And yet it's still being said.
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7970 CF or 680 SLI?
- Thread starter SwiftJump
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And yet it's still being said.
Well I think that was kind of implicit in the statement but OK it appears you're being a pedant.
Actually untrue on the second point. MSAA and AO are individually the biggest offenders on the VRAM. Both of which effect FPS considerably. Especially at high resolution.
Basically what you've got is something that is fairly complex and not everyone wants to explain the full technical explanation each time regarding the relationship between VRAM used, having playable FPS and the settings used because by nature it's varied. I don't have a problem with it as in essence the point behind the statement is true.
You are because we've discussed this exact point before and you agrees too that the point behind the simplified statement is true.
Theoretically yes. But the games, I and others tested showed that with 2 GPUs you're hitting other barriers with regards to playable FPS before the VRAM becomes a hard limit on performance. If you're hitting 20 FPS with 2800MB usage and then enable 4x MSAA which makes you hit the VRAM limit it's a moot point as you were never going to be able to run that setting even with 6GB of VRAM.
This is why people coin it in one sentence
.There's also the thing where people just aren't interested in the technical part of it not have any willing to understand it so to waffle all the above at them would make them lose interest. As long as the right information with regards to recommendations is provided then it's all good. If they want to know more information then I'm sure somebody will respond further.
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Yes, wasn't me bud, I posted about how TR made a song and dance about AMD frame times in Skyrim where as TR just made a whisper of frame time performance with the previous gens 570-which was nothing short of catastrophic in relation to the 69's frame times.
But at the end of the day, it pushed AMD in the right direction to tighten frame time performance.
Like the one this morning when the lad was arguing with himself over 2Gb/4Gb same series 67/80 gpus with last years top demanding games?
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Like the one this morning when the lad was arguing with himself over 2Gb/4Gb same series 67/80 gpus with last years top demanding games?
Oh dear, Tommy, are you still hurting from it that you have to revive it in a different thread? And to think you said I was trolling.
What actually happened was you were talking nonsense with regards to 2GB of VRAM even though everyone had said you were wrong from their own experience. I can see why people just ignore you when you start rambling. You just witter on about it for days over multiple threads. I hope you're not going to have another Titan price moment again.
I see you've got nothing more to add even though your last years top games comment was disproven by Greg confirming that the trend held true right up until he swapped to Titans. Conveniently ignored because you have nothing else to add to after your humbling.
Greg above is actually referring in yours and others general direction who always bang on about it so you just messed up by trying to use a quote aimed in your general direction for your benefit.
D'ohAnyway, I've found a thread for you to feel at home in to air your grievances:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18497754
Off you trott now lad.
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Speaking as someone who had 680 sli and now has 7970 xfire and used them both for 1400p I did/do not have problems with micro stutter with either of them. I am a fan of both however the extra vram with AMD is needed and the 7970s are the better performers by far for me. I'm not a fan boy of brands but of GPU's and will buy whatever I get the best performance from!
MSAA yes, but I discounted that based on the resolution, the higher the res, the less requirement for AA.
As for ambient occlusion, it used to be severely demanding, but over the years, the performance hit from it has greatly reduced.
It's important that people are made aware of the truths about it though. For example, Bioshock Infinite, which is very likely going to be HEAVY of VRAM usage with how they will be using studio quality uncompressed textures, which I think will be the start of higher quality textures.
Which is why I think it's important as you might get people getting confused about the VRAM to GPU power relationship. There's nothing wrong with people knowing more, but insisting on simplifications constantly reduces the knowledge that people have.
No I'm not, I know why I'm saying it, you can think whatever you want but you can't assert that I was trying to antagonise because I know I wasn't.
I'm not disputing that, I'm disputing the gross over simplification that is being bandied around of how you need x amount of GPU power to make use of x amount of RAM.
What's wrong with a technical explanation of how it really works? People who are very new to this sort of stuff, take things like that and think it's an absolute rule. Sooner or later they are going to have to learn how it works, no?
This is why people coin it in one sentence
I understand why people do it, that's never been the issue, but I've said this enough. There's absolutely nothing wrong with more knowledge especially when you're talking about niche compute setups like multi GPUs.
That would be relevant if we weren't on a technically minded website, no? It's called overclockers, it's supposed to cater to the enthusiast, there's nothing wrong with presenting technical explanations about things. They can take it or leave it really, but I think it's not a good to thing to settle for simple explanations that "may as well be true" to avoid a technical aspect, which frankly isn't that technical anyway.
Oh yeah, whoops it was Matt. It was Tommybhoy talking about the Techreport article that stuck in my mind.
Hurting over nothing rusty, must be the lad in the thread that kept arguing with himself-as it never made much sense to me from the start in that thread.
No offence mate, but are you and greg(no offence greg, but it's the view I'm getting from rusty) the gpu gurus on the forum now?
If you and greg type out on the forum and some one says otherwise, it can't possibly have bearing can it?
Cool, I understand how your wee thinking cap sits now.
Are you talking about the price of the titan again?
Iv'e not mentioned it in a while now, reminds me of a little kid reaching for the dummy, but hey ho, good to see you keeping up with the trolling though, carry on, you always do, feel free to have the last word too, another of your quaint traits...
No offence mate, but are you and greg(no offence greg, but it's the view I'm getting from rusty) the gpu gurus on the forum now?
If you and greg type out on the forum and some one says otherwise, it can't possibly have bearing can it?
Cool, I understand how your wee thinking cap sits now.
Are you talking about the price of the titan again?
Iv'e not mentioned it in a while now, reminds me of a little kid reaching for the dummy, but hey ho, good to see you keeping up with the trolling though, carry on, you always do, feel free to have the last word too, another of your quaint traits...
@spoffle: Fair enough on the above. You get some people who are interested in knowing more about it but a lot just want to what card to get and briefly why. Honestly, although I class myself of above average intelligence (don't we all 
) I wouldn't have had the foggiest regarding what tapped out above. It was only through testing and messing around did the knowledge and conclusions come from.
I get your point about it being an enthusiasts lobby but just not everyone is on the same level as you.
) I wouldn't have had the foggiest regarding what tapped out above. It was only through testing and messing around did the knowledge and conclusions come from. I get your point about it being an enthusiasts lobby but just not everyone is on the same level as you
.
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Hurting over nothing rusty, must be the lad in the thread that kept arguing with himself-as it never made much sense to me from the start in that thread.
Nice try but it doesn't wash.
Talking specifically with regards to VRAM here. Why are you applying a general rule to a specific scenario? Logic failure. Again.
The irony. Read your post in this thread which is reviving a subject you're obviously still bothered about. If that's not trolling then I don't know what is
. Reviving a subject and then trying to take the moral high ground by all of this "last word" nonsense is quite the troll trap. Congratulations.
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There is no need to over complicate VRAM. It is quite straight forward in 99% of the time.
As for the debate about the amount of VRAM required, this is something quite a few of us have been over before Tommy. Nothing personal bud and I can see where you are coming from but from my perspective, it does come down to the amount of VRAM being used is also linked to GPU grunt.
Take Crysis 3 for example. On the level I was on, it was using 3.8GB of VRAM with everything maxed (no idea if anything was being cached) but my frames are around 35 and this felt in no way playable. If I start turning down AA, there is a massive drop in VRAM being used and this in turn gives me far more fps and then becomes playable.
I would need another Titan to get the required smoothness to push that amount of VRAM about OR...I tone down AA and this would pop it under the limits of other GPU's.
I am interested to see what the amount of vram shows on CF 7970's/50's at 5760x1080 in Crysis 3 (just to see if caching is going on).
As for the debate about the amount of VRAM required, this is something quite a few of us have been over before Tommy. Nothing personal bud and I can see where you are coming from but from my perspective, it does come down to the amount of VRAM being used is also linked to GPU grunt.
Take Crysis 3 for example. On the level I was on, it was using 3.8GB of VRAM with everything maxed (no idea if anything was being cached) but my frames are around 35 and this felt in no way playable. If I start turning down AA, there is a massive drop in VRAM being used and this in turn gives me far more fps and then becomes playable.
I would need another Titan to get the required smoothness to push that amount of VRAM about OR...I tone down AA and this would pop it under the limits of other GPU's.
I am interested to see what the amount of vram shows on CF 7970's/50's at 5760x1080 in Crysis 3 (just to see if caching is going on).
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Indeed.
Is it full? No? Great.
Yes? What FPS do I have if I wasn't running out? Low? Oh well wasn't going to use those settings anyway. High? Hmmmm I must be playing Skyrim
Tommy will be running out of VRAM soon anyway when doomsday hits and we all need Titans for anything other than 1080p.
Indeed.
Is it full? No? Great.
Yes? What FPS do I have if I wasn't running out? Low? Oh well wasn't going to use those settings anyway. High? Hmmmm I must be playing Skyrim
Tommy will be running out of VRAM soon anyway when doomsday hits and we all need Titans for anything other than 1080p.
People on 1GB cards are still managing to play the latest games. They have to turn settings down because they don't have the GPU grunt for the game and this in turn lowers the VRAM used... Simples
Edit:
There is always the 4GB cards for the time being and then the 6GB 7970's/Titans or even the cut down Titan with 5GB
Edit 2:
Crysis 3 system requirements (minimum)
•CPU: 2.8 GHz dual core processor, Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Phenom X2 or better
•RAM: 2GB
•Graphics: DirectX 10 graphics card with 1 GB RAM, Nvidia 400-series or AMD Radeon 5000-series.
•Operating system: Windows Vista
•DirectX 9c sound card
•16 GB free hard drive space
Crysis 3 system requirements (recommended)
•CPU: 2.4 GHz quad core processor, Intel Core i5 or better
•RAM: 2GB (4 GB for 64-bit operating systems)
•Graphics: DirectX 11 compatible video card with 1GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 500-series or AMD 6000-series or better.
•Operating system: Windows 7, Win 7 64-bit is preferred
•DirectX 9c sound card, dedicated audio card is preferred
•16 GB free hard drive space
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@spoffle: Fair enough on the above. You get some people who are interested in knowing more about it but a lot just want to what card to get and briefly why. Honestly, although I class myself if above average intelligence (don't we all
I get your point about it being an enthusiasts lobby but just not everyone is on the same level as you
Honestly, I don't think I'm on some higher level, it's just knowledge. I think the importance is there when we're talking about high end set ups.
I wouldn't even bother if we were talking about low to mind range hardware, as it really doesn't matter.
People on 1GB cards are still managing to play the latest games. They have to turn settings down because they don't have the GPU grunt for the game and this in turn lowers the VRAM used... Simples
Well this is why I brought it up, because it's not that simple. Note, I never said that there wasn't a relationship between GPU power and VRAM, but rather that they aren't linked in the way people portray, as they aren't.
It's not as simple as you have suggested here. Turning down settings doesn't necessarily reduce VRAM consumption.
This is why I brought up Bioshock Infinite, as they are including very high resolution, studio grade textures with the game, which are going to EAT VRAM, but will have little impact on the GPU's performance. But it could introduce a situation where people are running out of VRAM well before GPU performance.
The sort of relationship that people suggest is more akin to the GPU and memory bandwidth relationship, because if VRAM is full, then memory bandwidth is consumed bringing stuff in and out of RAM.
Then you've got memory caching. There's absolutely nothing wrong with suggestion that people use the technical explanations about this sort of stuff because anyone considering multi GPU setups really ought to know.
For example, a 5870 has the GPU grunt to run a lot of modern games at high settings, but most 5870s being 1GB versions are chocked by the VRAM, not the available GPU power, so for example a 2GB 5870 will do better, hence why my old 5870 was particularly good at 5760x1200. I only swapped it (with a friend) to a 6950 because my I couldn't get all my 2560x1440 monitors running from it, whereas I could with a 6950.
Also note that I'm not actually suggesting that 2GB isn't enough, sometimes it isn't enough for more often than not it's fine.
Edit:
There is always the 4GB cards for the time being and then the 6GB 7970's/Titans or even the cut down Titan with 5GB
Edit 2:
Crysis 3 system requirements (minimum)
•CPU: 2.8 GHz dual core processor, Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Phenom X2 or better
•RAM: 2GB
•Graphics: DirectX 10 graphics card with 1 GB RAM, Nvidia 400-series or AMD Radeon 5000-series.
•Operating system: Windows Vista
•DirectX 9c sound card
•16 GB free hard drive space
Crysis 3 system requirements (recommended)
•CPU: 2.4 GHz quad core processor, Intel Core i5 or better
•RAM: 2GB (4 GB for 64-bit operating systems)
•Graphics: DirectX 11 compatible video card with 1GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 500-series or AMD 6000-series or better.
•Operating system: Windows 7, Win 7 64-bit is preferred
•DirectX 9c sound card, dedicated audio card is preferred
•16 GB free hard drive space
As Rusty said, that's system RAM not VRAM.
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I was never in dispute with the above greg, no mention otherwise from me in that thread, it's all there to read and I don't know why it comes back to that discussion time and time again:
I don't think I could have made it any more clearly what I was discussing, but this place being the way it is, some try to make out that I was discussing vram limits between 2Gb/4Gb 67/80's-when I clearly never.
