vRAM - What will be enough in a few years?

Razyre · 21 Apr 2013 at 19:09

Gregster said:
It's all good and you are entitled to your opinion, of which is fine/valid. The Titans were needed for me to driver 3 x 3D screens and nothing else would cope that is out. Vram was fine on the 2GB 680's I had previous and anytime it wasn't, the GPU grunt wasn't enough either. Scaling can be questionable even with 2 cards at times and 3/4 cards can have very little support.

As for the future, I wish I knew but I am sure I have enough to cope

Ah fair enough.

Seriously should stop posting YOLO it and buy a god damned card. Never going to decide otherwise. Now once again I'm back to bloody 670 2GB/7950/7970 and have no idea where I'm going.

Rusty0611 · 21 Apr 2013 at 19:14

670 and 7950 are round about even when clocked up. 7970 is 5% faster (clock for clock).

Basically you can't go wrong any way you go. Personally, the 7950 is the best bang for buck at the top end when you consider it's 5% slower than a 7970 clock for clock and costs considerably less. Doesn't necessarily make the 7970 bad value for money... just means that the 7950 is a better ratio on that front.

Gregster · 21 Apr 2013 at 19:17

Rusty0611 said:
670 and 7950 are round about even when clocked up. 7970 is 5% faster (clock for clock).

Basically you can't go wrong any way you go. Personally, the 7950 is the best bang for buck at the top end when you consider it's 5% slower than a 7970 clock for clock and costs considerably less. Doesn't necessarily make the 7970 bad value for money... just means that the 7950 is a better ratio on that front.

+1

You can have good or bad experiences with either Nvidia or AMD and the 7950 is a great card at a cheap price. If you have no joy, return it within 14 days and go for the 670.

whyscotty · 21 Apr 2013 at 19:19

Rusty0611 said:
670 and 7950 are round about even when clocked up. 7970 is 5% faster (clock for clock).

Basically you can't go wrong any way you go. Personally, the 7950 is the best bang for buck at the top end when you consider it's 5% slower than a 7970 clock for clock and costs considerably less. Doesn't necessarily make the 7970 bad value for money... just means that the 7950 is a better ratio on that front.

Gregster said:
+1

You can have good or bad experiences with either Nvidia or AMD and the 7950 is a great card at a cheap price. If you have no joy, return it within 14 days and go for the 670.

^^^
This

Razyre · 21 Apr 2013 at 19:47

Sounds good to me.

It'll be lovely when I get a Haswell build and things stop bloody bottlenecking as well... Only 2 or so months... Jesus.

Rroff · 21 Apr 2013 at 20:40

Razyre said:
I'm using a Kepler mobile card. The GT650m is a GK107 chip I believe and you can clock it up to and way beyond the GTX660M.

Ah I should have checked - bit annoying how theres a mix of 600 series on fermi and kepler and some denoted with an X and some not :|

Razyre · 21 Apr 2013 at 20:56

Rroff said:
Ah I should have checked - bit annoying how theres a mix of 600 series on fermi and kepler and some denoted with an X and some not :|

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Mr Krugga · 21 Apr 2013 at 21:58

Dave2150 said:
The next generation cards released by AMD/Nvidia will surely have 6-8GB of VRAM to match the consoles, in my opinion anyway.

Titan already has 6GB.

My trusty 5870 1GB will have to hold on until then, I don't see the logic in upgrading to say a 670 or a 7950 with 8GB consoles looming on the horizon (unless you have money to burn ofc )

Not VRAM, shared RAM. GDDR5 for that matter. And bear in mind that memory was the main bottleneck of the current generation consoles. They've had a good run for 8 years no, but struggling with visuals due to compression and not-so-good rendering power. Different problems plagued the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but limited memory was something they had in-common.

If the companies plan for the new generation consoles to run for at least 5 years, which bear in mind, are using rather mediocre APUs from what we know by high-end gamers standards, I think the excessive amount of shared memory is to future-proof them for a long time. It will be long before that becomes something common on PCs.

And Titan is a special case. GDDR5 memory is expensive, and Titan is NOT a cheap card. I think 3-4GB VRAM is more likely to become a new standard in a few years, but the vast majority of the systems still have only 1GB of video memory.

Razyre · 21 Apr 2013 at 22:19

Aww

No free Metro Last Light with the AMD cards XD And I bought Cry 3 damnit.

How much of a horrible, horrible bottleneck do you guys reckon my current system is, just out of interest?

AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3GHz (stock) (Didn't choose this)
ASUS M3N78 Pro (I did not pick this horrible, horrible mobo either)
8GB DDR2 800

Then I threw a 560Ti in there.

It's funny, since I probably won't get massive frame increases from a 7950 until I rebuild the system in a month or two.

Razyre · 22 Apr 2013 at 20:59

Quick bump.

Which 7950? Want decent cooling, ability to modify voltages and general overall overclocking performance to be good.

theone8181 · 23 Apr 2013 at 07:57

Razyre said:
Aww No free Metro Last Light with the AMD cards XD And I bought Cry 3 damnit.

How much of a horrible, horrible bottleneck do you guys reckon my current system is, just out of interest?

AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3GHz (stock) (Didn't choose this)
ASUS M3N78 Pro (I did not pick this horrible, horrible mobo either)
8GB DDR2 800

Then I threw a 560Ti in there.

It's funny, since I probably won't get massive frame increases from a 7950 until I rebuild the system in a month or two.

What sort of frames do you get and at what rez? Im thinking of donating my little brother 2 560ti's when the next gen comes out (possibly titan le) and just wondered what he should expect. Oh hes running at 1280 x 1024 :eek:

.

Marine-RX179 · 23 Apr 2013 at 08:11

Razyre said:
Aww No free Metro Last Light with the AMD cards XD And I bought Cry 3 damnit.

How much of a horrible, horrible bottleneck do you guys reckon my current system is, just out of interest?

AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3GHz (stock) (Didn't choose this)
ASUS M3N78 Pro (I did not pick this horrible, horrible mobo either)
8GB DDR2 800

Then I threw a 560Ti in there.

It's funny, since I probably won't get massive frame increases from a 7950 until I rebuild the system in a month or two.

Well, with your current system, the GTX560Ti would already be a good match (in fact be bottlenecked in some instances). Upgrading to faster graphic card would give your room for upping graphic settings higher, but your frame rate would still not improve much (if at all) as the latest games such as Crysis 3 are very CPU demanding as well, and your frame rate will be held back by your CPU (and lowering graphic settings would reduce GPU usage, but not improve the frame rate).

Gibbo3771 · 23 Apr 2013 at 09:30

Razyre said:
I... really don't want to go to AMD. I hear a lot of people complain about their experience with them and while I had a relatively good one, I'm in no way rushing to get back to CCC.

Never heard anyone complain about them, the odd person gets the odd bad card and it is rectified immediately, warranty ranges from 2-3 years.

I really think your stubbornness is going to cost you more money than necessary, no offence lol.

I would rather pay £230 for a 7950 than £330 for a 670.

Also just to note, most of the problems have to do with certain manufactures, not the card itself. MSI comes to mind.

ArchAndroid · 23 Apr 2013 at 11:47

Razyre said:
I... really don't want to go to AMD. I hear a lot of people complain about their experience with them and while I had a relatively good one, I'm in no way rushing to get back to CCC.

You trust other people's opinion over your own? :confused:

Mal X · 23 Apr 2013 at 12:17

my card is perfect, it's never crashed once, it's more reliable than my old 8800GTX.

most complaints are from people that OC too far, or have old Nvidia drivers, i only use AMD Catalyst and my rig is basically stripped bare.

FINALLY, i think you'll find that STEAM is responsible for many crashes too, because i've been playing a few games via external disc recently and they are miles more stable....STEAM farts around too much in the background doing something, i dont trust it one bit.

Razyre · 23 Apr 2013 at 16:30

Marine-RX179 said:
Well, with your current system, the GTX560Ti would already be a good match (in fact be bottlenecked in some instances). Upgrading to faster graphic card would give your room for upping graphic settings higher, but your frame rate would still not improve much (if at all) as the latest games such as Crysis 3 are very CPU demanding as well, and your frame rate will be held back by your CPU (and lowering graphic settings would reduce GPU usage, but not improve the frame rate).

As I said, I'm upgrading to Haswell in a matter of months. I'm fully aware my 560Ti is already bottlenecked. Just want to get the purchase down on a card now, or at least make a decision as to what card I'm going to buy.

Crysis 3 dies on my system because of the processor and I'm sure other components are dying. I think I will just go for the C1 stepping regardless of if it's a little faulty or not, I can't deal with the performance drops anymore. Hopefully the more powerful card will improve stability a little more with raw power lol.

ArchAndroid said:
You trust other people's opinion over your own?

These people have had a good experience with AMD, I've had a bad experience with Nvidia in the desktop, I hate CCC but there is RadeonPro and can send the card back if need be. Not to mention my 5770 was a bloody brilliant card. I think I will definitely stick with Nvidia in the mobile sector though, I absolutely adore my 650M and my old 6630M was horrible. In addition to this the 7950 can save me some money over the 670, for equal if not more power (larger bus and bandwidth will really benefit if I decide to go 3x 1080p with multiple cards). The 7950 is so cheap, I'd be happy to drop money on a second card a few months down the line.

I'd only go for a 7970M if I was going hardcore in mobile, and I'm not too bothered. I have a mind end card in a tiny laptop and it rocks.

Mal X said:
my card is perfect, it's never crashed once, it's more reliable than my old 8800GTX.

most complaints are from people that OC too far, or have old Nvidia drivers, i only use AMD Catalyst and my rig is basically stripped bare.

FINALLY, i think you'll find that STEAM is responsible for many crashes too, because i've been playing a few games via external disc recently and they are miles more stable....STEAM farts around too much in the background doing something, i dont trust it one bit.

Steam is a godawfully made piece of software, but I very much doubt it causes any crashes for games. It's a seperate entity, even if it's running as an overlay.

fishingcat · 23 Apr 2013 at 16:58

Never try to future proof on VRAM, you'll need to upgrade for any number of reasons after a few years.

I expect 4GB to become the new standard though.

Razyre · 23 Apr 2013 at 17:02

No one answered my question, what 7950? XD

Sorry it's not too obvious, obviously the title is a little distracting.

Rroff · 23 Apr 2013 at 17:10

Razyre said:
I'd only go for a 7970M if I was going hardcore in mobile, and I'm not too bothered. I have a mind end card in a tiny laptop and it rocks.

Seriously don't - I was trying to sort someones 7970m out earlier (and not for the first time) there seems to be something inherently flawed with that GPU (specifically), tho AMD's mobile GPUs have never inspired me - from a rough guess rather than a problem with the GPU itself I don't think most laptop chassis, even those supposedly designed to take them, can supply them with enough current or smooth enough current or something like that. (That said the GTX675m consumes more power on paper but doesn't have the same issues in the same chassis but it still feels like that kind of problem to me)

Razyre · 23 Apr 2013 at 17:26

Rroff said:
Seriously don't - I was trying to sort someones 7970m out earlier (and not for the first time) there seems to be something inherently flawed with that GPU (specifically), tho AMD's mobile GPUs have never inspired me - from a rough guess rather than a problem with the GPU itself I don't think most laptop chassis, even those supposedly designed to take them, can supply them with enough current or smooth enough current or something like that. (That said the GTX675m consumes more power on paper but doesn't have the same issues in the same chassis but it still feels like that kind of problem to me)

I'm not a power mobile gamer.

I'll always go with ultraportable solutions if I can.

http://www.************.co.uk/notebooks/inferno/

I have one of these with:

i7 3632QM
650M 2GB DDR3 (obviously)
8GB DDR3 1600
750GB hybrid cache drive

Can run anything at that native resolution of 768p (which looks pretty good at 11.6 inches, unlike at bloody 15.6) on high settings. Can even do /some/ 1080p gaming on an external monitor.

Of course, I suffer horrendous battery life, but looking into solutions for that, including the CUPP PunkThis when it's released (ARM chip to integrate into existing x86 systems).