** 2GB GFX RAM VS 1GB GFX RAM IN BF3 (560Ti 1GB VS 560Ti 2GB) TESTING RESULTS!

elrasho · 24 Nov 2011 at 17:12

starkill3r said:
Chuck another one in there and do SLI like me and you can enjoy it everything in ultra and 1080p and above 60fps constantly

Hold on, you have two 1GB 560GTXs and 4GB of ram? And you can play everything on Ultra with constant 60fps? What resolution are you playing at?

starkill3r · 24 Nov 2011 at 17:21

elrasho said:
Hold on, you have two 1GB 560GTXs and 4GB of ram? And you can play everything on Ultra with constant 60fps? What resolution are you playing at?

I have two 560 Ti 1GB in SLI, and 8GB of system RAM.

I play at 1080p everything on ultra, 2xMSAA and doesn't drop below 60fps

I've posted a thread on this before and a few videos.

P.S I also removed 4gb of the 8gb RAM and it played the same.

elrasho · 24 Nov 2011 at 17:24

starkill3r said:
I have two 560 Ti 1GB in SLI, and 8GB of system RAM.

I play at 1080p everything on ultra, 2xMSAA and doesn't drop below 60fps

I've posted a thread on this before and a few videos.

P.S I also removed 4gb of the 8gb RAM and it played the same.

You live in the matrix :confused:

starkill3r · 24 Nov 2011 at 17:28

elrasho said:
You live in the matrix

Why would you think that? BF3 isn't as demanding as people make out, two 560 Ti's in SLI beat a single gtx 580 in performance, the cards are fantastic paired up and I wouldn't expect anything less.

elrasho · 24 Nov 2011 at 17:30

Im thinking about the VRAM limitations of having everything on Ultra. Maybe because your just gamng at 1080P, I'd imagine at higher resolutions you'd get the stuttering when VRAM starts to run out. Even then after 1080P system RAM would get shared with VRAM to compensate.

I'd try testing that theory but my monitor only goes upto 1080P.

starkill3r · 24 Nov 2011 at 17:35

My VRAM is maxed out constantly, but before I got my second card I couldn't run it all in ultra, only shadows were on high, and would only get about 40 fps at 1080p, the extra horsepower from the second card is great, my monitor is 1080p also so I can't test any higher, 1080p is great anyway, I don't need dual/triple monitors, I play on a 84" screen with a projector and my LCD in the bedroom.

bhavv · 24 Nov 2011 at 18:03

Ive actually linked to starkillers thread several times when this diiscussion pops up. If you drop the AA to 2x MSAA, the game is completely playable around 55 fps minimum on SLI 1 Gb GTX 560 tis.

People who are rushing out to buy new cards right now with more Vram just to use 4x MSAA in one game are being daft, your 1 Gb cards will be more than sufficient until Keplers come out.

Buying an Intel hex core and at least 8-12 Gb ram would give you a bigger boost that more Vram would.

Unfortunately I ordered my I7 980 after the free BF3 promo ended, but £427 seemed a good price and I doubt they are going to drop to £300 as this is too close to the 2700k pricing.

Gregster · 24 Nov 2011 at 18:16

bhavv said:
Unfortunately I ordered my I7 980 after the free BF3 promo ended, but £427 seemed a good price and I doubt they are going to drop to £300 as this is too close to the 2700k pricing.

If only you had it delivered today!!!

Sorry bud couldn't resist.

bfar · 24 Nov 2011 at 19:13

bhavv said:
People who are rushing out to buy new cards right now with more Vram just to use 4x MSAA in one game are being daft, your 1 Gb cards will be more than sufficient until Keplers come out.

Agreed. It's just one game at the end of the day! And who knows what performance increases patches and new drivers will bring.

I personally think FXAA is good enough for the time being. It's nowhere near as blurry as MLAA. And MSAA on it's own has been broken since deferred shaders became commonplace. FXAA is a great compromise imo.

bhavv · 24 Nov 2011 at 19:36

Most important stuff to have in a current gaming PC at up to 1200p 60 hz is:

- I5 or I7 cpu clocked to 4 Ghz +
- 8 Gb ram
- A pair of 5800s, 6800s, 6950s, or GF104 / GF114 (1 Gb Vram is fine).

Its only people who dont meet this specification that are struggling to run games without lag, stutter, or terrible FPS.

tommybhoy · 24 Nov 2011 at 20:01

So if I was to take your advice, I could be ripping out a PII 955 BE@4GHz, a MB and maybe the ram too or probably double it(giving my self a seriously costly upgrade on top of the price of the gpus), and buy a pair of 1GB cards?

Where as keeping my current system and spending at the most, £50 extra on 2x2GB gpus! :eek:

That is absolutely shocking advice bhavv, you should really have a good think about it, seriously!

bhavv · 24 Nov 2011 at 20:08

tommybhoy said:
So if I was to take your advice, I could be ripping out a PII 955 BE@4GHz, a MB and maybe the ram too or probably double it(giving my self a seriously costly upgrade on top of the price of the gpus), and buy a pair of 1GB cards?

Where as keeping my current system and spending at the most, £50 extra on 2x2GB gpus!

That is absolutely shocking advice bhavv, you should really have a good think about it, seriously!

No you misunderstand. You simply shouldnt have bought a Phemon setup in the first place. They are terrible for most games out there today.

You wont see any performance improvement going from 1 Gb to 2 Gb vram in games. You would however be far better off with a 2500k and 8 Gb system ram.

Also you can get an I5 2500k and the cheap gigabyte Z68 mobo for under £250, and sell your current Phenom and mobo. If anything is ruining your gaming performance, its your Phenom CPU, not your vram.

bhavv · 24 Nov 2011 at 20:40

Wow, I also completly missed the current price on the 1 Gb GTX 560 TI - £149 for a 1 Gb vs £195 for the 2 Gb.

Yes I'd still rather have a pair of the 1 Gbs at those prices, and wait for kepler before considering 2 Gb vram.

tommybhoy · 24 Nov 2011 at 20:50

bhavv said:
No you misunderstand. You simply shouldnt have bought a Phemon setup in the first place. They are terrible for most games out there today.

You wont see any performance improvement going from 1 Gb to 2 Gb vram in games. You would however be far better off with a 2500k and 8 Gb system ram.

It's not the point if you shouldn't have, if someone already has this kind of setup and reads your post and takes your advice especially while reading this thread to make their minds up in regards to BF3 which isn't cpu dependant at all.

Crysis 2, Avp, DA II, Shogun 2, these are some games that can utilise over 1Gb at 1080p using just one 2Gb card!

bhavv said:
Wow, I also completly missed the current price on the 1 Gb GTX 560 TI - £149 for a 1 Gb vs £195 for the 2 Gb.

Yes I'd still rather have a pair of the 1 Gbs at those prices, and wait for kepler before considering 2 Gb vram.

I wouldn't buy any card right now, it's pointless!

If I had to buy, I'd get the £150 card though and be more than happy with the lower IQ for the saving.

bhavv · 24 Nov 2011 at 21:05

An I5 CPU would benefit far many more games right now and in the future than more vram does though.

As many people have said several times now, low vram issues are easilly overcome by having more than 8 Gb vram.

Also a single 2 Gb GTX 560 Ti really is a terrible choice if you want to play BF3 at ultra, it cant even run it with acceptable FPS.

Final8y · 24 Nov 2011 at 21:56

kissenger said:
No, sorry that's not true. 'Holding' and 'average' are two very different things. Holding is to do with the baseline performance, i.e. the troughs on the graph. It's hitting around the 25fps mark every 5-10 seconds if you look at the graph. So that means that even if the average is 35fps you will be dealing with 25fps every 5-10 seconds, and would you be happy with that? I wouldn't.

Would be great if Gibbo could scale back settings until he's getting 60fps on the 2Gb 560Ti and then check to see what the 560Ti gets on the same settings. That would settle this debate...

The graph shows that it hit low of 25fps 24% of the time over the 400 seconds, that means it spent 76% of the time above it.

decto · 24 Nov 2011 at 22:03

bhavv said:
No you misunderstand. You simply shouldnt have bought a Phemon setup in the first place. They are terrible for most games out there today.

You wont see any performance improvement going from 1 Gb to 2 Gb vram in games. You would however be far better off with a 2500k and 8 Gb system ram.

Also you can get an I5 2500k and the cheap gigabyte Z68 mobo for under £250, and sell your current Phenom and mobo. If anything is ruining your gaming performance, its your Phenom CPU, not your vram.

I guess my Q6700 is killing my gaming as well.....

Battlefield 3 on medium with a GTX280 is 70% across the cores with stock clocks of 2.67Ghz. You don't need an I5 2500k to play games. Any quad around 3GHz is plenty unless you have £4-500 of GPU's to drive.

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KHAN · 24 Nov 2011 at 22:06

Good Customer Service from OCUK, Gives some credibility to people saying 3gig over 1.5gig on the high end cards too IMO.

95thrifles · 24 Nov 2011 at 22:27

Just weighing in with my 2 pence
I don't think anyone will debate that given the choice of a 2 gig card vs 1 gig card they would take the 2 gig card, however you then have to factor cost into the matter. If they cost the same, simple decision 2 gig card it is, if the 2 gig version costs twice as much as the 1 gig, I doubt anyone would buy it. Where each person draws the line on cost vs potential current/future performance gains is going to be largely subjective. Although attempting to quantify that, I'd suggest that most informed buyers buy for today and not tomorrow, and anyone looking to buy a £200 gfx card now would prob be willing to fork out roughly an extra 10%, ie £20 for the extra VRAM, much more than this I doubt too many would consider it, unless they are attempting to buy for the future, which most people know you cant do accurately, as by the time that comes around you may as well sell up and buy newer card. That's just my opinion anyway. I've just bought a 1.5 gig 580 and whilst I don't have it up & running yet I'm comfortable with my decision, as the price increase for the 3 gig version just didn't justify it to myself, by the time I envisage I'll need 3 gig VRAM regularly I'll just sell up & buy a new card

Edit: playing at 1200p, and I generally like as many settings as I can (read all) to be maxed out, if I do need to ever drop anything its usually AA that takes first and only hit (running a 1 gig 560Ti ATM)

kissenger · 24 Nov 2011 at 22:49

Final8y said:
The graph shows that it hit low of 25fps 24% of the time over the 400 seconds, that means it spent 76% of the time above it.

If it is 25% of the time (looks like more to me, but it's a moot point), then that means that out of every four seconds, one second will be at 25fps, so in other words you will persistently be dealing with 25fps.

For me, dealing with 25fps 25% of the time, or once every four seconds on average, is not acceptable. If you think differently, then so be it, but I guarantee you that the vast majority of PC gaming enthusiasts will not be happy with that.