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Dedicated VRAM thread?

Soldato
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In all seriousness, there has been some really good discussion between at least 3 different threads. 3070/3080 and 6900XT in regards to VRAM usage and how important it is. Anyway for the mods to consolidate the discussion into a single topic?
 
Man of Honour
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Providing they close all the other VRAM threads.

I am also concerned that all these VRAM threads have more to do with trying to bash the rival brand and hardly anything to do with games running out of memory.
 
Soldato
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I am also concerned that all these VRAM threads have more to do with trying to bash the rival brand and hardly anything to do with games running out of memory.

Its nearly always select Nv supporters saddled with the more expensive lesser vram amount at a comparable performance trying to convince the world its not needed.

There was next to no argument to the Fury though...


Although Iv'e never seen a thread title around the line of:

Can't Amd Cards use less vram to make them even more cheaper than Nvidia?

:p
 
Soldato
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Its nearly always select Nv supporters saddled with the more expensive lesser vram amount at a comparable performance trying to convince the world its not needed.

There was next to no argument to the Fury though...

Although Iv'e never seen a thread title around the line of:

Can't Amd Cards use less vram to make them even more cheaper than Nvidia?

:p

I'm waiting for the "AMD's cards don't use as much power as Nvidia's therefore they must be inferior!" argument to appear. Give it time...
 
Associate
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Can't Amd Cards use less vram to make them even more cheaper than Nvidia?

I actually have unironically made this argument however. Way too many people seem to have this weird notion that somehow the price points of the cards are fixed and that adding more RAM would somehow cost Nvidia/AMD, or that less RAM would allow them to pocket greater profits. That's not how businesses work, if the product costs more to make then you sell it for more, if it costs less to make you sell it for less. What sensible people should want is enough RAM on your card so it's not a bottleneck, but no more.

Perfectly analagous to system RAM, people will avoid putting in 32Gb of RAM when 16Gb will do. Why? because 32Gb costs 2x more than 16Gb.
 
Soldato
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There's been a lot of worrying about not having enough VRAM, and not enough analysis of what happens when you exceed it slightly, or a lot in games.

For example, if a game exceeds VRAM capacity, does the frequency of RAM make a difference (used as a subsitute for VRAM)?

With cards like the RTX 3080, you may easily get over 60 in many titles, even if exceeding the VRAM capacity.

More GDDR6X is expensive and uses more power than GDDR6, NV is already using at least 320w of power for the RTX 3080, is it a good idea to increase the tdp further? This will just push up the heat and power supply requirements even more.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
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If they make a 7nm version of the RTX 3080, the power requirements should be lower, so they should be able to give it more VRAM at about the same power, or maybe lower.

No reason why they can't make a RTX 3070 with more VRAM though, except that it would annoy RTX 3080 owners.
 
Associate
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I actually have unironically made this argument however. Way too many people seem to have this weird notion that somehow the price points of the cards are fixed and that adding more RAM would somehow cost Nvidia/AMD, or that less RAM would allow them to pocket greater profits. That's not how businesses work, if the product costs more to make then you sell it for more, if it costs less to make you sell it for less. What sensible people should want is enough RAM on your card so it's not a bottleneck, but no more.

Perfectly analagous to system RAM, people will avoid putting in 32Gb of RAM when 16Gb will do. Why? because 32Gb costs 2x more than 16Gb.

Well, that really is the production led view taken by very many tech companies, and is the wrong way around for most companies.

Marketing works differently - find out what people want, find out how many want it, find how much they are prepared to pay for it, find out how much it costs to make it, and how many you can produce, then adjust the price to match production output. Had Nvidia done this correctly they would have been charging a heck of a lot more, and lowering demand as a result.
 
Soldato
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With cards like the RTX 3080, you may easily get over 60 in many titles, even if exceeding the VRAM capacity.

More GDDR6X is expensive and uses more power than GDDR6, NV is already using at least 320w of power for the RTX 3080, is it a good idea to increase the tdp further? This will just push up the heat and power supply requirements even more.

But is the vram being exceeded with assets that are being used and therefore needed or would the game just cache more if there was more vram available? We have seen many instances of vram usage way above what the game is actually using.

As for the power, GDDR6X uses 15% less power per bit than GDDR6, power consumption is only higher because GDDR6X is faster than GDDR6. If they were running at the same speed/bandwidth GDDR6X would use less power than GDDR6
 
Associate
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Wow, there seems to be something severely wrong with the 3070 being able to maintain performance on par with the 11gb 2080ti on Watch Dogs Legion - 4K Ultra DLSS Quality. 2080ti can stay over 30fps, but the 3070 is completely unplayable in the 20s.

This is looking at early YouTube tests though, I wonder if some recent 3070 owners could respond on their performance at 4K Ultra.

The old saying the core always runs out of juice before VRAM could be completely dispelled - Only in regards to the 3070 vs 2080ti battle.

So glad I picked up a 2080ti Sea Hawk Waterblock on the cheap less than half the RRP when the 3070 was announced.
 
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In all seriousness now, NVIDIA are doing their own customers an injustice when they allocate it less VRAM than it's performance equivalent launched with two years ago.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't the exact year where the new generation of graphics fidelity is launched.
 
Soldato
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Although Iv'e never seen a thread title around the line of:

Can't Amd Cards use less vram to make them even more cheaper than Nvidia?

:p


PMSL :p

In all seriousness now, NVIDIA are doing their own customers an injustice when they allocate it less VRAM than it's performance equivalent launched with two years ago.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't the exact year where the new generation of graphics fidelity is launched.

I think that was the observation most picked up on. When we dig deeper it gets more smoke and mirrors. The best way is for all users to target specific games and settings then using a proper tool, share results of the performance.


Lots of sensible discussion. Plenty of nonsense and tittle-tattle. Condensing it down to raw facts would be awesome.
 
Soldato
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Indeed and soon enough AMD will have their latest GPUs out which powerful enough to compare and expose any VRAM bottlenecks.

I have yet to invest any time to melt my head, but the infinity cache could be interesting in certain scenarios. It may cause stutter in poorly developed games/apps, but could also show vast improvements at the other end of the scale.

16Gb is at least doubling what you were getting previous gens back. Anyone want to run Windows 10 on 4Gb RAM?
 
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