VRAM usage.

[Michaeljcox24]

Wondering whether to buy a 580 for arkham city, and in the process of doing so, wondered if the 3GB would future proof me.

So I ran heaven, AA max and anisotropy max, and VRAM usage was maxing out at 1090MB

So with my GTX470 I should be ok?

How come I was only getting 20 odd fps?

low core clock? I had it at 850.

this suggests to me that a 1.5GB version, with a faster core clock @ 1920 by 1080 would be the right decision to make.

Am I right?

 

[harmony]

Typically with a single 40nm GPU you are unlikely to run into vram shortage issues (because usually bottlenecked by GPU power), unless you do things like WoW dual-instance or RAGE 16k texture. In terms of performance / price ratio you don't need a large vram card.

However when you go SLI it's recommended to get sufficient vram as the vram size does not stack up due to the AFR mechanism. It's always better safe than sorry to allow sufficient headroom if you can afford it.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Ah

Running a P5Q deluxe but will upgrade when IVY hits the shores, a 3GB 580 would be a good decision purely because SLI would be optimised?

 

[harmony]

If you can wait until Ivy Bridge then I'd say waiting for the 28nm flagship cards would be a better choice.

The GTX580 3GB cards in SLI are great for high resolutions like 2560x1600, but at 1920x1200 these are for geeks and perfectionists to run extreme situations like suggested in this thread.

 

[D13]

you have to bear in mind with things like vram/core clock is only part of what makes other cards faster/slower.
e.g a modern dual core cpu clocked at 1.5ghz will totally smash a older 3.8ghz pentium in performance because the differences in architecture mean it achieve more per clock
so a 580 is not just faster than a 470 because of vram and clock speed

e.g the cheapest gtx580 on overclockers

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-141-GW&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1812

- Core Clock: 783MHz
it will totally clobber a 470 at 850mhz performance wise

 

[Scougar]

470 @ 850 is still a great card. Personally... I wouldn't bother getting anything like a 580 or 580 SLI until you uprate your CPU. A faster CPU for SLI REALLY helps, where as a single card, it has less of an effect.

I really don't think you 'need' more than a 470 at your clock speeds right now.


BTW.. heaven is a touch benchmark, especially if you set everything on max. There is a 'heaven benchmark' thread in this same graphics section. Set your card to those settings to compare your system with others


BTW.. I've got a GTX 560Ti for SLI and it's around the same performance level as your card, and it's more than enough for BF3, as long as you don't go crazy with the settings (Some things on ultra, AA off, FSAA on, 1920*1200 res, ultra most things) getting 60 to 90fps roughly, so I just turned VSync on, and it never goes dips Very happy. Your's will do just fine.