If it was irrelevant then the 770 SLI minimums would not be so low and neither would the 690 minimums. After speaking with a 690 user from another forum he confirmed that he also had fps drops that stopped once he removed AA and then he was able to maintain 60 fps give or take. The main thing to note is the drops do not happen instantly. Only as you play the game more and move to different parts of the map. Something that is not going to be picked up in a 40 second bench.
The minimum is the same minimum as the 7970 GE. You're kind of going off point there:
a) VRAM isn't affected by action on screen but frame rate is. In fact I've seen usage decrease sharply while in battle so it's kind of independent of that rather than being linked
b) the previous bench being referred to has not been consistently measured - online gameplay by definition is varied
c) GameGPU in your words are trusted enough and their actual FPS readings are in line with what others are getting so there is no reason to take their results above or below what others have got
I think the problem is you've dug way too deep on this subject and you can't see the wood for the trees. Kaap wasn't limited by VRAM on his 690s at 1600p and the results from GameGPU suggest the same. The sweclockers one also isn't even showing the 2GB cards running out of VRAM. That's your interpretation based on your own bias.
Having bias isn't a criticism but you have to make sure you're seeing everything and not just seeing the results as you want to see them. Scientific bias and all that

Edit: I agree that mem usage will increase over time but we're not talking a massive amount here.
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