How future proof is 4GB VRAM?

[Rroff]

People used to recommend the gtx780 over the 290/x and say Vram is not a problem and never will be. The gtx780 at the time was as fast as the 290x so i can see why a little. The 290x had better specs though and look at it now. Those recommending the gtx780 mainly because it's Nvidia look daft. I can see dx12 making the amd cards look even better.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/R9_380X_Strix/23.html

My contention there is that for a lot of those benchmarks they haven't actually retested the 780 in ages (even sometimes when they say they do) and they are usually rev A cards at reference clocks - whereas until fairly recently the 290 were AMD's top cards and were the ones actually tested in comparisons.

The revision B 780 cards on that 1440p chart for instance would mostly be putting up scores that would put them at about 125% out the box, mine would be there with the 780ti out the box at ~130% - though that does still show the 290X having weathered time more.

Not that long ago I tested mine at max OC against someone with a 290X Tri-X at max OC and still just about edged it (EDIT: In comparison the 780 GHz edition on release was often showing an OC model 290X a clean pair of heels in review benchmarks).

 

[AlamoX]

hard to say how future proof it is, since it all depands on devs, how lazy they are in porting games or optimizing it, and you have to admit they'v been pretty lazy these last couple years.
imo 390+Freesync is the better choice and cheaper one over 970+Gsync

 

[r7slayer]

There is a fair degree of caching going on - while not quite a level playing field there are a few games at 1440p that will use something like 28XXMB on my GTX780 and 36xxMB on the 970 I have in another system with identical visual quality/settings and no performance implications on the 780. From my dabbling in terms of actual VRAM use before you start to get performance implications there is a fair bit of headroom at upto 1440p at the moment though there might be the odd exception to that.

on 1080p i get over 3gb on most high end games. so not sure how your hitting 28xx unless that's because your on a 3gb card?
But on 1440p i can see around another 400mb roughly getting used on varying games. I do think a 4GB card will struggle later on at 1440p.

Id say personally the 390x is the much better choice with a free sync monitor. more grunt and more vram isn't a bad thing right?

 

[TheRealDeal]

My contention there is that for a lot of those benchmarks they haven't actually retested the 780 in ages (even sometimes when they say they do) and they are usually rev A cards at reference clocks - whereas until fairly recently the 290 were AMD's top cards and were the ones actually tested in comparisons.

The revision B 780 cards on that 1440p chart for instance would mostly be putting up scores that would put them at about 125% out the box, mine would be there with the 780ti out the box at ~130% - though that does still show the 290X having weathered time more.

Not that long ago I tested mine at max OC against someone with a 290X Tri-X at max OC and still just about edged it (EDIT: In comparison the 780 GHz edition on release was often showing an OC model 290X a clean pair of heels in review benchmarks).

It would all depend on what you tested the cards with. Over Tpu's bench sweet the 290x is 23% faster than whatever gtx780 they used. Overclocked the gtx780 would just about match this at stock. You only need to look at the 390x to see what a slight overclock on the core along with some decent memory gains you. Different variations of the gtx780 would help but kepler is slowly fading away performance wise where as Gcn 1.1 is getting stronger against Nvidia's latest line up.

 

[Rroff]

on 1080p i get over 3gb on most high end games. so not sure how your hitting 28xx unless that's because your on a 3gb card?
But on 1440p i can see around another 400mb roughly getting used on varying games. I do think a 4GB card will struggle later on at 1440p.

Id say personally the 390x is the much better choice with a free sync monitor. more grunt and more vram isn't a bad thing right?

Take Starwars Battlefront for instance - on ultra settings (exact same settings on both) at 1440p the 970 is sitting at 34xxMB VRAM used, my 780 is sitting at 26xxMB - no noticeable difference in quality or performance in terms of visual fidelity or smoothness (the actual framerates are a little different as one card is slightly faster in some areas than the other and vice versa - but you can't actually notice that without having the framerate up).

EDIT: Without G-SYNC that would be pretty unplayable for me on Endor you are constantly bobbing slightly over and under 60fps with those settings and those cards - so you'd get tons of input lag with traditional V-SYNC and lots of tearing without (I need about 100fps to minimise perceived rippling/tearing).

 

[Dave2150]

Get a 390 with a freesync monitor and be done with it. It's a better card and at 1080p will only be faster again when dx12 takes away the amd cpu bottleneck. It's a more powerful card end of story. There is no vram worries and no drawback at the price.

This.

The 970 won't last you long with the rate at which games are increasing VRAM usage.

Also remember the 970 only has 3.5GB of full speed memory - 0.5GB of it is super slow vram, so if I game uses even 3.6GB, a shutter show will commence.

 

[Rroff]

edit: nm

 

[StudentDavid]

If buying a new card I would go with 6gb vram, 4gb isn't enough for a fair few games already.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

It's a tricky question to answer really.

When AMDMatt had 8GB 290Xs he made a few posts saying how 4GB was not enough for 4K.
When AMDMatt got his 4GB Fury Xs it turned out that 4GB was fine for 4K.

If 4GB is fine for 4K then you'd imagine it'll be fine at 1080p.
Unless AMDMatt was wrong, in which case the old tech of the 390/390X are more future proof than AMD's premium cards with new tech (the 4GB Fury range).

But if your choice is between a 390X and a 970 then I'd go with the 390X unless you generally play games that favour Nvidia hardware heavily.

 

[Rroff]

It's a tricky question to answer really.

When AMDMatt had 8GB 290Xs he made a few posts saying how 4GB was not enough for 4K.
When AMDMatt got his 4GB Fury Xs it turned out that 4GB was fine for 4K.

If 4GB is fine for 4K then you'd imagine it'll be fine at 1080p.
Unless AMDMatt was wrong, in which case the old tech of the 390/390X are more future proof than AMD's premium cards with new tech (the 4GB Fury range).

But if your choice is between a 390X and a 970 then I'd go with the 390X unless you generally play games that favour Nvidia hardware heavily.

They are doing a bit of aggressive memory management with the Fury these days so that 4GB is less of or not an issue (though I'm not sure how true that will be in the long term) - to be frank expected them to mess it up and fall flat on their faces by now doing stuff like that but so far it seems to have been fairly well implemented.

I still wouldn't buy a high end card today with "only" 4GB though - games are factually already using effectively upto 3GB at the very least at 1440p and below and can easily push it far more than that at 4K or multi-monitor.

 

[Orch]

Thanks all, I'm still reading.

I've gone full circle now in light of what's been said and it does seem the 390X is the better card for the sake of not much more money. I think the VRAM issue would annoy me if it proved to be a problem within the next 18 months.

My only remaining doubt is finding a suitable freesync monitor under £300 that does 144hz and freesync. I thought this was the winner - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/iiya...d-super-slim-bezel-monitor-bla-mo-118-iy.html but despite saying freesync in the discription I can't find anywhere else on the internet to agree?

The 27" version has it, but not sure if that's too big.

Such a minefield!

 

[ICDP]

Thanks all, I'm still reading.

I've gone full circle now in light of what's been said and it does seem the 390X is the better card for the sake of not much more money. I think the VRAM issue would annoy me if it proved to be a problem within the next 18 months.

My only remaining doubt is finding a suitable freesync monitor under £300 that does 144hz and freesync. I thought this was the winner - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/iiya...d-super-slim-bezel-monitor-bla-mo-118-iy.html but despite saying freesync in the discription I can't find anywhere else on the internet to agree?

The 27" version has it, but not sure if that's too big.

Such a minefield!

From PC Monitors review this monitor has full 35-144Hz Freesync range.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aoc-...descreen-led-monitor-black-red-mo-030-ao.html

"Note that the FreeSync operating range for the monitor is 35 – 144Hz. You must ensure you’re using the new driver, available to download from AOC’s website, otherwise you’ll be stuck with a 48Hz lower limit. In the meantime you can use this driver which was provided to us during the review. The GPU will respect your choice of ‘VSync off’ or ‘VSync on’ in the graphics driver, too. If you’ve got ‘VSync off’ you’ll get tearing or juddering below 35fps and above 144fps. If you’ve got ‘VSync on’ then you’ll get stuttering if the frame rate dips below 35fps and the usual VSync latency if the frame rate tries to rise above 144fps."

 

[james.miller]

This.

The 970 won't last you long with the rate at which games are increasing VRAM usage.

Also remember the 970 only has 3.5GB of full speed memory - 0.5GB of it is super slow vram, so if I game uses even 3.6GB, a shutter show will commence.

will it?

 

[Dervious]

From what I`ve read, we're on the cusp of a fairly big step forward in terms of graphics.

My HD7950 + 60Hz monitor is tempting me to upgrade. I`ve looked at the options and feel that it would be wise to wait for next-gen cards (and monitors). 12 months might seem a long time, but if you spend now, it might seem a lot of money when you look back.

Yes there's always something better if you wait, but I feel that something much better is just around the corner.

 

[AlamoX]

From PC Monitors review this monitor has full 35-144Hz Freesync range.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aoc-...descreen-led-monitor-black-red-mo-030-ao.html

"Note that the FreeSync operating range for the monitor is 35 – 144Hz. You must ensure you’re using the new driver, available to download from AOC’s website, otherwise you’ll be stuck with a 48Hz lower limit. In the meantime you can use this driver which was provided to us during the review. The GPU will respect your choice of ‘VSync off’ or ‘VSync on’ in the graphics driver, too. If you’ve got ‘VSync off’ you’ll get tearing or juddering below 35fps and above 144fps. If you’ve got ‘VSync on’ then you’ll get stuttering if the frame rate dips below 35fps and the usual VSync latency if the frame rate tries to rise above 144fps."

iit doesnt matter anymore how low the refresh rate is with freesync, in the last driver AMD added a feature that compensate the frames displayed, to have freesync always enabled, so if you have 30fps, it will double to 60, if you have 20fps it will triple to 60 etc, it does exactly what Nvidia Gsync module does but at a driver level.
but yes i agree the AOC is a good choice and 165£ thats really cheap for 1ms, 144hz

 

[Orch]

Thanks everyone. After two days of pondering, head scratching and going round in circles, I've settled on the AOC monitor (thanks ICDP!) and the MSI 390X. Hopefully a good combo!

 

[ICDP]

iit doesnt matter anymore how low the refresh rate is with freesync, in the last driver AMD added a feature that compensate the frames displayed, to have freesync always enabled, so if you have 30fps, it will double to 60, if you have 20fps it will triple to 60 etc, it does exactly what Nvidia Gsync module does but at a driver level.
but yes i agree the AOC is a good choice and 165£ thats really cheap for 1ms, 144hz

The Freesync compensation thing doesn't work unless your maximum Freesync range is something like 2.5X of minimum refresh range. So a range of 33-60Hz (my monitors range) is not going to have Freesnyc compensation. On the other hand a monitor with 30-75 Hz will have the compensation. Hopefully this can be addressed in future drivers.

Though with the AOC 144Hz monitor this will not be an issue.

 

[Tacitus]

4GB is fine, I have a 290x and see no reason to be upgrading soon.

Look at some benchmarks of games to have come out very recently, now that 390(x) drivers have matured and the 290(x) drivers have been updated. The 290 is slightly below the 390, which is typically 5-10% below the 290x, which is slightly below the 390x. This, I believe, mostly comes down to the fact most 390xs overclock further than most 290xs, particularly on the memory.

In a toss up between a 970 and a 390x I'd take the 390x, particularly at 1440p. I'd also note that Nvidia's 7xx cards have supposedly been butchered by bad drivers lately. I did have a 970 for a while though, and it was a great card.

However, if you're willing to take a risk, I'd see if you can snag a 290x for under £200 second hand. That's where the value for money is right now IMO.

 

[AlamoX]

The Freesync compensation thing doesn't work unless your maximum Freesync range is something like 2.5X of minimum refresh range. So a range of 33-60Hz (my monitors range) is not going to have Freesnyc compensation. On the other hand a monitor with 30-75 Hz will have the compensation. Hopefully this can be addressed in future drivers.

Though with the AOC 144Hz monitor this will not be an issue.

yes true, as long as you have 144hz you are pretty much golden, and all freesync monitors 1080p released lately seem to be 144hz, unless it's 4k.

 

[Dave2150]

Thanks everyone. After two days of pondering, head scratching and going round in circles, I've settled on the AOC monitor (thanks ICDP!) and the MSI 390X. Hopefully a good combo!

Awesome, it should be a great setup