10GB vram enough for the 3080? Discuss..

Drollic · 3 Sep 2020 at 10:07

It will be more than fine if you upgrade often, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's cutting it fine at 1440p by as soon as next generation in certain cases. This is with settings near max of course. Not ideal if you plan to keep the card for years. For 4k it's less than ideal. A possible 3070ti with more vram looks like a good option for 1440p. 3080ti for 4k.

Saying this, you normally have to be fairly short on vram before framerates tank so things should be fine even near the limit. It's more disappointing than anything that spending 450+ on a GPU doesn't get you more than 8gb.

McPhee · 3 Sep 2020 at 10:50

Too early to tell, I think. All depends on how successful technogies like Direct Storage and SFS are. Optimising memory usage is a key part of Microsoft and Sony's "next-gen" console plan. If that carries over to PC over the next 2-3 years, there's every chance the RTX 4080 may only have 10GB-12GB RAM.

On the other hand, if PC continues to rely on the "brute force" approach, 10GB could be looking very poor in a few years' time.

beany_bot · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:06

Look how many mainstream games use either over 10GB or come close to using 10GB. And thats not including MSFS and newer titles.
Not to mention years ahead...

chroniclard · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:08

beany_bot said:
Look how many mainstream games use either over 10GB or come close to using 10GB. And thats not including MSFS and newer titles.
Not to mention years ahead...

That doesnt help though. Without knowing if it impacts anything if say you only had 10gb on Warzone.

K1LaW8tt5 · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:14

McPhee said:
Too early to tell, I think. All depends on how successful technogies like Direct Storage and SFS are. Optimising memory usage is a key part of Microsoft and Sony's "next-gen" console plan. If that carries over to PC over the next 2-3 years, there's every chance the RTX 4080 may only have 10GB-12GB RAM.

On the other hand, if PC continues to rely on the "brute force" approach, 10GB could be looking very poor in a few years' time.

This, it's hard to say until we start to see how the next gen consoles are going to use their vram. 8K textures, compression , SSD streaming etc.
So this probably translates to if you plan in upgrading in ~2 years anyway 10GB will possibly be fine and how vram is used in games may have dramatically changed n 2 years time.

Lithium · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:16

It's interesting how many people are completely ignoring RTX IO and Direct Storage going straight to "more memory good, less memory bad". And this is supposed to be a technology forum. /facepalm

TNA · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:19

beany_bot said:
Look how many mainstream games use either over 10GB or come close to using 10GB. And thats not including MSFS and newer titles.
Not to mention years ahead...

Yea but again, we do not know how much of that is caching and what is the minimum those games need before there is an impact on performance/gameplay. I am not bothered about games that are out today, more so about the one's that will come out that are developed for next gen consoles. Those may indeed want more than 10gb for there not to be a performance impact if you want maximum textures.

If and when that happens I plan to either enable DLSS 2.0 if available or just lower textures one notch. Not like there are two options in textures Extreme and Crap. One below maximum for a handful of games is fine by me. Then can sell the 3080 a month or so before the 4000 series and by then 16gb will probably be standard on 4070/80 anyway. Either that or get a 3070 16gb. Will have to wait for price and reviews to know.

Born_2_Kill_83 · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:20

beany_bot said:
Look how many mainstream games use either over 10GB or come close to using 10GB. And thats not including MSFS and newer titles.
Not to mention years ahead...

It's a completely useless chart as it only show's cache'd numbers, even the bloke from the video admit this. Came across it myself when looking for some hard evidence to make my mind up.

McPhee · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:21

beany_bot said:
Look how many mainstream games use either over 10GB or come close to using 10GB. And thats not including MSFS and newer titles.
Not to mention years ahead...

That tells you how much VRAM those games will use, if it's available, rather than how much they need. Two completely different things.

five8five · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:38

There was a video in the main Ampere thread a while back which showed reducing the graphics level from Ultra down to Very High significantly reduced VRAM usage and obviously increased frame rates as well.

I thought Ultra setting was for benchmarking and Very High setting was used for actually playing the game as there can hardly any or no difference visually.

Plus, lots of individual settings can be tweaked to increase/decrease framerates and increase/decrease VRAM usage.

Dave2150 · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:42

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-provides-further-details-on-geforce-rtx-30-series

So, confirmation that:

1. RTX IO has to be supported and enabled by the game developer. Meaning there are currently NO games that will use this
2. RTX IO does not replace VRAM, and does not reduce the requirement for adequate VRAM frame buffer size

The writing is on the wall, new consoles have > 10GB VRAM, which means console ports will use much more than this on the un-optimised PC (un-optimised compared to consoles at least). Games at 4k (4k is mainstream this year thanks to consoles and these next gen cards) already use more than 10GB of VRAM.

As I see it, 3080 10GB is a trap - there'll certainly be a 3080ti/3080 super card with 16GB or 20GB, whatever the memory bus will support.

Dave2150 · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:44

five8five said:
There was a video in the main Ampere thread a while back which showed reducing the graphics level from Ultra down to Very High significantly reduced VRAM usage and obviously increased frame rates as well.

I thought Ultra setting was for benchmarking and Very High setting was used for actually playing the game as there can hardly any or no difference visually.

Plus, lots of individual settings can be tweaked to increase/decrease framerates and increase/decrease VRAM usage.

Lots of people can't tell the difference between 1080P and 4K in movies, games or TV. This boggles my mind, as I see a clear difference. It all comes down to what people are comfortable with, there are those out there still playing at 1080P - someone in that mindset will either not care or will not notice if you turn off the shadows, or reduce textures from ultra to medium etc.

Chuk_Chuk · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:45

Lithium said:
It's interesting how many people are completely ignoring RTX IO and Direct Storage going straight to "more memory good, less memory bad". And this is supposed to be a technology forum. /facepalm

It helps once you run out of VRAM but can not make up for a significant deficit in VRAM.

I do love how this is now an amazing feature when Nvidia brings it out :rolleyes:

but were panning it when it was revealed on the PS5.

KiNgPiN83 · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:48

I still think we are being bare minimumed by Nvidia. They probably have a good idea what AMD will bring and this is what they’ve decided to release. If AMD come out with decent performance, more RAM, better price to performance etc you can guarantee that NV will suddenly release some S versions of the 3x00 series like they did against the 5700’s. Which at the end of the day is what big businesses do.

Born_2_Kill_83 · 3 Sep 2020 at 11:50

Dave2150 said:
https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-provides-further-details-on-geforce-rtx-30-series

The writing is on the wall, new consoles have > 10GB VRAM, which means console ports will use much more than this on the un-optimised PC (un-optimised compared to consoles at least). Games at 4k (4k is mainstream this year thanks to consoles and these next gen cards) already use more than 10GB of VRAM.

As I see it, 3080 10GB is a trap - there'll certainly be a 3080ti/3080 super card with 16GB or 20GB, whatever the memory bus will support.

I think they're would be murder's if console ports at the end of this year would drop 3080's to their knee's in PC gaming. A blood bath Nvidia would not want to get into.

TNA · 3 Sep 2020 at 12:10

Born_2_Kill_83 said:
I think they're would be murder's if console ports at the end of this year would drop 3080's to their knee's in PC gaming. A blood bath Nvidia would not want to get into.

Yeah, I think it won’t be too bad, worst case drop one notch in textures me thinks.

We also have the magical DLSS 2.0 that makes 720p look like 8K so we can always use that option if needed

dsima27 · 3 Sep 2020 at 12:12

Lithium said:
It's interesting how many people are completely ignoring RTX IO and Direct Storage going straight to "more memory good, less memory bad". And this is supposed to be a technology forum. /facepalm

Won't games already released have to be updated to accommodate RTX IO and Direct Storage so it will be on a case-by-case basis?

McPhee · 3 Sep 2020 at 12:14

dsima27 said:
Won't games already released have to be updated to accommodate RTX IO and Direct Storage so it will be on a case-by-case basis?

More likely that it's something we'll only see on new releases. And even then, I wouldn't expect it to be commonplace for some time. It's based on Microsoft's DirectStorage API, which hasn't launched on PC yet.

opethdisciple · 3 Sep 2020 at 12:15

Also RTX IO (directstorage) might change this as the card will be able to swap out textures and game assets much faster so wont have to cache as much.

I'm sure Nvidia have done their home work and game devs will know that that is the amount of ram they can target.

They will not develop games that need 16GB of vram for PC when they know that 90% of people only have 8-10GB on their cards.

Brun · 3 Sep 2020 at 12:19

Kaapstad said:
8 years later 8gb really is not enough but the graphics have improved very little, what is going on?

Your eyesight has got worse?