Quick question - asus 1.5gb 580GTX vs ocuk 3gb 580GTX

James J · 10 Nov 2011 at 15:25

I game at 1080p and want to know if the extra vram will actually come in handy at some point in the near future or not? The asus card has vastly superior cooling which is swaying me towards that, not to mention the better price (nearly £60 cheaper) but the price of the ocuk (palit by the looks of it) 3gb model is tempting.

Ordering today for tomorrows delivery so need an answer now!

James J · 10 Nov 2011 at 15:42

Sod it, ordered the 3gb one so I don't need to upgrade again or think "what if" lol.

harmony · 11 Nov 2011 at 16:57

Thread closed due to fools failing to read scales of y-axis and have no idea about quantitative analysis: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18331666

If you plan to go SLI in the future then get the 3GB version for sure, otherwise it would be annoying when you find your expensive cards turned down by games like Shogun 2.

James J · 11 Nov 2011 at 20:56

Went for the 3gb card due to wanting to use very high AA modes at my native res, which isn't amazingly high (1080p), yet still demanding at 8xAA or above on vram.

kissenger · 11 Nov 2011 at 21:21

Don't listen to harmony. He's a right wally.

.Max. · 11 Nov 2011 at 21:24

kissenger said:
Don't listen to harmony. He's a right wally.

not really? future profed and as harmony said, games can use over 1.5gb vram, if you're spending that much may aswell get something which lasts

edit: was that post edited? swear it said congrats you just wasted your money?

Nvidiot · 11 Nov 2011 at 21:38

harmony said:
Thread closed due to me not having a clue what i'm talking about.

Fixed that for you.

kissenger · 12 Nov 2011 at 01:38

.Max. said:
not really? future profed and as harmony said, games can use over 1.5gb vram, if you're spending that much may aswell get something which lasts

edit: was that post edited? swear it said congrats you just wasted your money?

Not really though. Games can use over 1.5gb vram at the moment but they don't really need to, at least not at anything less than 1600p. By the time they will be able to make good use of 2gb/3gb of vram the rest of your card will be way behind the times, so splashing out on vram right now isn't a good idea.

E.g. no difference in performance between 1gb and 2gb 6950 in BF3:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/11/10/battlefield-3-technical-analysis/4

James J · 12 Nov 2011 at 01:47

Just had a pop on crysis 2 with dx11 + high res texture pack on and it was using 1900mb at 1080p. I did own a 1.5gb 580gtx when the dx11 patch first came out and this definitely plays it better at the same clockrates at the same sections.

harmony · 12 Nov 2011 at 01:55

kissenger said:
Not really though. Games can use over 1.5gb vram at the moment but they don't really need to, at least not at anything less than 1600p. By the time they will be able to make good use of 2gb/3gb of vram the rest of your card will be way behind the times, so splashing out on vram right now isn't a good idea.

E.g. no difference in performance between 1gb and 2gb 6950 in BF3:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/11/10/battlefield-3-technical-analysis/4

This review is a joke. Two pilots driving a plane in the sky, only dodging incoming missiles and locking enemy planes while you can hardly see anything but the cloud and the radar, what vram usage can that be? A proper review should tackle the vram-hungry scenes such like this and use MSAA 4X, if not being able to test the 64-player maps:

James J · 12 Nov 2011 at 02:04

To note, BF3 scales with the amount of VRAM detected on its mesh memory storage. 1.5gb cards do fine on ultra unless at 1600p or something equally daft. Thats from a tech video from DICE btw on BF3 posted in a thread on this very forum lol.

kissenger · 12 Nov 2011 at 03:58

James J said:
Just had a pop on crysis 2 with dx11 + high res texture pack on and it was using 1900mb at 1080p. I did own a 1.5gb 580gtx when the dx11 patch first came out and this definitely plays it better at the same clockrates at the same sections.

Yeah I'm sure it is, but that doesn't mean that it needs to. If you have extra vram it will cache more, which means you will use more than 1gb of ram but that doesn't mean you get any actual performance increase. Vram is not an issue in this game or in any others at less than 1600p and with non-mod textures.

kissenger · 12 Nov 2011 at 04:16

harmony · 12 Nov 2011 at 05:51

^^ That review is known to be questionable. It's already known that a valid result at 2560x1600 should look like this:

I've been challenging those 1.5GB users for long and I've never seen a single person bother to photoshop a result to counterattack.

Freddie1980 · 12 Nov 2011 at 08:24

So Metro 2033 at 2560x1600 on ultra with 4x MSAA will give you at worse 6 FPS min or 25 FPS min at best which means its unplayable no matter if your running in Crossfire or SLI or how much VRAM you have. Thank you for sharing that.

Marine-RX179 · 12 Nov 2011 at 08:36

I honestly have no idea what's the result for Metro2033 on 2560 res with 4xAA got anything to do with the this thread, considering the OP CLEARLY stated he's gaming at 1080p.

harmony · 12 Nov 2011 at 13:17

Freddie1980 said:
So Metro 2033 at 2560x1600 on ultra with 4x MSAA will give you at worse 6 FPS min or 25 FPS min at best which means its unplayable no matter if your running in Crossfire or SLI or how much VRAM you have. Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you for showing that you don't know both SLI and CrossfireX support up to 4 GPUs.

Marine-RX179 said:
I honestly have no idea what's the result for Metro2033 on 2560 res with 4xAA got anything to do with the this thread, considering the OP CLEARLY stated he's gaming at 1080p.

Then you should ask why kissenger posts BS about 2560x1600. Almost no one would question the advantage of 3GB vram at that res.

James J · 12 Nov 2011 at 13:49

Guys, enough. I'm happy with my purchase so no more discussion needed on the matter.

kissenger · 12 Nov 2011 at 14:28

harmony said:
Thank you for showing that you don't know both SLI and CrossfireX support up to 4 GPUs.

Then you should ask why kissenger posts BS about 2560x1600. Almost no one would question the advantage of 3GB vram at that res.

I never said that vram doesn't matter at 1600p. As a matter of fact I specifically stated "at resolutions less than 1600p". The evidence shows, however, that at 1200p and less, the difference between 1gb and 3gb is negligible in all currently existing games, and anyone can determine this for themselves by a quick google search for benchmarks.

kissenger · 12 Nov 2011 at 14:32

Actually, doing a bit more research, it seems as though even at 1600p the difference is negligible in 95% of the cases:

Only Metro 2033 seems to be able to do anything with the extra vram and that's not even in a real world situation. It's in a limit case where the game is unplayable with both 1.5 and 3gb.

"... it has to be said that 1.5 GB of video memory is sufficient and that there isn’t really any point in doubling this quantity of memory with higher density modules, even in SLI and surround. Either games don’t require this level of memory, or the processing power required of the GPU in addition to memory demands is too high, even for the GeForce GTX 580s, as is the case in Metro 2033. While a Quad SLI system could however get you close to a level of performance in gaming conditions that require 3 GB per GPU, such a platform is both very extreme and for a very reduced number of users and certainly doesn’t justify the proliferation of 3 GB versions of the GeForce GTX 580."