vRAM for 3440 x 1440?

[Matthew Blake]

With all the arguments on 10GB vs 16GB AMD vs Nvidia going on I'm trying to work what I really need for 3440 x 1440. All the discussions of things like 12GB in Godfall seem to focus on 4k. I don't want to game in 4k because I won't be able to afford a high refresh rate monitor in 4k that I will be happy with for years to come.

How much is needed for 3440 x 1440 at ultra mega super high detail going forwards? It is about 60% the pixels for 4k is it as simple as 60% the memory? What I don't know is if I run 3440 x 1440 rather than 4k will all the textures be at a lower resolution in vRAM too and thus take less space, or will they be identical in which case why does 4k take so much more memory than 1080p, surely the graphics card isn't storing 20+ rendered frames in its vRAM as a single frame should only be ~32MB uncompressed at 4k?

 

[Poneros]

Afaik the main difference will be framebuffer size, but you should expect near the same vram requirements as 4K (seems to be 0.5-1 GB less for 3440x1440). Textures should be unchanged and will depend solely on the texture quality setting you choose in the game. Keep in mind that with 21:9 AR vs 16:9 you will also have more things in view, so GPU & CPU stress will be different between the two.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Memory doesn't quite scale perfectly with pixel count. Some visual effects do scale per pixel, but some are fixed cost. Anti-Aliasing for example scales per-pixel where as texture size doesn't. Godfall needing 12Gb has not been verified yet and for reasons I won't go into, should be subject to some skepticism until we can test it.

It's my personal opinion that 10Gb will be completely fine for your needs. The stress future games will put on the GPU will cause that to be the bottlebeck before memory runs out. Whether or not you should pick up a 6800XT vs a 3080 is really more down to feature set, drivers, ray tracing performance and other ancillary things.

 

[Krono5]

iId say it depends on how long you intend to use the card. I remember when the GTX 670 2GB and Radeon 7950 3GB came out I ended up going with the 670 as it had slightly better performance but stayed with it for a number of years. In retrospect I would have been better off with the 7950 as the 2GB became an issue at 1080p and AMD tends to age like fine wine anyway.

If you're going to upgrade in 1-2 years anyway it won't be much of an issue and other features/overall performance is much more important. Otherwise the 6000 series GPU even if it is slighly less performance on release would imho be a better buy.

 

[Matthew Blake]

Ta guys, this is exactly what I was looking for

 

[Quartz]

All the discussions of things like 12GB in Godfall seem to focus on 4k.

It's not 4k screen resolution that's the issue with Godlike but their 4k x 4k textures.