I can see you raising the price of the 768MB GeForce GTX 460

[Big.Wayne]

[Off Topic]

I buy expensive GPU's so that i can hope to play any game i like new or old the way i like

um . . . . nice slong you have there boy!

 

[Big.Wayne]

[Off Topic]

As far as game engines go - I have more than 10 years development experience in that field including a substantial part of that working with idtech3.

Nice! . . . we got a real life game coder on ocUk forums! . . . did you have anything to do with Quake III Arena? . . . loved that game?

So why are you concerned about vRam exactly?

VRAM wise I'm basing it on a general trend for VRAM requirements over the last few years.

Share your data please?

 

[Final8y]

[Off Topic]

um . . . . nice slong you have there boy!

LOL mine have double the very oh so important Vram.

And slong has nothing to do with it because i buy to please me, not to please others.

 

[Big.Wayne]

[Off Topic]

double the very oh so important Vram.

If you say so . . .

smooth & creamy dreamy goodness.

 

[Final8y]

[Off Topic]



If you say so . . .

Oh no! you asked for it now

http://translate.google.com/transla...videopamyati_nuzhno_dlya_sovremennyh_igr.html

And some of those are not even using any AF or AA which would increase the Vram usage.

http://translate.google.com/transla...md_radeon_hd_5870_eyefinity_6_edition-03.html


http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18194652

 

[Rroff]

[Off Topic]


Nice! . . . we got a real life game coder on ocUk forums! . . . did you have anything to do with Quake III Arena? . . . loved that game?

So why are you concerned about vRam exactly?


Share your data please?

Theres 4-5 guys atleast on these forums who work for video game development companies (including Firaxis, Frontier! and I think someone from 4DRulers) closest I got to working on Q3 was some stuff for Sidrial.

 

[JTrickle]

You are entitled to your opinion and you are free to buy whatever hardware you please? . . . the article you speak of proved nothing except how much vRam can be used by the latest games with Max Max settings . . .thats it?

Toms Hardware had one last week as well and came up with similar figures. And it was using the 758mb 460 for the article.

And no, I don't basis my own opinions solely on articles like these. I actually think these articles give a slightly poor overview of what gamers run into. Loads of game mods have little in the way of max memory usage planning like pro developers do. Look at all the games out there with high res texture mods. MMOs where you can get 100+ people on screen at once - that's why I had to ditch my 4850 for a 5850 last year.

Sorry? . . . what do you mean "people do not buy cards for just now"? . . . are you sure your not just talking about yourself and somehow thinking the whole world does and acts like you do? . . . have you got any data or facts that you can share as to peoples buying habits? . . . if you do that will be interesting? . . . personally I buy a GPU for the "Now" and really don't give much thought about 6 months or 12 months time let alone 18 months lol! :

Do you not read peoples 'recommend me a card' threads? They *always* justify their budgets by stating "its going to last me 2-3 years". You are out of touch on this, I think. I also work in retail for one of OCUKs competitors and have experience of what drives peoples buying habits from that.

 

[KidCanary]

I'm not saying they will present a performance issue now - but I am concerned that VRAM useage in current stuff is very close to the cut off and in the not too distant future could be a problem.

Also its possible that the lesser ROPs means you could see poor performance in certain scenarios - tho it should show in graphs - where you'd see localised poor performance without massively hitting the averages. i.e. in scenes with heavy smoke effects.

I try to 'future-proof' as much as possible when buying hardware - But the fact that games already use more memory than the 768MB model has, and the performance difference isn't that great between it and the larger model suggests that it'll be suitable for playing at reasonable settings for a few years yet.

 

[JTrickle]

[Off Topic]

Originally Posted by Rroff View Post
VRAM wise I'm basing it on a general trend for VRAM requirements over the last few years.

Share your data please?

Why do you need data on this? Were you not into PC's two years ago? And three years bacl? We were having these discussions on whether the 1meg 4870's were necessary. A 1meg 4870 is still ok today. A 512 is not.

Only a year before that, the question on 256 vs 512. And look how quickly the 256 and 320 8800 based cards became obsolete.

Asking for quotations and sources for common knowledge stuff is annoying.

 

[Rroff]

I try to 'future-proof' as much as possible when buying hardware - But the fact that games already use more memory than the 768MB model has, and the performance difference isn't that great between it and the larger model suggests that it'll be suitable for playing at reasonable settings for a few years yet.

My point is - at the moment your at a point where the extra swapping in/out of local memory isn't intensive enough generally to have much impact on performance but its right on the edge of where thats going to be an issue. If your happy to turn down settings to save a few quid then it won't bother you.

People will be happy enough now but I can see them struggling in the not too distant future especially with DX11 games which seem to eat an extra 200MB off the bat.

 

[Porcelina]

I think that the discussion could possibly do with introducing some framework distinctions.

I find that what most people skip out on when they refer to buying graphics cards is what they are looking for in their card. Most people are on a budget and most people who are looking into the higher range of cards are looking to game.

Now, a lot of potential buyers and certainly a lot of the people who come to these fora for advice want one thing, performance within their budget. However, there is a huge difference between having a set budget set for GPU and just wanting to get whatever you can for that amount and the one who actually want the most bang for the buck.

I have no idea what card would actually de facto give the most bang for buck out there. Say you want the card mainly for three games or so. It is a matter of simple mathematics to find benchmarks for those three games, take the fps scores, weigh them (if for example you want average fps to matter the most, be most concerned about minimum fps and so forth) then just take that and divide by price.

Now most people will make some modifiers there. For example you have the option of a cut off point; say you will not accept anything below 30 fps average. Then you just go through that list and delete the entries that fail the requirements.

It seems to me that most people who object to Big.Wayne's assertions concerning the 768 version of the 460 do not fall in a range where you actually want bang for buck, where the proverbial buck is actually in flux. Most people actually want the most bang for what buck they have.

Additionally, and this is not unimportant, people want safety. And safety when it comes to spec threads is in finding that a lot of people recommend the same thing. You often find conventions on this forum where some hardware gets a reputation that may overstate its actual performance in comparison to the relevant competitors. Or that a bad reputation sticks with another piece that has long since been resolved. However the point stands that the herd feels pretty good. Especially if you come here because you are relatively inexperienced with the industry in general.

So, I am sure that the 460 768 is a splendid card in most respects. And it will certainly do well for most people who really want the 1GB version and end up getting that because it is a safe option perceivably.

However you should not underestimate the fact that getting bang for your buck, as stated, quite often means something else than the most lateral interpretation. And it is not always silly to have that view of it.

 

[FoxEye]

Why do you need data on this? Were you not into PC's two years ago? And three years bacl? We were having these discussions on whether the 1meg 4870's were necessary. A 1meg 4870 is still ok today. A 512 is not.

Only a year before that, the question on 256 vs 512. And look how quickly the 256 and 320 8800 based cards became obsolete.

Asking for quotations and sources for common knowledge stuff is annoying.

I wish people would stop making blanket statements like "a 512 mb gfx card is not good enough for today's games." Not good enough to play or just not good enough to max out?

I play with no AA and medium settings, and so far I haven't encountered anything that an 8800gt will refuse to run decently well. Admittedly I haven't been playing recent FPS games.

 

[arknor]

why because they build computers? they dont actually play games on the ones they build and if you think a card using 100mb+ memory than it has wont have any performance impact at all your crazy , why do you think games like GTAIV dont let you pick settings that would use more memory than your GPU has?

and yes bigwayne the majority of the memory will be textures go play bfbc2 single player and after a short time he card will easily be over 800mb of memory

now turn the textures down to "medium" and only 500mb of memory is needed you clearly have no idea what your talking about and want to argue for the sake of it.

join a debate club or something

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey Rroff

I am concerned that VRAM useage in current stuff is very close to the cut off and in the not too distant future could be a problem.

My contention with buying a 768MB card now is - while fine most games today don't require extra VRAM unless you use silly settings - a good number of games are already close to that amount of VRAM with normal settings so it not gonna last a huge amount of time before your seeing games that will use closer to 1gig with normal settings.

My point is - at the moment your at a point where the extra swapping in/out of local memory isn't intensive enough generally to have much impact on performance but its right on the edge of where that’s going to be an issue. If your happy to turn down settings to save a few quid then it won't bother you.

I think you have made your point abundantly clear . . . you say that "a 768MB card will not present a performance issue now" and will be "fine for most games today" but go on to say you are troubled or anxious that anyone who doesn't buy a GPU with enough VRam will run into problems in the future . . .

What you are not very clear about is your personal definition of "not too distant future" or exactly what you mean by "it not gonna last a huge amount of time" . . . you are advocating that a punter should Future-Proof their GPU investment by spending additional funds so that when this undefined "distant future" arrives the added premium will safeguard their investment . . .

In essence you are stating the obvious . . . and labouring the point . . .

What you are doing is actually no different from a salesmen selling an extended warranty? . . . asking the punter to pay an additional £40-£50 quid so that if the product doesn't work properly after 12 months they are covered? . . . and if the product does work properly after 12 months they have spent £40-£50 for nothing really!

Taking your Future-Proof ideology to its logical extreme it would seem anyone who really wants peace of mind and remove any doubts about the product functioning well in the "not too distant future" should spend as much money ££ as they can spare on as much Vram as possible? . . . is 1024MB even gonna be enough or perhaps they should step up to a GTX 470 1280MB like you?

The problem I have with discussions like these is that some people are putting so much emphasis on vRam as the be-all-and-end-all of GPU's when there is a lot more too it, shaders, rops, frequencies etc etc . . . sure vRam plays its part but its not the complete picture . . .

This article was quite interesting, comparing a GTX 460 768MB against a HD 5770 1024MB using a bunch of state-of-the-art games . . . strangely enough the card with the less vRam provided a better game play experience?

In every game we tested today, except Aliens vs. Predator due to video card RAM limitations, the ASUS ENGTX460 provided a better gameplay experience than the ATI Radeon HD 5770. When all things were equal in AvP performance was very similar between the video cards. It seems that AvP is very sensitive to video card RAM and uses high quality textures, the limitations of 768MB are showing themselves here. The 1GB HD 5770 was able to surpass the ASUS ENGTX560 in gameplay experience because we could use higher quality video card settings. While that is interesting, it was the only game that behaved like this, and out of this entire evaluation the ASUS ENGTX460 overall provided the best experience from these games.

ASUS ENGTX460 TOP 768MB Video Card Review

People will be happy enough now but I can see them struggling in the not too distant future especially with DX11 games which seem to eat an extra 200MB off the bat.

I'm not sure everyone will want to spend more money ££ to safeguard against this "not too distant future" if they don't have to . . as seen above vRam doesn't always translate as "better gameplay" . . . except Aliens vs. Predator? . . . is this an example of your concern or is this just a badly coded game? . . .

Your point about DirectX® 11 is a also blanket statement that assumes people are using Windows 7? . . . I'm happily still using Windows XP pro and don't see myself upgrading for at least another year maybe? . . . DirectX® 9 still looks good to me!

 

[Big.Wayne]

people do not buy cards for just now. Most will probably want it to last most of 2 years

Do you not read peoples 'recommend me a card' threads? They *always* justify their budgets by stating "its going to last me 2-3 years".

I also work in retail for one of OCUKs competitors and have experience of what drives peoples buying habits from that.

So you have read a few threads on the forums and picked up some info from work and have determined this represents "Most people"? . . .even if that was actually true I would still say it doesn't matter how many people believe or do something, that doesn't necessarily make it true or right or indeed the best practice!

Loads of game mods have little in the way of max memory usage planning like pro developers do. Look at all the games out there with high res texture mods. MMOs where you can get 100+ people on screen at once - that's why I had to ditch my 4850 for a 5850 last year.

I see, because you play MMOs that you customised with a high res texture mod and have 100+ people running around you somehow think this is "quite a few situations" and that it applies to everyone else? . . . and this is one of the reasons you state the following?

768 isnt enough in quite a few situations now

Why do you need data on this?

Why do I need data on the vRam trends on the last several years? . . . well I want to see the data so I know its based on some kinda fact and not someone’s opinion? . . . its obvious VRam requirements have increased over the years but I honestly don't know the "facts". . . hence why I am asking if anyone does actually have any "facts"

Were you not into PC's two years ago? And three years bacl?

Believe it or not I've been into PC's since 1995 . . . nearly sixteen years now . . . and been a member of OcUK forums since 2003 . . . when I joined these forums I bought an AGP Radeon 9800 128MB @ £210 and flashed it to a Radeon 9800 Pro to save some money (they were £295) . . . had probably about a dozen GPU's since then 256MB, 512MB, 1024MB etc

At first I kinda got the feeling there was some kinda pattern where the VRam requirements would double every 12months but if that had been the case we would be on 16GB cards by now!

I honestly don't know that much about vRam trends and the only way I personally can find out is to "examine" where we are now and see what is actually needed . . . of course working out what the definition of "needed" is also another contentious point!

We were having these discussions on whether the 1meg 4870's were necessary. A 1meg 4870 is still ok today. A 512 is not

The above is a non specific blanket statement that is based on your own personal opinion and relevant to everyone . . . I'm sure there would be quite a few folk quite happy with a Radeon HD 4870 512MB in their rig right now . . .what O/S do they run? . . . what screen res do they run? . . . what games do they like to play? . . . what level of graphic details do they require?

try to avoid generic opinionated statements like the above please!

Only a year before that, the question on 256 vs 512. And look how quickly the 256 and 320 8800 based cards became obsolete

I see so your working to the basic premise that roughly every 12/18months the vRam requirements of games will double? . . . right or wrong?

Asking for quotations and sources for common knowledge stuff is annoying.

Seeing people making blanket statements based on assumptions and their personal opinions is annoying . . . I'm still none the wiser of exactly the details of this vRam trend knowledge that both you and Rroff profess to have? . . . If you make statements of fact then please be prepared for someone to ask you where you are getting your facts from!

 

[arknor]

in that review they are turning the resolution down for a lot of the games to 1680x1050 and turning of AA something many people who buy a GTX460 768mb wont want to do , they also turned advanaced shadows off for AVP and even tesselation when tesselation is one of the main strengths of the fermi cards

Aliens vs. Predator

In Aliens vs. Predator the ASUS ENGTX460 TOP and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 were both playable at 1680x1050, no AA, 16x AF, Tessellation "Off", Advanced Shadows "Off", and all other settings on their highest levels. The ATI Radeon HD 5770 was playable at 1920x1200, no AA, 16x AF, and the highest in-game settings due to video card RAM differences.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey Porcelina

I think that the discussion could possibly do with introducing some framework distinctions

In theory I agree with you but it seems a flame-thrower and a couple of hand-grenades tend to be more appropriate here!

I find that what most people skip out on when they refer to buying graphics cards is what they are looking for in their card. Most people are on a budget and most people who are looking into the higher range of cards are looking to game.

What most people are looking for in a GPU is a piece of hardware that they can plug into a computer that allows them to play their computer games of choice . . . some other people are just looking for a bit of retail therapy in order to improving their mood or disposition . . . as you may have witnessed quite a few people who post here need as much improvement to their moods or dispositions as possible!

There is also two extreme groups of buyers . . . Benchmarkers and e-Slongers . . . its hard to tell the difference between these two as they both tend to spend a "ridiculous" amount of money on their hardware . . . A benchmaker will at least put his hardware to task and try and produce synthetic tests results to compare with his peers around the world . . . but an e-Slonger appears to just want to talk about their hardware on forums?

Now, a lot of potential buyers and certainly a lot of the people who come to these fora for advice want one thing, performance within their budget. However, there is a huge difference between having a set budget set for GPU and just wanting to get whatever you can for that amount and the one who actually want the most bang for the buck.

It's true . . . . some newer members have no idea on the distinction between the two scenarios you describe . . . the problem is if an innocent punter looking for buying advice happens to get into a conversation on the forums with either a Bencharker or an e-Slongers they get quite a distorted picture of what hardware they actually need? . . . both Benchmarker& e-Slongers are looking to enforce the reality of their strange habits by "grooming" the innocent punter and attempting to indoctrinate them into the world of excess!

If the innocent punter is a bit luckier he may bump into someone based a bit more in the RealWorld and will get asked a number of questions about their specific needs, what games they are playing or want to play, what screen res they have, what O/S they are using etc etc . . . they will then have an appropriate hardware solution suggested to them with the aim of keeping as much money in their pocket while at the same time getting a GPU that meets their specific technical requirements . . .

The understanding of the original OverClocking mantra "Bang-for-Buck" is not understood by a great many new forum users . . . I suspect this is due to the hardware manufacturers detesting it as they want to separate the punter from as much of his/her money as possible and have been working on various strategies to erode the Bang-for-Buck ideology from the public domain . . .

It seems to me that most people who object to Big.Wayne's assertions concerning the 768 version of the 460 do not fall in a range where you actually want bang for buck, where the proverbial buck is actually in flux. Most people actually want the most bang for what buck they have.

With enough data/information it should be possible to draw a line in the sand so the end user knows that stepping past this mark is all about diminishing returns where the more they spend the worse value they are getting . . . some people will just look at a benchmark chart and choose the card with the highest score that fits their budget . . even if the card only gets a handful of extra FPS than a GPU costing £40-£50 less its somehow enough to convince them the premium is worth paying?

Additionally, and this is not unimportant, people want safety. And safety when it comes to spec threads is in finding that a lot of people recommend the same thing . . . . . . the herd feels pretty good.

Yeah this is one of the biggest problems we have on this forum . . . this herd mentality leads to a situation called Consensus Trance and Groupthink and is the thing I fight against all the time . . . both scenarios leads to people not thinking for themselves and instead deferring the logic process to a so called "expert" . . . there are a few people on this forum who like to think of themselves as an expert but actually if you scrap away the thin layer of pretence you often find that their actual knowledge is very little or nothing! . . . . and revealing a Wiseman to not be wise often leads to attack!

I think every single person who posts here has the capability to think for themselves and not let other people do their thinking for them . . . all the punter needs is the "facts" to make their own opinion from . . . . sadly these facts are often hidden away or when they do come forward they are skewed or distorted to suit that individuals own point of view . . . .

My Modus operandi on these forums is to make sure the truth is spoken and this can only be done by accurate facts . . . facts speak for themselves!

However you should not underestimate the fact that getting bang for your buck, as stated, quite often means something else than the most lateral interpretation. And it is not always silly to have that view of it.

Getting the most performance for a set budget is not Bang-for-Buck . . . Bang-for-Buck is about getting as much performance as possible while at the same time spending as least money as possible . . . performance data and facts needs to be examined and an individual works out what is the "sweetspot" between performance and price . . . it's not such a hard concept to grasp . . . spending £40-£50 pound extra on a GPU that on average only gives an extra 4FPS in game people play today is madness . . . but somehow a few peeps are now trying to "justify" this premium by making out the extra 256MB of vRam will give the card a much extra useful life? . . .

"If" the 768MB GTX 460 meets someones needs today then by the time it begins to struggle the 1024MB GTX 460 will likely need upgrading too . . . the 1024MB GTX 460 may have extra vRam but compared to the technology for sale in 12 months+ it will look weak . . . personally I'd rather have a card that meets my specific needs today and save £40-£50 to put towards a card that meets my specific needs in 12 months . . . that £40-£50 saved and the funds from the sale of the 768MB GTX 460 in 12 months is gonna get a faster card down the line that what the 1024MB GTX 460 will be down the line . . . and if somebody says they will upgrade the 1024MB model at the same time then why exactly did they pay the premium for the 1024MB model today? . . . for the extra average 4FPS or?

 

[Big.Wayne]

I'd be interested to hear what the chaps at OcUk that build and test the systems think with regard to this topic

why because they build computers? they dont actually play games on the ones they build

arc@css, it doesn't matter what people who build computers think of this subject . . . thats like asking a cow farmer if he thinks eating too much steak leads to high cholesterol

The only authority you need to seek out are the "facts" . . .

if you think a card using 100mb+ memory than it has wont have any performance impact at all your crazy

It's not about what anybody "thinks" . . . it's about the "facts" . . . if you are in possesion of the data that shows if after someone max-max's a game or if the game is just max-max by default and the vRam on the card is exceeded and this in turn leads to the game becoming unplayable or has its playability reduced then please post up your data . . . The only way I would be crazy would be to just believe that what every angry person screams at me is a universal truth? . . .

Do you think its a bit strange that almost every single review site has given the 768MB GTX 460 a glowing review and all the benchmark data shows good FPS results? . . . on average coming in at a handful of less FPS than the 1024MB version? . . . I don't understand why you are making such a big fuss over this?

why do you think games like [Grand Theft Auto IV] dont let you pick settings that would use more memory than your GPU has?

I dunno? . . . maybe that specific game is coded badly and runs like carp if the VRam limit is exceeded so the coder built in a mechanism to restrict the game looking bad? . . . do you assume if this individual game uses a colossal amount of textures and runs like carp that all games use a colossal amount of textures and runs like carp? . . . and therefore "justify" that everyone needs to spend more money for a game they may not play?

and yes bigwayne the majority of the memory will be textures go play [Battlefield Bad Company 2] single player and after a short time he card will easily be over 800mb of memory

now turn the textures down to "medium" and only 500mb of memory is needed you clearly have no idea what your talking about and want to argue for the sake of it.

You know, if I didn't know what I was talking about do you think I would be learning anything from you the way you are talking? . . . did it ever occur to you that your coming across a bit huffy and puffy? . . . . take a chill pill man and when you feel nice and calm come back and join us in a cool, polite and calm discussion . . . if you can bring any "facts" with you that would be much appreciated by all parties involved!

join a debate club or something

I already did!

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/

Fora de OverClocker

 

[arknor]

i like some of your answers such as

You know, if I didn't know what I was talking about do you think I would be learning anything from you the way you are talking? . . . did it ever occur to you that your coming across a bit huffy and puffy? . . . . take a chill pill man and when you feel nice and calm come back and join us in a cool, polite and calm discussion . . . if you can bring any "facts" with you that would be much appreciated by all parties involved!

when presented with something you dont like you just release the troll and ignore it.

 

[robgmun]

Christ Almighty, death by quotations, at the end of the day nobody is hiding anything about the spec or what they can do. Nobody here is stupid and if they wish to spend extra for piece of mind then so be it.


/thread