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What to get

Looking myself ..... Super prices on the 7950s/670s but memory ?

Which is why I'm thinking that a 4gig 670 should give you a bit more longevity as future games will most probably eat more bits (?)
 
That's what the manufacturers want you to think, so people will pay a premium for what is largely a useless memory upgrade. Without higher bandwidth the 4GB 670s aren't very useful at all over the 2GB ones. The 3GB/384bit 7950s are far, far better in that respect.
 
As 4GB cards are so rare I can't see any games needing that for regular set ups. The 4GB is useful for playing across 2-3 screens, but you run into bandwidth limitations then, so it kind of defeats the purpose. The extra memory over the 2GB may become somewhat useful, but you're paying a large amount for it.

For a 1080p/1440p single display, the 3GB on the AMD cards or GTX 780 will become very useful over the next year I think, and a limitation with the 670/760/770 cards.
 
Subliminal Aura said:
I thought it was more about storing textures not actual fps bandwidth ?
Click to expand...

I had a read of this which helped me understand.

'Lastly, 2 things effect bandwidth when looking at the specs. Memory clock and memory interface. Bandwidth will determine how much textures and such you can jam through your graphics card per frame pretty much. What's nice is higher bandwidth means more efficiently your Vram is being used. 2GB video cards with 256bit interfaces will use more Vram than a 2 or 3GB card with 384bit interfaces

3.) Vram? When is it important and when is it pointless?

Vram is useless in lower end tier cards like a GT 630. Yes they make a 4GB version, but it's such a low end card you may only use 1GB MAX in any scenario. Vram or video memory is the graphics cards dedicate set of ram which is used to render textures, and the entire frame itself. As stated earlier, things like higher resolution, high amounts of textures and anti-aliasing require more and more Vram as time moves on. We are to the point where a lot of gamers are going beyond 1920x1080, to 2560x1440 as the prices of those monitor's are now down to $270.00 USD. The higher the resolution, the more dense the image, the more space it will take up in Video memory to render. 2GB for higher end gamers is actually not enough anymore and as 4K hit's 4GB+ is going to be the new standard. However, as I stated earlier, video cards like the GTX 770 with its higher bandwidth will do much better than a GTX 660ti or even GTX 680 because it can process more textures quicker and not eat up Vram during the early stages of rendering.

Right now 2GB is about all you need for 1920x1080. If you're looking to go 2560x1440 or multi-monitor, then you really should consider SLI/Xfire or at least 3GB of Vram or more. However, getting a GTX Titan is a bad idea because it's a hybrid professional/gaming graphics card. There are applications out there in the professional world where it can use 6GB of Vram without requiring a lot of graphical horse power to support it. In gaming, 6GB of textures would require TWICE the power the titan has to execute. A card like a GTX 770 4GB isn't a BAD idea, but note, it probably won't be able to utilize the 4GB but it should be able to handle more than 2GB with ease given the improvements in the GK104 architecture.'
 
Ordered the MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III Boost Edition 3072MB get it friday. Cheers lads for the input.
 
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