^
Why do people steer off and recommend cards he hasn't put into the equation without asking how he's narrowed it down to these two cards?? It's ridiculous! At least ask before you start recommending 7970's, 7950's, 660Ti's or whatever else you want to throw into the mix....
Basically I've narrowed down my choices to two cards (hopefully)
Its between
KFA2 GeForce GTX 670 EX OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
and
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 Windforce 3X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
As far as I can tell form research the only notable difference is the VRAM, it basicly seems to boil down to 2gb vs 4gb.
I'm looking at running two monitors and possibly expanding to SLI when the price drops which is leaning me towards the 4gb.
Any help would be appreciated.
Unless you have a tri-SLI platform (Sandybridge-E) then you are very likely to run out of GPU power on a 2 card SLI set-up before the extra headroom on VRAM comes into play.
I'll try to explain it simply from a minimum settings starting point:
- You increase settings which increases the amount of work the GPU needs to do and this causes your FPS to decrease (obviously
)
- Depending on the setting increased the VRAM usage will also go up
- In games today - bar an exception or two which I will come to - games will get to the point where the FPS is too low (running out of GPU power) before they can max out the settings which would see them run out of VRAM
Example - BF3 in triple screen mode (used because its VRAM usage
AND GPU usage is high):
On an ultra preset, 5800*1080 resolution, with:
- no MSAA: Fine FPS (averaging way above 80) and around 1500MB VRAM used
- 2x MSAA: Fine FPS. Averaging around 60 but with minimums starting to creep around the 40s. Around 1700MB VRAM used
- 4X MSAA: Poor FPS. Minimums in the 20s and averages around 50. The averages are OK but the minimums were game breaking for me. Around 1950MB VRAM used
What you can deduce from this is that yes, it is possible to run out of VRAM with 2GB cards. Nobody here with half a brain will disagree with you there. But I for one do not play with minimum FPS's in the 20's. The FPS in the 20's were caused by running out of GPU power even with 2 heavily overclocked 680's.
I can't run the settings which cause me to get close to the VRAM limit due to unplayable FPS from the lack of GPU power.
My point is on a single monitor set-up then there isn't even really a debate. 2GB is more than enough unless you play a lot of Skyrim with a lot of mods enabled. People like to talk saying it runs of VRAM with 2GB but you must understand that it takes a huge number of mods to cause this. And these are afterall, unofficial mods.
Multi-monitor is a little different but I feel from my testing in BF3 which as mentioned is heavy on the VRAM
and GPU that GPU power is going to limit way, way before VRAM does.
Short story, get the 2GB unless you're going tri-SLI
and triple screen.
