• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

is 2gb not enough?

jh30uk said:
This thread got more replies in 1 hour even though its the same old asked 100x Q and some peeps asking for help are lucky to get a reply in some threads lol.

OP could have used Search.
Click to expand...

if you read my original post I said that on closer reading, as in I used search and came to the conclusion that 2gb may well not be enough today, or the very near future and that is why I asked in the forums.
 
robertchalmers1 said:
does this mean that if you have 2 x 2gb cards in sli you then have 4gb vram while if you use 2 cards in crossfire then you only get the vram from one card in use
Click to expand...

Nope. Crossfire is alternate frame rendering like SLI which doesn't stack VRAM. Stacking VRAM would take a massive hit on performance, which is why even with Mantle having synchronous crossfire and having the ability to stack VRAM, experts are still saying alternate frame rendering is still preferable.
 
Thnx I thought that was the way it worked but clearly didnt understand the way it was written. The bit I dont get is why nvidia have the higher end cards with only 2gb vram. I quite fancied going with nvidia sas ive not owned a proper nvidia gaming card before and the 770 does seem to do very well in a lot of reviews even outdoing the 280x.
 
at 1080 there are a handful of games that use over 2gb skyrim,bf4 can , titanfall definitely does.

so yes 2gb is okay for 90 percent of games still but it will be pushed this year with bigger games.
 
The way im looking at it is, im building this pc as opposed to getting the xbox one. So choosing my card carefully. Im hoping to get something that say 6 months down the line I wont need to replace.

perfect example my son got a gaming pc for his xmas couple years back and I put in a 7970 and even now that plays most games fine and more than likely will for next 12-18 months. I was looking to do the same for me.

I cant afford to shell out 400+ in one go however I could easily buy a 770/280x this week then another in a fortnights time if its the right devision. I also plan on adding 2 cards possibly close together as its a water cooled pc and want everything built from the off so I dont needa mess about draining it etc in couple of months time
 
Last edited:
~>Dg<~ said:
at 1080 there are a handful of games that use over 2gb skyrim,bf4 can , titanfall definitely does.

so yes 2gb is okay for 90 percent of games still but it will be pushed this year with bigger games.
Click to expand...

This is just wrong.

BF4 doesn't use over 2GB at 1080P

Skyrim can if you add tons of mods.

Titanfall I can't comment on, as no one with a 2GB card that I know of has played it fully maxed.

@ Robert. Why not grab a 290 now and then when you have enough cash, add a second. From my understanding, you have less chance of them black screening under water, so could be worth considering.
 
Last edited:
~>Dg<~ said:
at 1080 there are a handful of games that use over 2gb skyrim,bf4 can , titanfall definitely does.

so yes 2gb is okay for 90 percent of games still but it will be pushed this year with bigger games.
Click to expand...

I've put in many hours of BF4 @ 1080p @ ultra with my GTX690, never had any VRAM problems.

Apart from that, i an't really give anymore input on this. I only play BF4 and BL2 really :p
 
And BF4 is pretty intensive too. Thing is though it will buffer the current frame and however many frames ahead, so with a titan although it says you're USING say over 3gb at 1440p you're actually not, with caching it's using as much as the game thinks it needs to and works with what's available. BF4 has some massive maps, so if it's buffering a further 10 frames for example, it's going to cache a lot of VRAM along with any other info the GPU needs. If you have 3gb VRAM, it won't cache as much.

At least that is the most obvious explanation. Which is why all these VRAM readouts prove nothing.
 
billysielu said:
1 is not rly enough
2 is fine for 1920x1080
3 is fine for 2560x1440

eyefinity fits in there somewhere but not sure where
Click to expand...

l would change the above to-
1-2 is fine for 1920x1080
2-3 is fine for 2560x1440

It all depends what GPU's your using regarding the amount of Vram and how much grunt[horsepower] they have Single GPU's are getting faster+more Vram.

As game's are slowly going beyond 2GB, using SLI 4GB 670's and at the moment its not worth upgrading.
 
MjFrosty said:
And BF4 is pretty intensive too. Thing is though it will buffer the current frame and however many frames ahead, so with a titan although it says you're USING say over 3gb at 1440p you're actually not, with caching it's using as much as the game thinks it needs to and works with what's available. BF4 has some massive maps, so if it's buffering a further 10 frames for example, it's going to cache a lot of VRAM along with any other info the GPU needs. If you have 3gb VRAM, it won't cache as much.

At least that is the most obvious explanation. Which is why all these VRAM readouts prove nothing.
Click to expand...

Thats most likely the reason why my VRAM useage shows 3.95Gb in single player 95% of the time.
 
So choices ive narr8wed it down to are a 2gb gtx 770 or a 3gb 280x, although ive noticed ocuk 280x are vastly overpriced compared to there competitors is there any reason for that or are ocuk just cashing in due to the mining craze that seems to be going on at the moment
 
robertchalmers1 said:
Im trying to do some research for my next purchase and it looks like 2gb vram is no longer really enough. The cards I were looking at was the gtx 770 which mainly comes with 2gb vram and the occasional, highly priced 4gb ram. On closer reading it appears that the 770s dont have enough grunt to make use of the 4gb anyways.

Basically if the general consensus is 2gb is no longer enough why did nvidia release mid-high end cards with onky 2gb ram?

im trying to wisely choose my card that will hopefully last as long as possible but stuck now as what to do

any help or advice in the right direction really appreciatec
Click to expand...


Don't buy a new card with 2GB of VRAM, that's my advice. Especially with a look to the future.

You'll regret it if you do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom