2GB Vram The Minimum. Really?

sparky05084 · 23 Feb 2012 at 16:47

So, a mate of mine got in touch with me today gloating about how he's treated himself to a nice shiny new Benq XL2420T 3D Monitor and an MSI GTX 570.

My first reply, "Only has 1.2GB Vram I'd have gone with the 6970 or waited for Kepler to see real world performance."

Mate replies, "Since when did you come to the conclusion that I'd need a 6970 over the 570?"

Me, "Well, obviously the 6970 has more Vram and more headroom. Apparently that's the minimum".

Mate, "1.2GB is plenty and I'm gaming at 1080p. I can play on highest settings on BF3 and I haven't even got round to Skyrim yet but the way things are shaping up it's going to be great".

He went onto say something like, "As for Kepler, I didn't want to wait even if it's supposedly around the corner and at the end of the day the card is certainly no slouch and I think it's better than the 6970".

He finished by saying "Anyway, I'm off now to go put this card through it's paces, enjoy your 8800 GTX"

(cheeky bugger)

This was a rather interesting conversation as I hear (especially around here) that Vram is very important and the size of 2GB seems to be the magical number. That very same number pops up all too often and I think there was a case a while back where someone was advised to not go with the GTX 570 even though they were too, gaming at 1080p.

Now, I do occassionally pay attention to benchmarks and the odd review but I think I'm going to side more with my mate and he is a bigger gamer than me so I do value his opinion.

Not saying he's an expert but "real" world tests and scenarios are what interest me, not a link to some "proposed" specs when the cards are not even out yet.

It's early days but already he gives me the impression that a card with less than 2GB can more than handle resolutions at 1080p. Also, considering it's a TF III if he overclocks (which, knowing him he will) I imagine (correct me please if I'm mistaken) he will get better FPS too.

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?

I mean in my opinion how can one future proof or even use such a statement when there is always something newer and potentially faster and/or better around the corner?

Orcvader · 23 Feb 2012 at 16:50

I have to agree with your friend, 1gb is more than enough for most games at 1080p. You only need more if you're playing higher resolutions, a game with a haevy texture pack or planning to have a multi-GPU setup.

andybird123 · 23 Feb 2012 at 16:55

he's not playing at max settings at 1080p on a 570, and certainly not in 3D

been there, tried it, seen the slideshow that results

the 6970 also falls off a cliff at if you start trying to use MSAA so it's not entirely down to VRAM

however - 560ti 1GB SLI can't play on Ultra preset (tried that one personally as well), but 560ti 2GB SLI can

for me, playing with either 1 or 2 1GB cards was identical performance - although 60% utilisation at high on 2 cards, as soon as you turn to Ultra you see VRAM usage go from 900mb to 1008mb and FPS slows to a crawl - same effect on 1 or 2 cards

on my 580 3GB usually see VRAM usage over 1.6GB and sometimes even up to 1.8GB - with a GTX 580 1.5GB I would get texture issues from time to time - none at all on the 3GB card

ALXAndy · 23 Feb 2012 at 16:57

Marine-RX179 · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:10

This is how I see it...

6970 2GB with bigger performance hit with MSAA application right of the bet even when there's plenty of VRAM free in some games vs GTX570 1.2GB loses less frame rate on MSAA application with only tiny performance hit if VRAM go a little over.

The thing is people blow this "run out of VRAM" issue completely out of proportion. We are not talking about having only 512MB VRAM when game uses 1024MB VRAM here (100% extra) ...we are talking about having 1280MB VRAM, with SOME game using a little bit over, not 100% over. With VRAM being over by such a small margin, the actual performance might not even drop by 0-5fps.

OCPete · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:12

Summary
1.2 or 1.5GB is enough for 1080p in most scenarios in most games. However its NOT enough in all games for max settings.

When you run out of vRAM it can sometimes have a massive performance hit. Again it varies.

If buying a new upper mid range (or above) gfx card its worth aiming for 1.5GB minimum or better still 2GB if the price hike is not too much.

Over 2GB @ 1080p is currently overkill.

The 1.25GB 570 is still a good card for ALL games @ 1080p. Just not max settings! With a little tweaking it'll be perfectly fine (BF3 included).

Mojo · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:13

I've avoided a 570 for this reason. 1280mb is all very good for a lot of modern games, but Battlefield 3 in particular uses more than that at 1200p (i have a 16:10 monitor). You have to roll with the times, and more and more games are requiring more than 1gb or 1280mb to play at max settings. The new 7xxx series' 3gb is a little crazy, but I'd say 1.5gb at minimum for a high end card now.

Rroff · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:17

1280MB is fine for most games out except maybe at ultra high resolutions/high levels of AA but if I was buying a new card now I'd be looking forward at the next 12-18months or so I'd be using it for and probably wouldn't be buying under 2GB - even with the increased useage of texture streaming mechanisms anything under 1.5gig is fairly quickly going to become a bottleneck for playing at decent resolution with high/ultra settings and a reasonable level of AA with near future games.

Marine-RX179 · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:30

Mojo said:
I've avoided a 570 for this reason. 1280mb is all very good for a lot of modern games, but Battlefield 3 in particular uses more than that at 1200p (i have a 16:10 monitor). You have to roll with the times, and more and more games are requiring more than 1gb or 1280mb to play at max settings. The new 7xxx series' 3gb is a little crazy, but I'd say 1.5gb at minimum for a high end card now.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-crossfire-benchmark,3123-6.html
6970 2GB loses 33% frame rate on 4xMSAA application, whereas GTX570 1.25GB only loses 19.5% on 4xMSAA application.

Grunt/GPU architecture>VRAM for most games, even for games that are known to use VRAM a little over than what's available. Metro2033 is probably the ONLY game that extra VRAM would make a big difference, and it's VRAM hungry like mad, and no other game is like this.

Rroff · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:34

^^ just going over the VRAM available on the GPU doesn't always mean theres any performance hit anyhow. The useage pattern will dictate that, if your having to swap just a few MB but it needs to swap that out of physical RAM<>VRAM every frame then it could have a massive performance penalty whereas it could be 100s of MB over but only having to swap data now and again and having no real impact on performance.

ANN1H1LAT0R · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:43

Its a toughy in reality. You'd think more VRAM would = better FPS but thats not always true and it does depend on resolution, the game (as in how large are the texture files) and also the architecture of the GPU itself. Don't forget that the bit rate of the memory and the type of memory will also factor in as this will determine the flow rate of the memory and therefore how fast it can shift what it needs about and how quickly it can add the post processing effect after each frame is created before rendering

If you want to future proof then yes go for as high as possible and it definately will not hurt to do so BUT 2Gig isn't a minimum to go for. I play BF3 with everything on Ultra and all the MSAA etc and Im silky smooth and I have a 1.5Gig GTX580.

Even Crysis 2 in Directx 11 with those mega textures runs super smooth with everything on mega super maxed out specs lol.

Final8y · 23 Feb 2012 at 17:48

1.5GB minimum.

555BUK · 23 Feb 2012 at 18:59

Graphics cards can pre-buffer VRAM in much the same way as Windows 7 does. Give it more memory and it can use it, even if the additional data is not yet required.

Just because a 2GB graphics shows most of it's buffer is used, it does not mean all of that memory is actually needed or improving performance.

1GB is fine for most games at 1920x1200 on high settings. Try reading some of the 6950 1GB vs 2GB reviews to see how extreme you really have to go before VRAM limitations really become a problem.

To backup my argument, read this. Even at 2560x1600 with 4xAA there is almost zero difference between the 1GB and 2GB cards. Sure, 2GB will become more important for future games, but 3GB will be overkill for quite some time unless you want a high-res multi-screen setup.

1GB minimun
1.5GB nice to have and fine for awhile
2GB provides some future proofing (2, maybe 3 years)
3GB not needed unless we are talking extreme resolutions (larger than 2560x1600).

ALXAndy · 23 Feb 2012 at 19:04

555BUK said:
Graphics cards can pre-buffer VRAM in much the same way as Windows 7 does. Give it more memory and it can use it, even if the additional data is not yet required.

Just because a 2GB graphics shows most of it's buffer is used, it does not mean all of that memory is actually needed or improving performance.

1GB is fine for most games at 1920x1200 on high settings. Try reading some of the 6950 1GB vs 2GB reviews to see how extreme you really have to go before VRAM limitations really become a problem.

I've decided to bite the bullet and reinstall it tonight. Since my last memory dump whilst playing I have switched to a 7970 (from a 6970) so am interested to find out if the 7970 uses the same. If it does then I would imagine it's quite unified as I recall seeing some one with a 580 post usage of 1.6gb in multiplayer.

The issue is that when vram runs out the buffer is your hard drive. The 5xx series Nvidia cards (and AMD cards) can not buffer into your physical ram, so things get choppy even though frames appear high.

This, apparently, is one of the tricks Kepler has up its sleeves. Which is why they seem to be a bit underspecification on vram.

Mojo · 23 Feb 2012 at 20:09

Marine-RX179 said:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-crossfire-benchmark,3123-6.html
6970 2GB loses 33% frame rate on 4xMSAA application, whereas GTX570 1.25GB only loses 19.5% on 4xMSAA application.

Grunt/GPU architecture>VRAM for most games, even for games that are known to use VRAM a little over than what's available. Metro2033 is probably the ONLY game that extra VRAM would make a big difference, and it's VRAM hungry like mad, and no other game is like this.

I didn't mention the 6970, there are other cards with >1.2gb out

andybird123 · 23 Feb 2012 at 20:59

555BUK said:
Graphics cards can pre-buffer VRAM in much the same way as Windows 7 does. Give it more memory and it can use it, even if the additional data is not yet required.

your own link that "proves" your argument shows that the NEWEST game on that list does benefit from 2GB, NEWER games like BF3 make this benefit even more pronounced

1GB is the minimum for playing on medium or possibly high settings
1.5GB is the minimum for playing on ultra settings
2GB will be somewhat future proof
3GB is even better

tommybhoy · 23 Feb 2012 at 22:59

This old chestnut again.

Same architecture/gpu, 1Gbv2Gb, BF3:

All 3 1Gb cards above all fall short in the minimums compared to higher vram, adding a second 1Gb 560/6950 gives way more 'gpu grunt' but it can't do very much at all for playability as the lows won't increase by much, if at all.

With BF3, comparing the way Nvidia gpu's handle BF3 is not really down to 'gpu grunt'.

In the case of BF3, Nvidia has the edge in general performance due to the game having Nvidia's Driver Command Lists programmed into the code which holds a benefit as they have this function and AMD don't.

It's up to AMD to negate this benefit by implementing something the same/similar into their hardware to negate/improve on this performance advantage if they are interested at all regarding performance.

'there is one thing we know they implement in the engine that only NVIDIA can use: Driver Command Lists, the same “secret sauce” that boosted NVIDIA’s Civilization V performance by so much last year. So it may be that NVIDIA’s DCL support is helping their performance here in BF3, much like it was in Civ V.'

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/22

Where all the 'AMD's can't handle AA' and 'they collapse' come from I don't know as it's game dependant with swings and roundabouts between comparable gpus, eg 6970 and the 570.

Cleeecooo · 23 Feb 2012 at 23:08

1.3 gb is fine at 1080p, but you any expect all the trimmings.

As the price difference between VRAM sizes is often negligible , atleast on the AMD side, you may aswell buy the card with more VRAM.

Although, if it's between, say, a 570 and a 6870 2gb, obviously get te 570!

ALXAndy · 23 Feb 2012 at 23:30

andybird123 said:
your own link that "proves" your argument shows that the NEWEST game on that list does benefit from 2GB, NEWER games like BF3 make this benefit even more pronounced

1GB is the minimum for playing on medium or possibly high settings
1.5GB is the minimum for playing on ultra settings
2GB will be somewhat future proof
3GB is even better

And not forgetting this, of course.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18344284&highlight=560+ti+2gb+gibbo

Borsch · 24 Feb 2012 at 00:30

I dont care about BF3, but the only games that I know to go over 1.5gb VRAM are IL2:CloD and Rise of FLight (on highest settings of course).