12 and 16GB GPU is NOT "A Gimmick"

[humbug]

I've watched some of the 3060 reviews, Hardware Unboxed, JayZ2Cents, Gamers Nexus.... and they all have a common theme, they all seem to hate GPU's with anything more than 8GB of Vram on them, its like a pet peeve with them, Oh no its got 16GB of Vram on it... its a gimmick, its just marketing, its just a peeing contest YOU DON'T NEED IT.... winge winge winge...

So the 3060 has 12GB, for that card maybe it is overkill, but i'm sorry these people who think themselves so clever are so stupid they don't realise why Nvidia did that.
With a 192Bit bus it can only have Vram in 3GB or 6GB multiples, people are not happy with 6GB of Vram on a midrange card, its why when Nvidia upgraded the 2060, which had a 192Bit bus and 6GB to the 2060 Super with a 256Bit bus and 8GB, Nvidia wanted the 3060 to be a more efficient design, so a smaller bus, 192Bit, that meant 6GB or 12GB, 6GB was pretty much out of the question so it had to be 12GB.

Now with that in mind they can make their arguments but they are being idiots. Fine.

But then they turn their attention to the 6800/XT 6900XT, 256Bit bus, choices are 8GB or 16GB, AMD opted for 16GB.
So these idiots, again, point at that and rant, Marketing, gimmick, its too much blah blah blah...

It isn't too much, when you consider these are the same people who used to insists "You don't need more than 4 cores" you realise how idiotic these people really are, because that aged well didn't it?

You might not need 16GB of Vram 'for most things' now, but in a year, two or three? When they predict what you will need in a couple of years remember that "you only need 4 cores" nonsense they used to spout.

Yes i'm getting annoyed with them, they keep banging on and on about it like they are trying to force Nvidia AMD to reduce the amount of VRam they put on the cards, why? what's it to them? why is this so important to them? I don't get given my cards for free every 6 months, i'd like to keep them for a few years.

The 6700XT will have 12GB on it. GOOD, FANTASTIC!

Stop it, you're supposed to be on the side of consumers, not these vendors. Do your job, shut up. Don't tell us what we "Don't need"

 

[ltron]

In my opinion that's exactly what Nvidia want them to say and that's why they're saying it.

 

[humbug]

In my opinion that's exactly what Nvidia want them to say and that's why they're saying it.

Probably...

 

[Gerard]

I take it you watched the Jay 3060 review then?

I would agree with him that the rvam amount on the card is a bit dumb as the card is likely to run out of puff before vram usage is a concern. There have been other cards in the past with the same issue, lower end of the product line but more vram than it would likely ever need.

 

[humbug]

I take it you watched the Jay 3060 review then?

I would agree with him that the rvam amount on the card is a bit dumb as the card is likely to run out of puff before vram usage is a concern. There have been other cards in the past with the same issue, lower end of the product line but more vram than it would likely ever need.

So you wouldn't buy it with 12GB, but you would with 6GB?

 

[Gerard]

So you wouldn't buy it with 12GB, but you would with 6GB?

All depends on the resolutions you game at i would say, 6 gig for 1080p card is probably fine for the most part. But the fact remains that the card hasn't enough grunt to ever make vram a concern, it'll run out of steam long before it runs out of vram.

 

[ltron]

Probably...

The 3060 is a bad GPU because it's not powerful enough for the price and market position not because it has 12GB of VRAM. As for the AMD 6000 series and the constant remarks about 16GB being too much as well as the huge focus on ray tracing and DLSS (good technologies and worth having, but they are only in a handful of games and even the 30 series is still not quite fast enough), well let's just say it's quite possible they have been cowed by Nvidia.

 

[humbug]

All depends on the resolutions you game at i would say, 6 gig for 1080p card is probably fine for the most part. But the fact remains that the card hasn't enough grunt to ever make vram a concern, it'll run out of steam long before it runs out of vram.

If 6GB is good enough then so is 12GB, the 6GB difference equates to about $20 cost, if that, so if they had a 6GB version for £20 less then that might be a solution.

The 3060 is a bad GPU because it's not powerful enough for the price and market position not because it has 12GB of VRAM. As for the AMD 6000 series and the constant remarks about 16GB being too much as well as the huge focus on ray tracing and DLSS (good technologies and worth having, but they are only in a handful of games and even the 30 series is still not quite fast enough), well let's just say it's quite possible they have been cowed by Nvidia.

The reason these same people (Not sure about Hardware Unboxed) said "You don't need more than 4 cores" is because Intel said it, they unashamedly regurgitated Intel's crap, i would not be at all surprised if they are indeed cowed by Nvidia, its always Nvidia who skimp on VRam, i'm sure they would have loved the 3060 be a 6GB card, at the same cost, but the 6700, its direct competitor will be 12GB, while that is overkill, i'd rather it be 12GB than 6GB.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Yeah I do remember the 4 cores and even some on this forum spouting the '2 cores for gaming' not so long ago..

I have not seen these mention it in the context you have though, to be fair I rarely watch jayz as his biased opinion grated on me a long time back. Are you triggered from specifically the 3060 and its generous VRAM or has it been due to coverage on every launch?

I watched the bitwit guy 3060 review today and it basically came out well that it plays games good for 1080 and 1440p titles.

 

[JohnG7]

LTT is a sell out, he made a video about fast ram not needed in gaming as no benefits or like 1FPS then a few months later the exact opposite, think this was DDR4 and when Corsair were pushing crazy high priced kits with high speed 4000mhz or such with crap latently.

 

[humbug]

Yeah I do remember the 4 cores and even some on this forum spouting the '2 cores for gaming' not so long ago..

I have not seen these mention it in the context you have though, to be fair I rarely watch jayz as his biased opinion grated on me a long time back. Are you triggered from specifically the 3060 and its generous VRAM or has it been due to coverage on every launch?

I watched the bitwit guy 3060 review today and it basically came out well that it plays games good for 1080 and 1440p titles.

No, its not the 3060, tho i think its better with 12GB (overkill) than 6Gb (just enough for now) its when they turn their attention to the Radeon 6000 Series, is 16GB really too much for a 6800XT? or even the 6800? How are they be better with 8GB, other than reducing the cost, for AMD.

I have 8GB on my 2070 Super, it has the physical prowess to run my favourite game at 4K, it does not have enough Vram, so i don't want hear Jay or Steve bang on about GPU's with TWICE the muscle my card has having too much Vram at 16GB when the alternative is 8GB, if i'm to replace this GPU it might well be the 6700XT, not because its much faster than my 2070 Super, it probably isn't going to be. It will be because i can turn the resolution up in my favourite game to 4K.

 

[Lightnix]

It sort of is and it isn't. It's true that there's this segment of PC gamers who seem to think VRAM is the be all and end all when it most definitely isn't, and I guess that's who these reviews are setting out to 'educate' (or I suppose this would be the pretext of their rants). Of course there are many good reasons to have that much VRAM: there are GPGPU tasks (not mining in this case since it's nerfed!) which will benefit from as much memory as they can get their hands on, certain texture mod packs will send your VRAM usage sky-high and certain games out of the box are already starting to hit the limit at 6GB.

In particular Godfall even at 1080P can use more than 6GB of VRAM (https://www.techpowerup.com/review/godfall-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/4.html), and given with a 192-bit bus you really have a choice between 6GB and 12GB (given mixed memory configurations are sub-optimal from a bandwidth point of view) 12GB makes a lot of sense seeing as we've already got this real world example of a game that is going to force you into some compromise with 6GB (given the framerate averages for the RTX 2060, it's probably dynamically adjusting its settings somehow which will lower image quality, e.g. pop-in).

Of course if the rumours are true you will be able to get a graphics card with the same GPU as the 3060 but with half the VRAM, and it will probably be a better buy for a lot of people.

The real problem with the RTX 3060 is it falls about in line or slightly worse than the RTX 3060 Ti depending on how you plan to use it, where we normally expect the mid-range products to be better value than the ones higher in the series.

edit; that said I wouldn't touch it for the prices some sites have it at with a barge pole. MSRP only, any above that and you definitely should be looking at a 3060 Ti instead.

 

[ASMB]

LTT is a sell out, he made a video about fast ram not needed in gaming as no benefits or like 1FPS then a few months later the exact opposite, think this was DDR4 and when Corsair were pushing crazy high priced kits with high speed 4000mhz or such with crap latently.

This guy isn't happy with LTT review of 3060, https://youtu.be/zAibJUkaXJw?t=398

To be fair to HUB they have said that the vram on 3070 is holding it back already https://youtu.be/5mXQ1NxEQ1E?t=842

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

The real problem with the RTX 3060 is it falls about in line or slightly worse than the RTX 3060 Ti depending on how you plan to use it, where we normally expect the mid-range products to be better value than the ones higher in the series.

edit; that said I wouldn't touch it for the prices some sites have it at with a barge pole. MSRP only, any above that and you definitely should be looking at a 3060 Ti instead.

3060TI is better than the 3060 for sure, but neither has the grunt for very high FPS in demanding titles, i would say 3060TI is good more shorter term for 1440p but a great card for 1080p.

 

[Lightnix]

3060TI is better than the 3060 for sure, but neither has the grunt for very high FPS in demanding titles, i would say 3060TI is good more shorter term for 1440p but a great card for 1080p.

Sorry to clarify I meant from a price/performance point of view specifically. The 3060 Ti clearly is the stronger card in general.

 

[humbug]

The 6700XT will have 40 CU's and 12GB VRam, at 2.4Ghz stock the 6800XT clocks 25% higher than the 5700XT, AIB's overclock to 2.7Ghz easily. that's +40%.

Stock I think the 6700XT would land at the 3060TI level, it might even overclock to 2080TI levels.

In a normal world priced right ($350) its exactly what people are looking for, it could be AMD's most successful GPU in a very long time. But, the world we live in now is anything but normal, all this is meaningless as they are all priced £200 higher than they should be.

 

[Lightnix]

The 6700XT will have 40 CU's and 12GB VRam, at 2.4Ghz stock the 6800XT clocks 25% higher than the 5700XT, AIB's overclock to 2.7Ghz easily. that's +40%.

Stock I think the 6700XT would land at the 3060TI level, it might even overclock to 2080TI levels.

In a normal world priced right ($350) its exactly what people are looking for, it could be AMD's most successful GPU in a very long time. But, the world we live in now is anything but normal, all this is meaningless as they are all priced £200 higher than they should be.

I think there are two main issues with this analysis: performance and clocks don't necessarily scale linearly, they might reach it but will probably hit some bottleneck (most likely memory bandwidth in this case). Also AMD is in no mind to create a bargain at the moment, and with a RX 6800 with an MSRP of $579 they are not going to happily leave a massive pricing chasm in such a high volume segment. If it performs like a RTX 3060 Ti it will most likely be priced like one, and if it does better they will be looking to plug that massive price gap in their lineup.

 

[ianh]

Looking at the Steam Hardware chart, most users will get about 4-5 years out of a GPU (GTX1060 is still top of the charts & was released in 2016) so my guess would be that Nvidia are looking towards that sort of life span by adding 12GB of RAM rather than sticking with the "it works currently" 6GB for the GTX 3060 which, looking at the 1060's history, would probably also be expected to last 4-5 years and who knows what games will be doing then.

So while it is definitely a gimmick today, in 4-5 years who knows!

 

[Brazo]

So the vram amount is basically dictated by memory bus choice and 6gb is deemed too little.

Let’s be honest a 3060 doesn’t need 12gb (nor does it ‘fit’ well in the existing product stack and if there was another way it wouldn’t have 12gb. It’s simply a ‘side effect ’ of the memory bus.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

12gb is arguably not needed on a 3060, but without altering the bus the other option of 6gb would have perhaps been too little... seems like they got caught with their pants down by AMD to me. Had they known how AMD was going to play things they perhaps would have designed the chip with a wider bus to allow 8gb.

I think any card higher up the stack would do just fine on 12gb, 16gb for gaming isn’t really required at the moment but is useful for some workloads...

Interesting though, if we pretend the world was normal now and play the msrp game - assuming a reasonable guesstimate of around $6 per Gb, the 3060 could have been sold at similar margins with an msrp of $293 vs $329... with its weak performance level arguably the sub $300 would make it a much better value proposition even if it was with 6gb less vram.