2GB Vram The Minimum. Really?

[Final8y]

I've read a fair chunk of it.

I tried all of the updates for BF3 and all of the driver updates from Nvidia that were supposed to improve performance.

Yet, even though FRAPS showed a decent FPS in the top corner the game was laggy and stuttered.

It almost felt like vsync issues, yet I had it enabled and I could actually see it capping at 60 FPS in the few instances it went that high.

I was just as eager to disprove it as some others in this thread. I would be ! I had three bloody expensive graphics cards that could not run it properly.

To make sure all variables were ruled out I ran the game on all of the cards in two completely different systems. One was a I7 920 @ 3.6ghz, the other was my I7 950 at both stock and 4ghz.

And each time the results were exactly the same.

My GTX 470 was by no means a slouch. Infact, it was pretty much dead even with the brand new 560 TI 448. However, it could not run Battlefield 3 smoothly with everything on ultra AND 4SFSAA. And there is a reason for that.

How do I know for sure? easy. At the time I first started playing BF3 I had 9gb ram. 3x1gb 1600mhz and 3x6gb 1600mhz. So 9gb total, running Windows Ultimate X64.

Again at that time I was using a 60gb Patriot SSD to boot from, so I had disabled my paging file. Up until that point like many others who have brought it up on this forum I had never had any issues with having it disabled. However, as soon as I started playing BF3 I was getting paging errors.

So what was trying to use the paging file? BF3. It was clearly running out of vram and trying to cache textures to my paging file on the hard drive. Yet, because I had disabled it the game simply crashed to desktop with paging file errors.

Now in hindsight what I should have done was just, you know? uninstalled Battlefield 3 as it's a bit crap. Instead I fell for the hype and ended up spending a fortune on a new GPU.

Now there was a very good reason I did that. I don't upgrade my computer unless I deem it worthwhile and completely necessary.

So I maintain. The FPS scores you see in benchmarks are smokescreens. They do not depict tearing or stutter or even microstutter if it doesn't last for more than a second. However, *I* notice it. What my 295s did on paper and what they did in reality differed hugely. When I sold the second system with the 295s in I simply ran Vantage when the guy came. He was happy, PC sold.

Last thing I would have done was run BF3. He'd have ran a mile.

So maybe it comes down to how acute your vision is at picking out anomalies? I know for a fact that I have an incredible set of eyes.

Some good points about what benchmarks dont show.

 

[Final8y]

As do i and 2 x580's with 1.5 vram is smooth as butter. With zero lag/stutter/fps drops.

1.5 is enough.

 

[ALXAndy]

Indeed. Not seen any one have significant problems with 1.5gb.

I see vram limits as I see CPU bottlenecking. When that started to become an issue people argued it wasn't, funny that.

The bottom line is this. AMD are not putting 3 bloody gigs of the stuff on their cards for the craps and giggles. There is a very valid reason they do it, because vram is not cheap.

It's the same reason some Nvidia partners are making 4gb 680s. And why they made 2gb 560tis, and 2078mb 570s, and 3gb 580s.

 

[ALXAndy]

As do i and 2 x580's with 1.5 vram is smooth as butter. With zero lag/stutter/fps drops.

And you run what resolution?

 

[ArnieRambo]

its called marketing...

 

[tommybhoy]

So I maintain. The FPS scores you see in benchmarks are smokescreens. They do not depict tearing or stutter or even microstutter if it doesn't last for more than a second. However, *I* notice it. What my 295s did on paper and what they did in reality differed hugely.

What the benchmarks don't tell you:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22573/6

 

[ALXAndy]

its called marketing...

I don't agree. The extra vram costs money, that price being passed onto the customer. A 1.5gb 580 is already a hard sell.

Making a few extra quid out of the vram isn't a great marketing strategy.

Put simply, the 580 3gb was solely designed to be slapped in SLI and then ran on three screens.

Or, it was for people who were using it for CAD and the likes, and rendering large objects. But either way it definitely was not done for the fun of it.

The 7970 and 7950 carry 3gb because they run Eyefinity. At those kinds of resolutions you need it.

 

[ALXAndy]

What the benchmarks don't tell you:

People just won't listen Tommy. Not until they are actually faced with the issue themselves, then they do a very quiet U-turn.

TBH mate if I had no issues in BF3 I would be sitting here arguing the toss. I would be against large amounts of vram because they make cards more expensive.

Now, though? well, even though my 470 wasn't cheap I was absolute bloody loathe to get rid of it just because one game was out that rendered it unable to run a game on ultra with 4XFSAA.

And, when I came to buy my next card I had a really nasty taste in my mouth. Mostly because I did not want to put out a ton of cash only to find the card useless a year down the line because graphics engines are "improving".

 

[Final8y]

People just won't listen Tommy. Not until they are actually faced with the issue themselves, then they do a very quiet U-turn.

TBH mate if I had no issues in BF3 I would be sitting here arguing the toss. I would be against large amounts of vram because they make cards more expensive.

Now, though? well, even though my 470 wasn't cheap I was absolute bloody loathe to get rid of it just because one game was out that rendered it unable to run a game on ultra with 4XFSAA.

And, when I came to buy my next card I had a really nasty taste in my mouth. Mostly because I did not want to put out a ton of cash only to find the card useless a year down the line because graphics engines are "improving".

Happened to me with 4x3870 512MB, really enjoyed that until my first Vram hit, some games would stutter in places and others would plummet at a given setting, i was gutted, sapphire had 1GB editions later, but i never seen one for sale anywhere and was way to late into the 4xxx series.

 

[ALXAndy]

Happened to me with 4x3870 512MB, really enjoyed that until my first Vram hit, i was gutted, sapphire had 1GB editions later, but i never seen one for sale anywhere and was way to late into the 4xxx series.

BFBC2 was fine on my Quadfire 3870x2. It really was like a pig in the proverbial.

So much did it love all those CPU and GPU cores that it utterly put my 5770 CF to shame. I could not get the game to drop below 60 FPS with vsync on no matter how hard I tried.

But trying to run BF3 on my 295s was embarrassing. It was clearly seeing and using all four GPUs, but even with everything on the lowest it was just awful.

Noticed a post from a guy today saying he has a 5970 that's been rendered utterly useless by BF3. Can't even keep it smooth on medium settings.

So what's causing that if it isn't vram?

 

[Final8y]

BFBC2 was fine on my Quadfire 3870x2. It really was like a pig in the proverbial.

So much did it love all those CPU and GPU cores that it utterly put my 5770 CF to shame. I could not get the game to drop below 60 FPS with vsync on no matter how hard I tried.

But trying to run BF3 on my 295s was embarrassing. It was clearly seeing and using all four GPUs, but even with everything on the lowest it was just awful.

Noticed a post from a guy today saying he has a 5970 that's been rendered utterly useless by BF3. Can't even keep it smooth on medium settings.

So what's causing that if it isn't vram?

I have seen many trifire 5970+5870 going because of BF3 and users saying its because of the 1GB Vram, but as i have said the 2GB versions were really late and seriously costly and most people would not of thought that it would be and issue over the life of the setup and if they have not personally experienced such an issue before they would not think otherwise.

I have and seen games use more than 1GB at the time so held out for the 2GB versions as i was not going to go through the 4x3870 experiences again if i could help it, saying that i have hit 1980MB, i just hope it does not get breached and cause issues before the 8xxx series comes out at least.

 

[ALXAndy]

Tell you what. I can add another game to the "FPS look fine, but input lag is terrible and makes gameplay impossible".

F3AR. Ran like dog crap on my 470 maxed.

 

[Mal X]

Tell you what. I can add another game to the "FPS look fine, but input lag is terrible and makes gameplay impossible".

F3AR. Ran like dog crap on my 470 maxed.

it was a crap game too !

 

[ALXAndy]

it was a crap game too !

Yeah for sure. I got stuck on that rooftop shooting endless enemies. Tried to run for it but got splattered.

Very frustrating.

 

[Mal X]

Yeah for sure. I got stuck on that rooftop shooting endless enemies. Tried to run for it but got splattered.

Very frustrating.

that was the Phase Commander you had to kill him before you could enter the helicopter, playing as Fettle was fun though

 

[tommybhoy]

People just won't listen Tommy. Not until they are actually faced with the issue themselves, then they do a very quiet U-turn.

TBH mate if I had no issues in BF3 I would be sitting here arguing the toss. I would be against large amounts of vram because they make cards more expensive.

Now, though? well, even though my 470 wasn't cheap I was absolute bloody loathe to get rid of it just because one game was out that rendered it unable to run a game on ultra with 4XFSAA.

And, when I came to buy my next card I had a really nasty taste in my mouth. Mostly because I did not want to put out a ton of cash only to find the card useless a year down the line because graphics engines are "improving".

I don't know if it's down to loss of face or what, but the whole debate was about 1GB v's 2Gb exact same gpu's, then it gets changed to other cards being better, ignoring BM's between same gpu's then throwing the other gpu's to and fro again, it's just pedantic rants borne out of ***add to suit***.

 

[bhavv]

Its the same 3 people who always argue about and overate vram always going offtopic and missing the point.

The 1280 Mb GTX 570 is sufficient for EVERYSINGLE game out there at 1080p, which was the point of the op in this thread, so no, 2 Gb vram is absolutely not a minimum for gaming.

 

[zpaf]

So, my fellow friends, the question is do you really need 2GB of Vram and would you seriosuly call it "future proofing" like is often advised?

When i saw this in crysis 2 just on first map I decide to keep my 7970 and dont go for 680.

 

[bhavv]

Thats called Vram caching, its been described yet ignored so many times.

The data stored there isnt actually required, but it may be required at some other time. There is zero performance gain obtained from data caching in the vram.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

When i saw this in crysis 2 just on first map I decide to keep my 7970 and dont go for 680.

Interesting that I managed to play that game fine without any problems on a GTX 470 then and its lowly 1.2GB VRAM. Then again it was before their graphical patches. Although looking at that SS if that is the new patches in effect it's still a fuzzy meh looking game.