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VRAM size - what about the other specs?

ninjag

ninjag

ninjag

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18 Sep 2012
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684
Was just wondering about VRAM and the focus tends to be on the amount of VRAM being priority. But can a lesser amount of VRAM be ok if the memory interface width and bandwidth is higher?

For example, 8GB VRAM with a 256-bit interface and 448.0GB/s bandwidth vs 12GB VRAM with a 192-bit interface and 360.0GB/s bandwidth. Which would perform better, does application matter etc?
 
it somewhat depends on application, but the main problem is fitting everything into the amount of VRAM. the point is that at a certain point all the current needed textures etc dont fit into 8GB, so you have to have 12GB.
The fast 8 gb vs slow 8gb would be better for when the engine can stream in higher res textures, but its still going to be reliant on your storage subsystem/system RAM for this.


Just look at AI performance. if it fits into your VRAM it tends to run image generation/text that is counted in seconds, or minutes. As soon as it can't fit into VRAM and needs to swap things in and out, that goes up to hours/days
 
Assuming you're talking about gaming, I think there are too many variables to purely look at the GPU specs on paper to evaluate a card's performance. The overall system, from CPU, RAM, hard drive/SATA SSD/nvme and the application/game optimisation and single core vs multi core performance etc. all collectively makes a GPU's raw specs a somewhat useless metric.

That being said, I think one card's slightly bumped up compensation specs with less VRAM is unlikely to give you a huge difference compared to the one with more VRAM. Probably in the single percentile differences. I'm kind of pulling that out of no where though, so happy to be corrected on this.
 
basically (according to my understanding)...
- the VRAM amount effects the performance ceiling i.e. you run out of VRAM and performance drops off a cliff presumably because it has to load it in from system RAM or storage
- bandwidth and speed really comes into play the higher the resolution you go or conversely the lower the resolution the less it matters where you really notice a difference is powering the render resolutions for high end PCVR
 
There's a lot of frothing about 8GB cards existing and youtube channels have been baiting views by doing videos showing that if you try to use more than 8GB of memory on an 8GB card it won't run as well. Cutting edge research.

Since the dawn of time, gamers have been aware that graphics settings can be lowered to improve game performance. Apparently in 2025 this is now an alien concept.

However if making the workload suitable for the card is not an option then ideally you magic up some more money and get a card with enough memory to suit the workload.
 
Ok so I feel like all the previous answers have just over complicated what is a relatively simple answer.

The card with the faster VRAM and bus etc will perform better than a card with slower VRAM/bus even if it has more vram providing the cards vram capacity is not exceeded. Once VRAM capacity is exceeded then performance will drop considerably. Faster VRAM and larger bus will not allow for more data to be stored in the same about of VRAM
 
SpudMaster said:
Ok so I feel like all the previous answers have just over complicated what is a relatively simple answer.

The card with the faster VRAM and bus etc will perform better than a card with slower VRAM/bus even if it has more vram providing the cards vram capacity is not exceeded. Once VRAM capacity is exceeded then performance will drop considerably. Faster VRAM and larger bus will not allow for more data to be stored in the same about of VRAM
Click to expand...

This is the part I was wondering about. If it's going slightly over the capacity, can the faster bus etc not clear it etc quick enough to compensate? But I'm guessing that at best that might only be the case if it's only going very slightly over, whereas several GB over would be a problem?
 
AMD tried that.

Fury X, a 4GB HBM card with a 4096 bit interface, at a time when alternatives ranged from 4 to 12GB.

It was "ok" but AMD decided HBM was too good for gaming peasants and we never saw it again.
 
ninjag said:
This is the part I was wondering about. If it's going slightly over the capacity, can the faster bus etc not clear it etc quick enough to compensate? But I'm guessing that at best that might only be the case if it's only going very slightly over, whereas several GB over would be a problem?
Click to expand...

No it doesn't work like that unfortunately. You run out of VRAM and performance tank. You could go from 100fps to single digits.

Hotwired said:
AMD tried that.

Fury X, a 4GB HBM card with a 4096 bit interface, at a time when alternatives ranged from 4 to 12GB.

It was "ok" but AMD decided HBM was too good for gaming peasants and we never saw it again.
Click to expand...

Vega GPUs used HBM also.
 
Fitting everything into vRAM also depends on how much the game WANTS to do things SMART. With SSDs/nVME drives these days, it can stream a lot more data constantly, however, the games chose not to do it and prefer to just dump everything into vRAM. Result? 8GB runs into problems, no matter how fast it is.
 
Hardware unboxed tested this, running out of vram with a PCIe 5.0 card on a system running very fast DDR5 RAM is less bad than on a PCIe 4.0 card running on a system with slower DDR4. It's still not good, you really want to avoid running out of VRAM but it's the difference between literally unplayable and just unenjoyable..

 
I think it was the 3060 which prompted my interest with this and that's where I got the numbers from in my opening post.

The 3060 Ti had 8GB VRAM but it was 256-bit with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth, whereas the 3060 with 12GB of VRAM was only 192-bit and 360.0 GB/s bandwidth. But I'm sure the reviews said the 3060 Ti performed better despite the lesser VRAM, although I'm not sure if other factors were at play such as GPU clock speeds etc.
 
ninjag said:
Was just wondering about VRAM and the focus tends to be on the amount of VRAM being priority. But can a lesser amount of VRAM be ok if the memory interface width and bandwidth is higher?
Click to expand...

No. Assorted sites have shown the performance disparity and game spikes when you run out of VRAM. The bandwidth of the PCIe bus is vastly slower than the VRAM bandwidth of a modern GPU: 64GB/s for a v4 x16 slot vs 640 GB/s on a RX 9070 XT. That's a 10x difference; you're not going to get faster than the native VRAM.
 
3060 Ti is still faster than 3060 across the board, except in certain games 8-12GB usage scenarios you basically have to specifically target. And even then not always slower.
Its not like either of these is max settings 4k card, but the 8GB one is still on top
 
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