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Is 16gb GDDR7 enough for 4K gaming in 2025 onwards?

Nitefly said:
I read somewhere that the bandwidth of the GDDR7 is massively higher than that used in the 40s series so you can’t make a direct comparison GB per GB.

… not sure how true that is!
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Faster memory is always welcome but if an application demands 20GB, For example, Then it won't care if you have 16GB of fast memory, It'll still need 20GB.
 
Dicehunter said:
Faster memory is always welcome but if an application demands 20GB, For example, Then it won't care if you have 16GB of fast memory, It'll still need 20GB.
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Is there a difference between a game allocating a large amount of vram because you have it, rather than it strictly needing it? Or am I thinking of normal RAM.
 
Hostile_18 said:
Is there a difference between a game allocating a large amount of vram because you have it, rather than it strictly needing it? Or am I thinking of normal RAM.
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I honestly couldn't answer that but I'm looking at it more from a work aspect i.e videos, rendering etc...
 
Hostile_18 said:
Is there a difference between a game allocating a large amount of vram because you have it, rather than it strictly needing it? Or am I thinking of normal RAM.
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Should work in a similar way to software program. Request memory for assets, drop the allocation when done, however, you’d have to consider how those assets are used in the game world and whether it’s faster to keep them in memory, because they’ll be used again soon, or drop them - this is also where developers will get lazy.

Maybe faster memory changes that but it’s not like developers will make that effort.
 
Mesai said:
Should work in a similar way to software program. Request memory for assets, drop the allocation when done, however, you’d have to consider how those assets are used in the game world and whether it’s faster to keep them in memory, because they’ll be used again soon, or drop them - this is also where developers will get lazy.

Maybe faster memory changes that but it’s not like developers will make that effort.
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So in a way it does sound like what was debated above is correct in that GDDR7 would allow for less overall because it's more proficient (faster) at pulling and flushing the assets that it needs. Theoretically anyways.
 
Hostile_18 said:
So in a way it does sound like what was debated above is correct in that GDDR7 would allow for less overall because it's more proficient (faster) at pulling and flushing the assets that it needs. Theoretically anyways.
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It opens up options. You’d hope there’s a reason they’re going for faster, more expensive VRAM on the flagships as that’s not exactly a selling point for consumers.

Maybe some form of intelligent caching on unused assets to compensate for bad memory management from the developer, otherwise on its own, the speed increase probably isn’t worth much without something to actually use it.
 
Dicehunter said:
Kind of reminds me when AMD had 6GB on the Fury X and they said because it's faster than normal GDDR, It's actually the equivalent to nearly double the capacity :cry:
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4 gig of hbm, it wasn't that it was faster it was to do with the memory bus being 4096 bit.
 
Last edited:
Good point, if you had 4gb ram on a flagship today, and it was like 10TB/s bandwidth, would you worry about the 4GB?
 
willhub said:
Good point, if you had 4gb ram on a flagship today, and it was like 10TB/s bandwidth, would you worry about the 4GB?
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Yes.

It's not just about how fast or efficiently things can be cycled on the memory, you can't flush out data that's still in use and assets (textures etc) have only grown as time has went on.

Don't even get me started on modding.
 
Hostile_18 said:
I think I'd rather a 5080 and £700 in my pocket if it comes to it lol.

Nvidia always seem to give people less than the want, but so far they have always been on the money in terms of VRAM allocation.

Isn't allocated but not used VRAM a thing as well? Also what kind of performance penalties when its maxed out?

You'd think Nvidia would have done loads of tests with the amount and I doubt they would be afraid to pass any extra cost on to the consumer, if it was needed!
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Nope, RTX 3070 called and said:"Cyberpu....." darn it ran out of vram again.
 
Phixsator said:
Nope, RTX 3070 called and said:"Cyberpu....." darn it ran out of vram again.
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What resolution is that at? If 4k I wouldn't necessarily say the 3070 is a modern 4k card so in a way understandable.

That said I'm currently playing FF7 Remake 4k max settings on my temp 3050 just fine, so who knows.
 
No. A bunch of games now use 11-15GB of VRAM alone with the remaining being used by the OS and BG apps which is the norm. When you enable other tech like frame gen you increase VRAM usage as well. 16GB is imo not enough for modern 4K gaming, even when upscaled.
 
My own view, for what it is worth, is that 16gb will probably be ok - but until the cards are out and a couple of years of new games have been issued ???
 
funny how the hype about Direct Storage has died down. A year or two there was such excitement about this magical pcie4/5 nvme saviour for streaming huge textures among other things
 
Even when games used DirectStorage, the bandwidth wasn't even exceeding gen 3 NVMe speeds, it's just not necessary as evidenced by most new games releasing that have super fast loading times without any need to have DS, just leverage modern SSD storage capabilities.
 
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