vram usage under 2560x1600 captured by GTX580 3GB x 2 SLI

[harmony]

Just some random scenes (not necessarily the most stressful):

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: 710MB

Alice Madness Returns: 1032MB

BFBC2: 1314MB

Crysis Warhead: 2003MB

Crysis 2: 1873MB

Dragon Age 2: 1550MB

Metro 2033: 1934MB

Napoleon Total War: 1802MB

Shogun 2: 1916MB

Unigine Heaven Benchmark: 1522MB

The Witcher 2: 1322MB

World of Warcraft Cataclysm: 1135MB

Conclusions: to maximise everything under 2560x1600, 1.5GB isn't affluent any longer. Whenever the vram usage is slightly above the dedicated vram available on each GPU, lag spikes/stuttering occur. Unless an enthusiast of 30" monitor/multiscreen is insensitive to lag spikes/stuttering, I recommend staying away from multi-GPU solutions with less than 2GB vram per GPU.

However, keep in mind that 2-way GTX580 SLI does not have sufficient GPU computing power under 2560x1600 for some games like Metro 2033, Shogun 2 etc. It is recommended to have at least 3 GTX580s or equivalent power from 28nm cards.

 

[harmony]

Useful information, thanks

I'm using SLI GTX480s at 2560, so it's good to have a reference. I've only seen full (1500mb+) VRAM usage in Crysis2 and metro2033, but I haven't played Napoleon or Shogun 2.

Out of interest, did you have Windows aero enabled during these tests? That eats 150-200Mb of VRAM, so is well worth disabling when VRAM usage is a concern.

I don't think AERO still occupies vram as long as the game is running in fullscreen mode. Proof:

Look at them crappy FPS.....LOL

Alice Madness Returns = 24fps
Dragon Age 2 = 20fps
Metro 2033 = 20fps
Shogun 2 = 30fps
Unigine Heaven Benchmark = 34fps
World of Warcraft Cataclysm = 39fps


Who gives a crap how much Vram is being used when your getting them super low FPS

Alice Madness Returns: PhysX killing fps. Most of the time it stays at 60 fps with vsync.
Dragon Age 2: See the GPU usage. Need more explanation?
WOW: You only get the same fps in Orgrimmar even if you run it under 1024x768 unless you are on a ghost server.

The only problematic games are Metro 2033 and Shogun 2.