is the extra VRAM really that beneficial?

[Journey]

Will see how much my 4070 Ti loses when I sell it. I will again look at what 3080 Ti's would have sold for when that happens and I will see how much extra I lost. Don't think there will be much in it.

It depends on how much you bought it for which is what matters really. Quite a few new 4070 Ti's have been £499 now, guess they are clearing stock still, but then the there have been may 4070 Supers for under £500 as well on good deal days, with cards being ~£529-540 on a bad day.

Someone was asking for advice if they should get a 4080 Super now with a view to moving to 5000 series, based on a £950 buy price, but I said unless you are keeping it for a long time don't bother, as the 4070 Super is the best deal as they'll lose £200 max, where as the 4080 Super is going to end up losing £400 or more with out a shadow of a doubt. Impossible thing to guess is the actual release date.

 

[TNA]

It depends on how much you bought it for which is what matters really. Quite a few new 4070 Ti's have been £499 now, guess they are clearing stock still, but then the there have been may 4070 Supers for under £500 as well on good deal days, with cards being ~£529-540 on a bad day.

Someone was asking for advice if they should get a 4080 Super now with a view to moving to 5000 series, based on a £950 buy price, but I said unless you are keeping it for a long time don't bother, as the 4070 Super is the best deal as they'll lose £200 max, where as the 4080 Super is going to end up losing £400 or more with out a shadow of a doubt. Impossible thing to guess is the actual release date.

Yep. It is all about price. I got my one last year for £575 and it has been great.

Yeah, I personally would not buy now unless you have no choice as old card is dead or get it for a bargain whereby reselling it when the new stuff comes out means minimal losses.

2 days ago!

its a beast of a card. love it.

Lol!! Did not expect to hear that. All makes sense now. Enjoy

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Yep. An in 2025 with next gen cards coming the minimum needs to be 16GB. I know I won't get a card with less than that.

Definately relevant. I remember seeing a video of a modded 3070 with 16GB VRAM. It demolished the 3070 in some scenarios, as 8GB VRAM was just too little.
I've got a 10GB 3080, and I definately think some of the performance stuttering and such I get in some newer games is very likely to be VRAM related as I'm playing a 1440p, but I couldn't justify upgrading to a 4080.

As with most of us who got 30** cards early however, back during the Crypto/COVID boom, you got what you could get, and Nvidia really abused that. My wife's 7900XT Nitro+ demolishes my 3080 across the board, with substantially higher average AND minimum performance, and I suspect the VRAM is PART of the reason.

 

[humbug]

Only worth bothering with if you have a 4090.

I find this sort of crap hilarious too...

 

[Nexus18]

Definately relevant. I remember seeing a video of a modded 3070 with 16GB VRAM. It demolished the 3070 in some scenarios, as 8GB VRAM was just too little.
I've got a 10GB 3080, and I definately think some of the performance stuttering and such I get in some newer games is very likely to be VRAM related as I'm playing a 1440p, but I couldn't justify upgrading to a 4080.

As with most of us who got 30** cards early however, back during the Crypto/COVID boom, you got what you could get, and Nvidia really abused that. My wife's 7900XT Nitro+ demolishes my 3080 across the board, with substantially higher average AND minimum performance, and I suspect the VRAM is PART of the reason.

In what games?

Not saying you aren't facing issues potentially with vram but a lot of people usually just jump to it being a "zomg vram issue" when reality is, it's most likely the game and even the more powerful gpus/higher vram gpus are also suffering such issues, TLOU is a perfect example of where even having loads of vram, the game still exhibited issues on higher vram gpus (and not just vram related issues) because the game was fundamentally utterly broken as evidenced in DF video. This is where DF is fantastic as they highlight where such performance issues are happening i.e. vram, shader compilation, cpu bottleneck, lack of system ram, memory leaks and so on.

Only worth bothering with if you have a 4090.

I find this sort of crap hilarious too...

Yup exactly. It's a fine line balancing vram and grunt, as evidenced so many times now, all the vram in the world doesn't allow a 3090 to get that much better performance outside of a handful of games and then where it does provide a bigger performance improvement, you then face a lack of grunt to which point that extra vram doesn't matter anyway as you're still going to sacrifice settings..... and even a 4090 could be argued to have all the vram but showing a lack of grunt for such titles as AW 2.

Again, no one has answered the main question yet..... Has the extra £750 proved to be worthwhile if just gaming?

This has always been my point when it comes to vram, the extra vram has never truly provided a worthwhile benefit in games and has simply been a method to brute force poorly optimised launch day titles during 2023, had textures been true 4k or/and far more unique assets, higher draw distance and so on then great, invest in that vram where it actually does prove worthwhile but ultimately games should be better optimised and people shouldn't just be pointing fingers at nvidia for not providing enough vram but ALSO pointing fingers at devs to do a better job, thankfully as evidenced, we are seeing much better optimisation now all round.

 

[humbug]

Yup exactly. It's a fine line balancing vram and grunt, as evidenced so many times now, all the vram in the world doesn't allow a 3090 to get that much better performance outside of a handful of games and then where it does provide a bigger performance improvement, you then face a lack of grunt to which point that extra vram doesn't matter anyway as you're still going to sacrifice settings..... and even a 4090 could be argued to have all the vram but showing a lack of grunt for such titles as AW 2.

Again, no one has answered the main question yet..... Has the extra £750 proved to be worthwhile if just gaming?

The RTX 2070 Super i had was easily capable of high refresh rates at maximum 1440P settings, in terms of GPU grunt, it did however have a lot of visual artefacts related to its lack of VRam or would just flat out turn in to a slide show for the same reason.

That was a 2070 S, never mind a 3070 or 4060 Ti, this argument has been going on for years, its been proven over and over again that these GPU's don't have enough VRam relative to how much GPU horsepower they have, and yet people still want to die on this hill of advocating for low VRam cards, just like people used to advocate for low core count CPU's.

And i don't get it, what a hill to die on, give us less, we want less, we want our games to run like crap and then blame the game developer instead of you me'lord. 3.5 Trillion $ is not enough for you, me'lord.

 

[Nexus18]

The RTX 2070 Super i had was easily capable of high refresh rates at maximum 1440P settings, in terms of GPU grunt, it did however have a lot of visual artefacts related to its lack of VRam or would just flat out turn in to a slide show for the same reason.

That was a 2070 S, never mind a 3070 or 4060 Ti, this argument has been going on for years, its been proven over and over again that these GPU's don't have enough VRam relative to how much GPU horsepower they have, and yet people still want to die on this hill of advocating for low VRam cards, just like people used to advocate for low core count CPU's.

And i don't get it, what a hill to die on, give us less, we want less, we want our games to run like crap and then blame the game developer instead of you me'lord.

2070s is what a 5 year old gpu? What was the equilvalent gpu from amd, a 5700 XT? Also, a 8gb vram gpu. You can't expect gpus to last forever from a vram nor grunt pov.... If vram was a factor back then, then why not pay the extra what £600-750 for a 2080ti to get 11gb vram? Obviously you want your gpus to last longer so why not pay the extra for a higher vram gpu back then? Maybe you could have kept the 2080ti for longer than a 2070s and not be wanting the extra grunt perf that newer gpus such as your 7800xt offer?

3070 for £440 was incredible value for 3-4 years ago. I agree, these days, you shouldn't be paying £500+ for a <12gb gpu as we have come a long way with game advancements in 3-4 years, let alone 5+ years....

If game devs do a better job then we wouldn't need to go out and buy newer gpus with more grunt or more vram..... But as shown on this forum, people love to overpay just so they can brute force poor optimisation but then cry about when their gpu can't keep up with newer gpus.

Again, would you have paid the "extra" £750 for a 24gb 3090 over a 10gb 3080 4 years ago? Do you think it has proved to be a worthwhile investment?

 

[humbug]

Here is an example.

120 FPS no problem, but pay attention to the VRam, its already at 8GB, also pay attention to the System RAM as i get close to the scrapyard, see it get higher as the System RAM is the only place left for anything to load in to as the VRam is full, also pay attention to the frame rates as they tank.

RUST 2023 04 26 15 18 29 01

www.youtube.com

Now look at the dark purple trees and the blurry road textures in this, these are visual artefacts cause by a lack of VRam, these are 2070 / 3070 era games, and there are a lot more of them then and certainly now.

Forza Horizon 5 2022 09 14 14 03 52 03

youtu.be

 

[humbug]

If the 4070 was a bit cheaper and 16GB it would have been my forth Nvidia card in a row, probably my fifth Nvidia card in a row if the 3070 didn't have the same problem because while i only buy in the upper mid range i upgrade every generation, or used to.

Now its Nvidia why have to convince me to switch from AMD.

 

[Nexus18]

Here is an example.

120 FPS no problem, but pay attention to the VRam, its already at 8GB, also pay attention to the System RAM as i get close to the scrapyard, see it get higher as the System RAM is the only place left for anything to load in to as the VRam is full, also pay attention to the frame rates as they tank.

RUST 2023 04 26 15 18 29 01

www.youtube.com

Now look at the dark purple trees and the blurry road textures in this, these are visual artefacts cause by a lack of VRam, these are 2070 / 3070 era games, and there are a lot more of them then and certainly now.

Forza Horizon 5 2022 09 14 14 03 52 03

youtu.be

Can't comment since don't own a 8gb gpu on those games, although no issues when I last played them on a 3080 at 3440x1440 and 4k.

BTW, that forza visual artifact was a bug iirc something about anistropic filtering or/and the drive you use as it was also mentioned on their forums on higher vram gpus too when the game released, I believe in one of their patch notes, it was resolved.

 

[humbug]

Can't comment since don't own a 8gb gpu on those games, although no issues when I last played them on a 3080 at 3440x1440 and 4k.

BTW, that forza visual artifact was a bug iirc something about anistropic filtering or/and the drive you use as it was also mentioned on their forums on higher vram gpus too when the game released, I believe in one of their patch notes, it was resolved.

Its not a bug, you get a VRam warring in the settings menu, you get another warning in the game splashed across the screen if you ignore that warring, if you carry on it takes about 10 minutes and the game starts looking like that.

 

[Nexus18]

Its not a bug, you get a VRam warring in the settings menu, you get another warning in the game splashed across the screen if you ignore that warring, if you carry on it takes about 10 minutes and the game starts looking like that.

You can google and you'll see loads of posts from various people on the issue. Also, iirc, there was an issue where the vram wasn't being properly allocated either at times i.e. people had only 6gb of vram being used on 3080s.

Haven't looked through all the patch notes but just from a quick glance:

https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/4418548807699-FH5-Fixed-Issues

Turns out it was a nvidia driver update causing the issue you were seeing, May 23rd 2023:

Graphics - Multicolor or rainbow colors and texture on the ground for Nvidia card users, players have solved issue by temporarily downloading previous Nvidia driver (3092411) (Date Updated: 05.23.23)

And also this:

Performance - Texture rendering issues on PC for terrain and vegetation when using Resolution Scaling On (Date Added:11.17.21)

Quite interesting to see A LOT of specific mentions around texture issues for specific cars too, I'm sure many would have blamed the "lack of vram" for these too:

Cars - Fixed an issue with the 2020 Audi TT RS where the digital gauge in the cockpit view had some texture inconsistencies (Bug 3935309) (Date Updated: 05.21.24)

Cars - Fixed an issue with the 2008 Aston Martin DBS where texture issues were visible on the left door (Bug ID 3926843) (Date Updated: 02.27.24)

Cars - 2021 Ferrari Roma - Low quality textures are present on the dashboard display, visible in Freeroam in Cockpit and Dashboard cameras and in Forzavista (3901597) (Date Updated: 09.12.23)

 

[Nexus18]

Its not a bug, you get a VRam warring in the settings menu, you get another warning in the game splashed across the screen if you ignore that warring, if you carry on it takes about 10 minutes and the game starts looking like that.

Also, most of the time, the in game vram meters are pretty inaccurate e.g. resident evil remake games being the perfect example of this so I wouldn't pay much attention to these and instead would use msi ab and rivatuner to check the dedicated and allocated vram usage for yourself.

 

[humbug]

No Nvidia driver ever fixed that issue, i only sold the card 3 moths ago.

The game was telling me the settings are too high for the VRam i had.

 

[tommybhoy]

Definately relevant. I remember seeing a video of a modded 3070 with 16GB VRAM. It demolished the 3070 in some scenarios, as 8GB VRAM was just too little.
I've got a 10GB 3080, and I definately think some of the performance stuttering and such I get in some newer games is very likely to be VRAM related as I'm playing a 1440p, but I couldn't justify upgrading to a 4080.

As with most of us who got 30** cards early however, back during the Crypto/COVID boom, you got what you could get, and Nvidia really abused that. My wife's 7900XT Nitro+ demolishes my 3080 across the board, with substantially higher average AND minimum performance, and I suspect the VRAM is PART of the reason.

Had a 3070 and a 3080...

Least said about 8Gb on the 3070 the better.

Replaced with a 4070 and it's going the way of the 3080 already.

And the 80 got replaced by the XTX, if you know you know.

 

[humbug]

Had a 3070 and a 3080...

Least said about 8Gb on the 3070 the better.

Replaced with a 4070 and it's going the way of the 3080 already.

And the 80 got replaced by the XTX, if you know you know.

Yeah i've heard that too, the thing was expensive for what it was but the 12GB is what ultimately ruled it out for me, if you're paying that much money for a GPU you don't want to be compromised with it like it cost half as much....

 

[Nexus18]

No Nvidia driver ever fixed that issue, i only sold the card 3 moths ago.

The game was telling me the settings are too high for the VRam i had.

Well that's from the devs themselves in terms of fixed issues right there in black and white....

And this:

Also, most of the time, the in game vram meters are pretty inaccurate e.g. resident evil remake games being the perfect example of this so I wouldn't pay much attention to these and instead would use msi ab and rivatuner to check the dedicated and allocated vram usage for yourself.

In game recommendations are never accurate, same way amd and nvidias recommended settings are never accurate. According to resident evil I should have been having issues because the game was suppose to be using 16+gb in the game meter reading yet in afterburner, only 7gb was being dedicated (10gb total being allocated)

@humbug

Why didn't you go for the 2080ti back in the day? You would have been future proofed surely and thus held onto the gpu for longer? After all, 11GB vram.

 

[TNA]

Again, no one has answered the main question yet..... Has the extra £750 proved to be worthwhile if just gaming?

They will all ignore this question because the answer means they lost the argument on the spot.

Again, would you have paid the "extra" £750 for a 24gb 3090 over a 10gb 3080 4 years ago? Do you think it has proved to be a worthwhile investment?

They won't answer

If the 4070 was a bit cheaper and 16GB it would have been my forth Nvidia card in a row,

Please stop saying this man. We all know you had a AMD card in between. You can keep saying you didn't. But you did. Loads of posts to prove it too.

Why didn't you go for the 2080ti back in the day? You would have been future proofed surely and thus held onto the gpu for longer? After all, 11GB vram.

Exactly.

You won't get an answer though.

At the end of the day if you know you know. Ba-dum-tss

 

[Bill Turnip]

This is getting a little silly. "Is the vram beneficial" has evolved into "I'm clever and did a clever".

Was the £750 worth it if just gaming? No, probably not but it gives additional options, and may be useful for particular scenarios other than gaming. Is spending, say, 2 grand on a gaming PC worth it when a number of games can be played on a £500 console? In all honesty probably not, unless you can justify it with... Other uses for the hardware, not just gaming.

It seems really difficult to actually discuss merits or otherwise of vram without this going on in between. This isn't a value for money question, it's a question of how beneficial the vram actually is. The value question is different, and I know where my money went.

 

[TNA]

This is getting a little silly. "Is the vram beneficial" has evolved into "I'm clever and did a clever".

Was the £750 worth it if just gaming? No, probably not but it gives additional options, and may be useful for particular scenarios other than gaming. Is spending, say, 2 grand on a gaming PC worth it when a number of games can be played on a £500 console? In all honesty probably not, unless you can justify it with... Other uses for the hardware, not just gaming.

It seems really difficult to actually discuss merits or otherwise of vram without this going on in between. This isn't a value for money question, it's a question of how beneficial the vram actually is. The value question is different, and I know where my money went.

But more is always better. If 3080 had 20gb vram instead and cost the same or even say £50 more I would be saying get the 20gb one. Well worth it.

But like hub and gamers nexus saying had the 7900 XT been priced on release what they eventually dropped it to not long after release it would have got much better reviews and sales. Cost does matter.

What is annoying is not being able to put a counter argument over without some people getting upset and reporting. Not saying you did by the way. But this has happened before and that is why mods end up getting involved. Like if mods post now I will know why