if it isnt playable then i investigate why.
i dont look at the numbers to tell me if what i am seeing on my screen is playable to me.

Click to expand...

Locky said:

People must have broken computers, my 480 sli system handles anything I throw at it.

Click to expand...

480 SLI, 2560x1440, no issues whatsoever.

Point of this thread....?

My 6950 2GB unlocked to 6970 should be handling everything @ high, not ultra AA off. Might go Crossfire when I can afford it.

ElliottJames said:

My 6950 2GB unlocked to 6970 should be handling everything @ high, not ultra AA off. Might go Crossfire when I can afford it.

Click to expand...

At the time you made that post you hadn't even tried unlocking it yet