vram usage under 1920x1200 captured by GTX580 3GB x 2 SLI

[drifting]

I no longer have many games still installed on my computer. Just did some simple tests on several games. I do not guarantee to cover the most stressful scenes.

Crysis Warhead ending scene: 1393MB

Dragon Age 2 boss fight: 1115MB

Metro 2033 early stage: 1443MB

Napoleon Total War first battle of Italy campaign: 1235MB

Total War Shogun 2 advanced tutorial of land battle: 1547MB

The Witcher 2 inside the inn in Chapter 1: 1152MB

Unigine Heaven Benchmark: 1101MB

So stop asking why I do not recommend putting GTX570s in SLI. Whether you believe there'd be lag spikes due to temporary vram shortage or not, I just don't like running out of resources. When I had my Intel X25-E 64GB and X25-M 160G G2, I still installed 8-12GB physical memory in order to disable page file for Windows, because I hate seeing the HDD light flashing indicating that the whole memory hierarchy is messing with secondary storage.

So far according to my short tests, only Shogun 2 explicitly exceeded 1.5GB vram usage under 19x12. I didn't enable PhysX in Metro 2033 , and I no longer have the save file of later chapters, and I didn't see it pushing over 1.5G.

My words are: for 1920x1200, 1GB vram is not sufficient, especially for DX10/11 games. I would discourage people to SLI/crossfire 1GB cards. The GTX570 was a decent card when it was first released, but when we shift into the DX11 era (as of today there're around 20 games supporting DX11), I could expect games to eat more and more vram, and thus for this reason I don't think it is very wise to put GTX570 in SLI for now. However, 1.5GB still seems sufficient in most cases, and I don't think 1.5GB users need to bother to upgrade to 3GB versions until 28nm process around the end of this year. 3GB is meant for resolutions like 2560x1600 or multiscreen.

 

[drifting]

Your statement about 1GB of vram is not enough for 1080p is totally wrong. I got a gtx 460 with only 768mb of vram, yet I can play crysis and metro 2033 and other demanding games such as Bad company 2, all on high and while using 1080p resolution.

I just finished crysis warhead, using enthusiast setting for all but shadows (Gamer) at 1080p. Got a solid 30-40 fps in DX10. If I switch to dx9, I get another 7-8fps boost. My GPU is using 750mb of vram while playing at these settings.

Games will adapt to how much vram your computer has, just like windows adapts to how much RAM you have. You might not get best performence, but you can still use the computer pretty easily.

I remember there was a guy who claims to be able to max out Metro 2033 with his 560 Ti 1GB x 2 SLI. However when he first uploaded his benchmark results he showed that he didn't use max settings at all, and when he made the benchmark done right, it was merely 30fps average with horrible lag spikes there. I have also tested Metro 2033 with my 5850 1GB as well, so no matter what you say about your GTX 460, I wouldn't care how it works. It may work for you, but not for me.

Regarding system memory: 6GB physical memory was not enough for me last year when I built my rig, because I need to run virtual machines but I hate pagefile. That's why I gave up aircoolers for CPU and went for Corsair H70 in order to give way for all memory slots on the mobo. You don't care about swapping, but I do, even on the fastest SSD available.

 

[drifting]

You don't say if your using any AA in these tests...

As using high AA settings will really increase the Vram useage..

Yes you are right, I was using max settings for each game, and turning down AA should decrease vram usage by a reasonable margin. But for games like Metro 2033, you only have the choice between No AA and 4AA... Anyway, this thread only serves as a reference to enthusiasts who'd like to max out everything.