VRAM - AMD/Nvidia, why does it differ?

Ian Evey · 20 Dec 2013 at 19:47

humbug said:
He's right Greg, i can run setting in BF4 that fills my 2GB VRAM to the point where its not enough, a GTX 770 is a faster card than mine.

See here http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25518151&postcount=30

Thats Strange, I run bf4 at ultra settings at 1920x1200 and dont have any vram issues. Infact the game runs just as well as bf3 does.

Tonester0011 · 20 Dec 2013 at 19:49

Marine-RX179 said:
The point I was making got drag off into a different direction...

I was preferring to the point that people were advising others to go for the GTX670/GTX680 at average of £80-£100 higher in price, despite the GPU is arguably less powerful, with 1GB less vram, and small-bus size together with lower memory bandwidth comparing to the 7950/7970. If both sides were same price, then one could argue it doesn't matter going for the AMD with 3GB vram or Nvidia with 2GB vram...but the GTX670/GTX680 was priced at an average of £80-£100 higher in price during that time for nearly a whole year.

The 670 vs 7950 was never £100 difference, unless you're talking special offers or counting the cash value of the game bundles...? They've been pretty much 30-50 difference all the time.

The perceived value of less VRAM, smaller bus is moot as its still not needed or a hinderance, unless you're talking heavily modded Skyrim or 1600+ res. No difference between the 512 and 384bit busses of the 780/780ti and 290/290X, the extra bandwidth avaliable to the 290s even at eyefinity res doesn't show an advantage, meaning its just not required (yet).

Gregster · 20 Dec 2013 at 19:50

After playing BF4 at 1440P on a 6970 with 2GB to see if it ran out, it didn't and usage was at ~1900MB iirc (didn't bother writing it down), so if VRAM is running out for others at 1080P, they have something else amiss.

Adding mod after mod in Skyrim and then saying "See, Skyrim needs more VRAM" is laughable. For those with a 680 2GB, they could have sold that 6 months ago and bought a 7970 without spending any more of their own money and added loads more mods and then said "Blimey, this 3GB isn't enough VRAM" and then sold that, invested lots of money into a 6GB Titan and then added tons more mods till such a point they could say "Well i'le be.... 6GB isn't enough either"

Show me a vanilla game that runs out of VRAM at 1080P on a 2GB card and I will admit defeat

Don't go saying "Skyrim" with tons of mods, as we could all do that with any amount of VRAM if we wanted.

Ian Evey · 20 Dec 2013 at 19:57

Marine-RX179 said:
The point I was making got drag off into a different direction...

I was preferring to the point that people were advising others to go for the GTX670/GTX680 at average of £80-£100 higher in price, despite the GPU is arguably less powerful, with 1GB less vram, and small-bus size together with lower memory bandwidth comparing to the 7950/7970. If both sides were same price, then one could argue it doesn't matter going for the AMD with 3GB vram or Nvidia with 2GB vram...but the GTX670/GTX680 was priced at an average of £80-£100 higher in price during that time for nearly a whole year.

It wasn't untill later on in the 7950's life that it made sense to get a 7950 as AMD did wonders with the drivers, ( from a purely gaming / benchmark POV )

Out of the box the 670 was faster, so people saw that few fps more and thought it was worth it, me included, for £301 in august 2012 and still going strong, why would i 'worry' about something that is not happening to me

^ or anyone else by the looks of it. Except Humbug.

TheRealDeal · 20 Dec 2013 at 20:06

Tonester0011 said:
The 670 vs 7950 was never £100 difference, unless you're talking special offers or counting the cash value of the game bundles...? They've been pretty much 30-50 difference all the time.

The perceived value of less VRAM, smaller bus is moot as its still not needed or a hinderance, unless you're talking heavily modded Skyrim or 1600+ res. No difference between the 512 and 384bit busses of the 780/780ti and 290/290X, the extra bandwidth avaliable to the 290s even at eyefinity res doesn't show an advantage, meaning its just not required (yet).

The larger bus on the r9 290x does give an advantage because according to a few reviews it can match a 780ti up at 4k and eyefinity resolutions where as we all know the ti is the faster card at normal resolutions.

Marine-RX179 · 20 Dec 2013 at 20:37

Tonester0011 said:
The 670 vs 7950 was never £100 difference, unless you're talking special offers or counting the cash value of the game bundles...? They've been pretty much 30-50 difference all the time.

Nope. The 7950 was sitting at around £220-£240 for long period of time, the 7970 was around £300-£330, and the GTX670 was around £330-£340. The GTX670 with custom cooler dropped to £299 on offer at one point, but it bounced back up to £320-£330 after a while, and it was only the reference GTX670 with the short PCB and cheap reference cooler that had deals of £280-£290 popping up every once in a while. It was only till the launch of the slower GTX760 that the £250 GTX670 began to appear.

Kaapstad · 20 Dec 2013 at 20:48

TheRealDeal said:
The larger bus on the r9 290x does give an advantage because according to a few reviews it can match a 780ti up at 4k and eyefinity resolutions where as we all know the ti is the faster card at normal resolutions.

The 290X bus may actually be less efficient @1600p and below, this is what I found comparing the 290X to a Titan on the TR bench.

I will be doing a lot more testing after Xmas using anything up to 4 v 4 way setups to really test the buses. The TR result may have just been a one off but it did hint that faster VRAM chips are more important than wider buses for normal resolutions, this needs to be tested a lot more though before reaching any conclusions.

At the moment my new 900D case has turned up today so I have got an AMD leviathan to build (interrupted by consuming large amounts of alcohol) over the next week or so.

Gregster · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:10

Marine-RX179 said:
Nope. The 7950 was sitting at around £220-£240 for long period of time, the 7970 was around £300-£330, and the GTX670 was around £330-£340. The GTX670 with custom cooler dropped to £299 on offer at one point, but it bounced back up to £320-£330 after a while, and it was only the reference GTX670 with the short PCB and cheap reference cooler that had deals of £280-£290 popping up every once in a while. It was only till the launch of the slower GTX760 that the £250 GTX670 began to appear.

You are cherry picking prices to suit, so so will I

http://web.archive.org/web/20130829...t.php?prodid=GX-299-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914

http://web.archive.org/web/20130829...id=GX-275-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1673

670 at £70 cheaper on the same day....Crazy pricing from AMD

LtMatt · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:18

Kaapstad · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:19

LtMatt said:

Have you decided to go for the 290s ?

Marine-RX179 · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:36

Gregster said:
You are cherry picking prices to suit, so so will I

http://web.archive.org/web/20130829...t.php?prodid=GX-299-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914

http://web.archive.org/web/20130829...id=GX-275-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1673

670 at £70 cheaper on the same day....Crazy pricing from AMD

Cherry picking? I was talking about price over time exactly as it was, whereas you are quoting EOL price...so who's cherry-picking now? :rolleyes:

So what it was cheaper during that 1 month of EOL period comparing to very overpriced for nearly entire year? Also not to mention the EOL pricing of 7950 and 7970 also came not long after that....think it was something like 1 week later.

Anyway, again this is not what I wanted to talk about. As I said I find it annoying that people giving irresponsible advice encouraging others to get less for their money's worth, just because Nvidia's shiny logo is on it.

whyscotty · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:37

Kaapstad said:
At the moment my new 900D case has turned up today so I have got an AMD leviathan to build (interrupted by consuming large amounts of alcohol) over the next week or so.

Drunken watercooling - NOT recommended

Sin_Chase · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:41

Darujhistan said:
Me too and I think SKYRIM has a well known bug @ over 3Gb IIRC, the game just crashes.

My take on NV's RAM rip-off has always been the same, whether it is required or not, cards costing £400-£500 should come with a minimum of 3GB, the 7950's at half that price all had 3GB.

I paid £184 for my card and it has as much RAM as cards costing more than double when I purchased it almost 2 years ago.

That's cannot be right.

If nVidia were using a 384bit bus they would have used 3GB and not 2GB. They used a 256bit bus so their reasonable options were 2GB or 4GB.

4GB is overkill for 99% of the cards they would have sold and would have bumped the price for 1% of the niche market who would have needed it. 2GB was the sensible option.

This is such a simple concept yet people cannot grasp it.

Nobody is complaining that AMD used 3GB on a 384bit bus instead of lopsided 4GB or an even spread 6GB. Let's be honest, at the sort of multi screen/multicard/huge resolution circumstances we are talking about (that need the VRAM) the difference between 2GB and 3GB is somewhat marginal.

Cards with big VRAM exist for the niche who want it. Otherwise cards are designed for the highest common denominator.

It's absolutely nothing about "ripping off" it's all about sensible choice of components for the target market of the card and the capabilities it can offer.

People need to stop complaining that a GPU does not have for all what only 1% need on the basis that "It should just have it" and expect that prices remain the same.

TheRealDeal · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:42

Kaapstad said:
The 290X bus may actually be less efficient @1600p and below, this is what I found comparing the 290X to a Titan on the TR bench.

I will be doing a lot more testing after Xmas using anything up to 4 v 4 way setups to really test the buses. The TR result may have just been a one off but it did hint that faster VRAM chips are more important than wider buses for normal resolutions, this needs to be tested a lot more though before reaching any conclusions.

At the moment my new 900D case has turned up today so I have got an AMD leviathan to build (interrupted by consuming large amounts of alcohol) over the next week or so.

Good stuff mate look forward to seeing your results.

Kaapstad · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:45

whyscotty said:
Drunken watercooling - NOT recommended

Last year I was doing a build on Xmas eve morning, I filled up the waterloop to test for the first time and it leaked out over the motherboard. I left the mobo/pc to dry out while I did some serious alcohol consumption for the next four days. When I came back, I was well soaked but the mobo was dry and the PC booted up first time.

Gregster · 20 Dec 2013 at 21:46

Marine-RX179 said:
Cherry picking? I was talking about price over time exactly as it was, whereas you are quoting EOL price...so who's cherry-picking now?

So what it was cheaper during that 1 month of EOL period comparing to very overpriced for nearly entire year? Also not to mention the EOL pricing of 7950 and 7970 also came not long after that....think it was something like 1 week later.

Fair play

http://web.archive.org/web/20120323...id=GX-148-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1673

£401 Vs £330

http://web.archive.org/web/20120515...=GX-164-MS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=2294

Both launch prices and the 670 was the faster at launch but did come with 2GB of VRAM as opposed to the 3GB of VRAM but for 1080P gamers, they were getting a great deal with the 670.

Anyways, we seem to be going off on a tangent here and the original point of 2GB being enough for 1080P still seems to stand. Hell, even 2GB for 1440 is enough and possibly 1600P but I wouldn't recommend a 2GB 670 card to a 1440P or higher user, as the bus is the achilles heel

Marine-RX179 · 20 Dec 2013 at 22:12

Gregster said:
Fair play

http://web.archive.org/web/20120323...id=GX-148-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1673

£401 Vs £330

http://web.archive.org/web/20120515...=GX-164-MS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=2294

Both launch prices and the 670 was the faster at launch but did come with 2GB of VRAM as opposed to the 3GB of VRAM but for 1080P gamers, they were getting a great deal with the 670.

The 7950 was not at £400, it was launched at around £330~£350. Ask anyone with a better memory they can confirm that for you. In fact, here's something to jock you memory:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2012/01/31/amd-radeon-hd-7950-3gb-review/

Also looking at the pre-order date for 23 March 2012 on that 7950, the only reason for that high price was probably because it was the first batch 7950 with the custom cooler available, so it has a price premium similar to the price premium of the custom cooler 290 on pre-order over the much cheaper reference 7950...also not to mention the GTX680 not yet hit the market at the time. You seriously comparing the reference GTX670 with the short PCB and cheap cooler and its pricing in May 2012 to premium custom cooled pre-order 7950's pricing Feb~March 2013?

By the time it hit May, the pricing of the 7950/7970 has already been slash by huge margain, as AMD slashed the pricing of both the 7950 and 7970 almost straight away as soon as Nvidia launched the GTX680 on the 22nd of March.

Ian Evey · 20 Dec 2013 at 22:16

Marine-RX179 said:
Cherry picking? I was talking about price over time exactly as it was, whereas you are quoting EOL price...so who's cherry-picking now?

So what it was cheaper during that 1 month of EOL period comparing to very overpriced for nearly entire year? Also not to mention the EOL pricing of 7950 and 7970 also came not long after that....think it was something like 1 week later.

Anyway, again this is not what I wanted to talk about. As I said I find it annoying that people giving irresponsible advice encouraging others to get less for their money's worth, just because Nvidia's shiny logo is on it.

Had the same debate many moons ago re 670 and 7950, and still to this day people that bought both cards are not unhappy with their purchase.
If it annoys you that people bought a 2gb 670 card that runs all current games as fast as ( if not faster ) than a 3gb 7950, then i for one am sorry for your annoyance.

whyscotty · 20 Dec 2013 at 22:17

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Marine-RX179 · 20 Dec 2013 at 22:19

whyscotty said:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us

These are pricing before the GTX680 hit the market as I mentioned above. Nobody forgets about that dark period of AMD's horrendously overpricing their 79xx cards when they had pretty much the whole market to themselves (though during that period they barely able to shift those overpriced cards at high volume...I still remember OcUK had the 7950 or 7970 on daily deal with 20 of them and it was still 20 there at the end of the day

).

Ian Evey said:
Had the same debate many moons ago re 670 and 7950, and still to this day people that bought both cards are not unhappy with their purchase.
If it annoys you that people bought a 2gb 670 card that runs all current games as fast as ( if not faster ) than a 3gb 7950, then i for one am sorry for your annoyance.

Clearly you either didn't read my previous post, or delibrately taken my posts out of context attempting to make me look sad and pathetic:

Marine-RX179 said:
I was preferring to the point that people were advising others to go for the GTX670/GTX680 at average of £80-£100 higher in price, despite the GPU is arguably less powerful, with 1GB less vram, and small-bus size together with lower memory bandwidth comparing to the 7950/7970. If both sides were same price, then one could argue it doesn't matter going for the AMD with 3GB vram or Nvidia with 2GB vram...but the GTX670/GTX680 was priced at an average of £80-£100 higher in price during that time for nearly a whole year.