So it's not worth 2 x 670s at 4GB total?
Not unless you intend on buying three 4GB 670's. They are only viable when you have enough GPU grunt to push the amount of VRAM that is required to run max details.
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So it's not worth 2 x 670s at 4GB total?
You haven't played that res have you? No, so don't talk and recommend things you haven't tried and tested especially when you're wrong.
I wouldn't be throwing more money for high res gaming and being stuck on 2Gb, could become useless very soon due to the raft of titles encroaching very close to the limit of 2Gb if not already exceeding it already-Hitman@1080p max MSAA for one(although it will need Titan or 2 79's to manage anyway).
Not unless you intend on buying three 4GB 670's. They are only viable when you have enough GPU grunt to push the amount of VRAM that is required to run max details.
Not very fair bud.
You told me I was wrong in our 7970 v 7950 performance difference debate, despite myself testing 7970 v 7950 and you only testing a 7950 v nothing.
Do the ATI cards make better use of more VRAM then? As they come with 3GB or 6GB in the extreme?
And at the moment, I am playing Skyrim with about 50 mods...
Regardless of what people will have you believe you need 3gb plus for higher res gaming
I cba to reiterate what's been said, I run 2 2gb 680s @ 3 x 1080p, you have to turn settings down anyway for demanding games as they don't have the balls. A single 4gb 670 would fail hard.
Hitman has proven to be sensitive to VRAM capacity, and since we are evaluating a 6GB video card, we hope to see some benefit in this game. We weren't disappointed either in that regard, but it had a bigger impact under SLI.
With the GeForce GTX TITAN we were able to play this game at the highest in-game settings with no less than 4X MSAA enabled at 2560x1600. To this date, no other video card has been capable of giving us that level of performance. The 2GB GTX 680 struggles at 4X MSAA because of its VRAM limit, and the 3GB HD 7970 GHz Edition struggles because it just isn't fast enough at 4X MSAA in this game.
We also dropped the resolution to 1920x1080 to see how the TITAN performs on 1080p displays. We really wanted to push the video cards, so we opted to run the game at the highest 8X MSAA level at 1080p to see if it would be playable. The only two video cards that could even do this were the 6GB TITAN and 3GB 7970 GE, the 2GB GTX 680 was not capable of running this setting due to its small memory footprint.
Do the ATI cards make better use of more VRAM then? As they come with 3GB or 6GB in the extreme?
And at the moment, I am playing Skyrim with about 50 mods...
Been playing around with Skyrim mods and all was good until I installed the Texture Pack Combiner, some stuttering started.
Low and behold I fired up Afterburner and was shocked to see my Vram usage sitting @3995Mb@1080p which of course is 1997Mb each gpu.
The cards in question are 6950>70 CrossFire running 950MHz/1300MHz, these are plenty fast at anything I have thrown at them@1080p, including Skyrim until the texture pack combiner was installed.
I swapped in a 7970 Wind Force and fired up Skyrim again, no stuttering but the vram is now hitting ~2750Mb.
As imo, the 7970 I used is slower than my CrossFire setup@1080p, it's definitely not gpu grunt at fault, they ran out of Vram!
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At this point I should add that this is all being done in 3D via Tridef.
Mods used along with the Texture Combiner(and required files) are:
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In game settings:
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Not advocating/advising anyone rips out gpu's to replace a 2Gb gpu at all for 1080p gaming, the aim of the post is to be informative and let anyone know that a modded Skyrim can breach 2Gb vram@1080p.
Texture Combiner available here:
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/20801/#content
@rusty,
I was speaking to the op, but yes, I'm stating that 2Gb 67/68's aren't enough, I'm not even convinced that the 4Gb's are enough as you need 3 of them, that's why I mention 2 79's or Titan, they have a large enough mem bus/vram, and since they are faster at higher res than the 6 series= extra grunt to help cope better.
Your findings last August or so=outdated and were from the best you could get to challenge the 2Gb limit=BF3, but this is the middle of March and like I said then and I'm saying now, it wasn't enough.
BF3 has been surpassed by vram requirements I put 'may' in to save some grief, but no I got it anyway, guy asks for an opinion, so I gave it, so heres why
Single 7970 not fast enough, but 2 of them will be, whereas, 2 2Gb's will still struggle and the game still has another 4X MSAA available to select.
The only 2 cards@1080p, playable had more than 2Gb and both on the larger memory bus.
We debated till the cows came home on the 7970-50 performance difference despite yourself not using both, that was what was meant in regards to telling diagro that his opinion wasn't good enough.
Of course they do, when a 2 GB card hits the wall in Skyrim, this happens
Contrary to what was said earlier, if AMD wanted the 79's to struggle with memory, they would have went the cheaper route and put them on the same memory bus as Nvidia and made 2Gb/4Gb versions.
They didn't(maybe because they know the capabilities of the consoles peeking out from the corner up the road), they made a higher memory bus to cope with pushing out higher bandwidth, which is a design decision that will see the 79's carry on where the 6 series struggles-rusty said BF3 was 27% faster and with newer titles=more demanding...
I am so bored of this pointless VRAM argument.
Should i sell and step uo to the 4GB version? Buy another of the same and go SLI? maybe the 680 2 or 4GB?
Rusty, the op can decide, there's no point trying to correct my first quote you used, when your arguing the same point I stated, I'm missing no point in regards to vram, besides the cows are in.
IMO, it's bullish to say the least, that 2Gb/256-bit is enough not knowing what's coming tomorrow when it's at/busted the limit just now, even more so when the devs are saying the PS4 is going to surpass current PC's capabilities at first-like they done last time, initially the PC couldn't match the 360, it didn't happen overnight either.
It's tiresome at times.
What no one seems to grasp is that I'm talking about what 2 X 3Gb 384 bit can achieve that 2 X 2Gb 256 bit can't.
I already said earlier-with your results you posted above, the most demanding title is BF3, that has been superseded in regards to vram.
If the op wasn't going to buy any future titles then I wouldn't have shared my opinion, but no doubt he will.
There has been/definitely will be more vram hungry titles since BF3.
The 79's are different to the 6's too, what takes more than 2 6's, doesn't equate the same for the 79's all the way down the line.
It's all well pointing out that we think/don't think, at the end of the day, again, it's my opinion, the same argument happened with 570's and looked what happened there and remember there wasn't next gen consoles in the equation that time.
IMO, it's bullish to say the least, that 2Gb/256-bit is enough not knowing what's coming tomorrow when it's at/busted the limit just now, even more so when the devs are saying the PS4 is going to surpass current PC's capabilities at first-like they done last time, initially the PC couldn't match the 360, it didn't happen overnight either.
Heck I've started Tomb Raider today and I'm hitting 3-3.2gb Vram usage at 1440p Max details bar AA which is set to FXAA
Well I'm talking about 2/4GB 6 series. What is faster out of the 7900 series and 600 series across 3 screens is so clear cut I'm clearly not on about that.
Edit: this is the OPs question Tommy. You'd do we'll to stay on topic:
Should i sell and step uo to the 4GB version? Buy another of the same and go SLI? maybe the 680 2 or 4GB? I'm a little lost.
I thought the 670 was a better card than the 7950? I'd also read some negative points to their drivers, and I'm not sure if there's any advantage with multi-display with AMD?
I wouldn't be throwing more money for high res gaming and being stuck on 2Gb, could become useless very soon due to the raft of titles encroaching very close to the limit of 2Gb if not already exceeding it already-Hitman@1080p max MSAA for one(although it will need Titan or 2 79's to manage anyway).
@rusty,
I was speaking to the op, but yes, I'm stating that 2Gb 67/68's aren't enough, I'm not even convinced that the 4Gb's are enough as you need 3 of them, that's why I mention 2 79's or Titan, they have a large enough mem bus/vram, and since they are faster at higher res than the 6 series= extra grunt to help cope better.