When will 4gig gpu be needed

I'm still building and I want to get the 4gig version of my graphics card but will it be necessary. How long before developers really start utilizing it.

Probably someday

Which card?

The current GPUs that are 2 GB by default like the 770 aren't powerful enough to take advantage of 4 GB anyway. It's only worth it if you intend to SLI it, only then will it be fast enough to even take advantage of 4GB of VRAM.

This, and it's going to be useful for 4k gaming.

If your buying a gtx 760 or 770 4gb version, don't its not worth it

you guys read my mind. I was planning on getting the 770 4gb but I will have to reconsider

For 1080 gaming 2gb is plenty, 4gb models only worth if your SLI'ing and even then the 256bit will limit some aspects. You should look into the GTX 780 which are $500 it has 3gb buffer along with 384bit bus much better ratio.

I would like a 780 but I don't the money to spend on just that. I'm splitting it with the rest of the rig. I will still have an expensive rig but the money I save on getting the 770 helps me get the rest of the rig.

I got a 770 GTX 4GB Windforce from Gigabyte and it lets me run Titanfall on High Settings at 1080p and 60fps steady.

I have no idea if the 2GB version would be the same or not, but I read thy if you enable full texture quality on Titanfall or some other game (BF4?), it would fill up the 2GB really fast.

Mine came with AC4 too, so I'm happy.

I upgraded from a 460 GTX, so yea, it's a huge upgrade for me! More than double the benchmark results. Triple in some tests.

TitanFall runs fine with 1gb cards, the game I/O calls for textures aren't as load-intensive. It is the Source Engine. Even with BF4 with 2gb is enough if you dont use moderate to extreme amounts of AA.

Most games adapt to the amount of VRAM you have... For example Battlefield 4 on a 3GB GPU was using 2.25GB and on a 2 GB GPU was using 1.75GB's with both cards running the game at 1920x1080 on ULTRA.

LINK.

Also the GTX 780 Ti with 3GB's VRAM out perfroms a GTX Titan with 6GB VRAM on Battlefield 4 at 4K on Ultra settings.

LINK

If VRAM heavily effected performance a GTX 660 3GB would outperform a GTX 680 2GB... But it doesn't even in the most demanding VRAM heavy game running at 4K or three screens it would not give you a higher framerate.

completely untrue.... COMPLETELY. infact, the game will slow down on anything less than a 2gb. the GTX570 with 1.2gb ran the game -ok- on high... but did experience some framerate issues during intense firefights.

titanfall requires 3gb minimum to play maxed. i have a 4gb gtx770 and it uses 3.5gb with insane textures and max AA.

that being said, there arent a lot of games that require 4gb.... but there will be soon. soon meaning this year. i would say a 4gb card is already necessary. it is only worth it if you are buying a 770/780 or higher though. lesser cards dont really have the horsepower to push games at that detail level.

depending on the game and/or mods, I can easily fill my 3gb on 1080p, so...if you have higher than 1080p, right now 4gb can serve you well

False

As you can see going from a 1gb 7850 to a 2gb GTX 650ti boost yielded no real improvement which means lack of VRAM is not the issue. also as you can see GTX 580 falls short of GTX 750 1gb and GTX 650ti boost (roughly equal to GTX 560ti). even though we know that GTX 580 is stronger then a 750 and 650.

Allocating and what is actually needed for memory to run the game is two different things.

clearly does not have a grasp on how performance actually works.

a 660 3gb outperfoming a 680 2gb? it would never happen regardless of VRAM. VRAM is simply a delivery method for information into the GPU for it to process. if the hardware cannot process that data quickly, then it doesnt matter at all. the 660 has less processing power than the 680.... you could give the 660 10gb of VRAM and it still would not be able to process that information as quickly as the 680, but it would be able to store a hell of a lot more data than that 680. greater VRAM in a GPU with less processing power is not going to make that GPU perform better than a GPU with greater processing power and less VRAM... that just isnt how it works.

however, if you were to take two GTX680s with 2gb and 4gb of VRAM, and put them both into a game that uses 3gb of VRAM, the 4gb VRAM gpu is going to perform better than the 2gb gpu because the 680 actually has the processing power to handle that load.

up until recently, there have been almost no games that used greater than 2gb of VRAM, so the benchmarks comparing GPUs with 2 and 4gb have been basically worthless. they show maybe a one or two frame difference. if you compare a 2gb GPU running insane textures in titanfall/skyrim/crysis 3 to a 4gb gpu however, there is a performance difference.

insane setting requires a minimum of 3gb VRAM so ofcourse going from 1gb to 2gb would provide no difference rofl... it even says right on the setting that it is only for GPUs with greater than 3gb of VRAM... if you dont have that much, the game probably allocates like you do not even if you have the setting checked... so uh.... -not- false.

More memory is almost exclusively used for higher resolutions. The higher the resolution the more memory needed for the textures. There are some rare examples where the texture resolution can be increased independently from screen resolution (such as BF4).


On average, 1gig of GDDR5 is about right for 1920x1080, however there is a [small] increase between cards with higher amount of memory - this, however, is due to how memory works in tandem with it's controller. Memory modules in larger capacity naturally report faster.
A prime example of this are the reported speeds of larger SSDs vs smaller capacity SSDs; with the larger being faster.


All-in-all, if you plan to game in "1080p' then anything 1gig and over is fine - with 2gig now being the standard you would have no issue. To put that into perspective, 6 gigs is considered good for 4k resolution... that's a mere twice the memory needed for over 4x the pixels.

when you play Star Citizen at UHD res with max graphics

Is English your 2nd language or something? or cant you read?

"If VRAM heavily effected performance a GTX 660 3GB would outperform a GTX 680 2GB"

Don't know, but I am sure it will happen during this console generation. Problem is you need something ala 780(Ti) or 290(X) to fully use those 3-4GB with one card.

no, it wouldnt, even if VRAM did heavily affect performance. as i said, VRAM is a delivery method. it does not affect performance in the way that he is insinuating. more VRAM would simply make more data available to the GPU for processing. if the processing power cannot handle that amount of data, which in the case of a GTX660 it cannot, then it doesnt matter how much VRAM it has. a 660 with more vram would -never- beat out a 680 with less vram in that fictional scenario.... as i said in my post.

perhaps you should consider that you are the one that needs reading lessons. thank you for being so concerned about the state of today's education system however.

yes it can... there were benchmarks on the old days on such matter

@cyloninside:

I'm concerned with your education level, I didn't say that, it was a quote from the link that @Grey_Eyed_Elf posted before your ignorant comment, but since your a bit challenged, let me make it clear for the 3rd time in this thread.

IF vram affected performance, a 660 4GB would outperform a 680 2GB.

Is the word "if" not contained in your vocabulary or something?

that's not quite how it works... VRAM can't do anything by itself, but it needs a powerful chipset to utilize it.

Holy hell, what has PC hardware come to?

I didn't even say vram doesn't do anything by itself, of course it needs a chipset and bus capable of handling the vram.

The topic is about WHEN WILL 4GB BE NEEDED? its not about if a 4GB weak card will beat a faster card with less vram.

Running out of vram is like running out of ram, your system won't crash because of swapping. Swapping is lower performance (ram is slower than vram, disk is slower than ram). The impact can be very noticeable, but with GPUs it's less noticeable than ram in most cases.

i had to really think about what you are trying to say there, since it's not clearly obvious like you think it is, but yeah, i see what you mean now.

anyway, 4GB wont be "needed" in a long time, but you will benefit from it if you want to push max settings on large resolution.

and my response is.... no, it wouldnt. in your fictional scenario.... no, it would not. 4GB of VRAM would just allow the GPU to store more information for processing without swapping... it would not "make the GPU faster" as you are insinuating. a 2GB GTX680 would be able to process the information that it has stored in that 2GB far faster than a GTX660 would be able to in that 4GB.

VRAM does not speed up a GPU.... it does not increase its performance in and of itself. it simply makes more information readily available to be processed. it does NOT work in the way that you are insinuating.

keep at it though. i am enjoying flagging your comments.

hey look.... someone that actually has an idea of what they are saying! GTR12... take notice.

I would like to ask @GTR12 to keep it civil, but @cyloninside, this

keep at it though. i am enjoying flagging your comments.

will get you moderated as well, so before you take the moral high ground I suggest you do your reporting without egging people on.

@Korvus85: color me unintimidated. your comment could have come in the form of a PM.... instead you chose to post it so everyone could see; as if you were doing it as a means of shaming me into submission.

i would request the mods use a bit more modesty in their displays of "authority". we even have mods outright insulting or belittling users on these forums and there is no way to flag their posts. basically shows that the mods are, or think they are, above the rules they are supposed to be enforcing.

if you are really going to mod me over making it known to the other user that i am flagging his comments... then go nuts i guess. i see 10000x worse stuff go down on these forums unmoderated. if something like that gets me modded then looool at the moderator's priorities on these forums.

@cyloninside: In that case colour me unimpressed with your reply. You have been warned about this type of behaviour before so I don't see a reason to act all offended. If I was trying to intimidate you I would have given you both a strike; instead I tried to warn you both so that my moderation wasn't necessary instead of doing it "in the shadows" or "behind the scenes" like so many users claim we work. I am sorry if me being open about the rules offended you but if you're really that displeased with my acts as a moderator please file a complaint to @DigitalDame, @Zorine, @girlparts or @ohaifrancy and they'll take action as they see fit.

EDIT: Those are our Community Managers, by the way, and you should always direct to them complaints mods can't take care of (or complaints regarding mods, of course)

@jayd02:

My philosophy is better to have it and not need it initially but later down the road you will have to use. I went with the GTX 690 a year and a half ago and I have to say it hasn't even been tapped into yet with these recent games. And it's capable of 4K. Yes it's pricey but I would rather not have to upgrade later and eventually I will just run SLI. It's a beast and as long as you give your GPU the power it needs than it will perform. I achieved 175 fps with a single GTX 690. Average 150 fps.

@Korvus85: oooo, i have been warned before. GD, now i really know you are trying to publicly shame me.

was i acting offended? i couldnt tell... i saw it more like me asking you to do your job correctly. "job" being an optional word since i know you guys are all volunteers. i thought i was being -relatively- polite considering the circumstances.

since you have chosen to make this a discussion open to the world instead of taking it to PMs like it should have been done in the first place.... fine. done. complaints filed for you and several other mods. a simple PM saying "hey FYI, can you please not do that?" would have avoided a lot.

@cyloninside: I appreciate you going through the proper channels. You should hear from one of our CM's soon. Now let's not derail this thread any further =) Have a nice day.

I wouldn't bother wasting your money on lower budget cards with 4GB of memory, usually they don't have the memory bus to make it worthwhile. Obviously for MSAA or higher resolutions beyond 1080p you'll want to start looking for more video memory, Titanfall has giant uncompressed textures, it gets to the limit of 2GB and causes some graphical glitches here and there, so they recommended 3GB. Usually though games wont have such bit texture files and so that never comes into play...

I wouldn't buy a new card with 2GB of video memory now, it has reached a point where they aren't future proofed at all, but in most games 2GB is enough. A big mistake people make is turn MSAA to x8, usually that'll require vast amounts of memory, stick it down to x4, why most games cap it at x4. Those Apple monitors, their high resolution Retina things, you don't even need to bother with AA on one of those, so eventually I think resolution will negate the need for AA.

this is pretty much good advice. unless you are purchasing a GTX770 or above for Nvidia, or an R9 290 or above for ATI right now.... i just would not bother. if you are buying an Nvidia card though, i would get the 4gb version.

and FYI... titanfall uses 3.5gb of VRAM when set to insane textures. on very high, it is right around 2gb.

Sooooo get the 770 4gb is what we have come to.

Again with the facts in front of you and you ignore them..... If you actually *needed* 3gb you would clearly see a massive stutter and framerate difference between a 1gb gpu vs one with 2gb with insane textures vs similar gpu's but you dont....but the key takeaway is that the I/O calls for textures aren't as load-intensive. Which means that game only *needs* around 1gb to run correctly but more vram buffer available the game will allocate and reserve more into memory needing less swapping from system ram and or HDD.

There is myriad of other sites which display the very real problems with this game on Pc. There has been plenty of side-by-side screenshots showing very little difference between High/Very High/Insane - yet each one of those settings ramps up the VRAM usage to a ridiculous amount That is just poor optimization on their part.

Its up to you but there have been tests done on 2gb vs 4gb on 770 with max settings at insane resolutions like 3840x2160 or 5760x1080 but the performance difference between the two at best tends to be a small ~1-2 fps gap. Fact is that the 770 does not have the processing power nor the memory bus to fully use 4gb.

Regardless of what you may think I "implied" I clearly said "if"... Basically echoing your whole statement that VRAM and how it doesn't directly effect performance in a linear way. Your reading comprehension is ghastly. Also no a 4GB GPU in Crysis 3 would make 0 difference. In fact a 1.5GB GPU keeps up with a 3GB GPU.

there IS massive stutter and framerate issues on a GPU with 1.2 gb of ram.... i can confirm that first hand considering i ran the game on the first day on a GTX 570. insane settings was completely unplayable because of the stutter and framerate issues.

all i see you doing is making up what ifs and fantasy scenarios to support your claims. the fact of the matter is i am right... but you apparently dont want to give up a little bit of your imaginary e-cred to admit it.

@@Korvus85:

Yeah ok, i'll cool it down, seems like theres only 1 poster here that doesn't get it.

@groowagon

Yeah that's what I meant.

Just for your complete lack of knowledge let me school you on something called "support" and "optimization".

1. Driver support for your card - the older the card is the less likely Nvidia and AMD will thoroughly update them for specific games
2. Game developers tend to optimize for GPU's that are currently being sold

In game A: a GTX 780 runs faster than a R9 290 and in but in game B: the R9 290 runs the game faster than a GTX 780... Why is that?... Surely a faster card would be better in every game?...

When it comes to Titanfall VRAM is not the issue people with HD 7770 and HD 7790 with 1GB VRAM are playing Titanfall at 1920x1080 on High with 50-60FPS... My iMac with a 750M 1GB plays Titanfall at 1920x1080 on High with 40-50FPS.

Seems like you have an ego issue... Professional's and reviewers have it all wrong and your right.

@Grey_Eyed_Elf said:

@cyloninside said:

@04dcarraher said:

@cyloninside said:

@04dcarraher said:

@cyloninside said:

@04dcarraher said:

@Netherscourge said:

I got a 770 GTX 4GB Windforce from Gigabyte and it lets me run Titanfall on High Settings at 1080p and 60fps steady.

I have no idea if the 2GB version would be the same or not, but I read thy if you enable full texture quality on Titanfall or some other game (BF4?), it would fill up the 2GB really fast.

TitanFall runs fine with 1gb cards, the game I/O calls for textures aren't as load-intensive. It is the Source Engine. Even with BF4 with 2gb is enough if you dont use moderate to extreme amounts of AA.

completely untrue.... COMPLETELY. infact, the game will slow down on anything less than a 2gb. the GTX570 with 1.2gb ran the game -ok- on high... but did experience some framerate issues during intense firefights.

titanfall requires 3gb minimum to play maxed. i have a 4gb gtx770 and it uses 3.5gb with insane textures and max AA.

that being said, there arent a lot of games that require 4gb.... but there will be soon. soon meaning this year. i would say a 4gb card is already necessary. it is only worth it if you are buying a 770/780 or higher though. lesser cards dont really have the horsepower to push games at that detail level.

False

As you can see going from a 1gb 7850 to a 2gb GTX 650ti boost yielded no real improvement which means lack of VRAM is not the issue. also as you can see GTX 580 falls short of GTX 750 1gb and GTX 650ti boost (roughly equal to GTX 560ti). even though we know that GTX 580 is stronger then a 750 and 650.

Allocating and what is actually needed for memory to run the game is two different things.

insane setting requires a minimum of 3gb VRAM so ofcourse going from 1gb to 2gb would provide no difference rofl... it even says right on the setting that it is only for GPUs with greater than 3gb of VRAM... if you dont have that much, the game probably allocates like you do not even if you have the setting checked... so uh.... -not- false.

Again with the facts in front of you and you ignore them..... If you actually *needed* 3gb you would clearly see a massive stutter and framerate difference between a 1gb gpu vs one with 2gb with insane textures vs similar gpu's but you dont....but the key takeaway is that the I/O calls for textures aren't as load-intensive. Which means that game only *needs* around 1gb to run correctly but more vram buffer available the game will allocate and reserve more into memory needing less swapping from system ram and or HDD.

There is myriad of other sites which display the very real problems with this game on Pc. There has been plenty of side-by-side screenshots showing very little difference between High/Very High/Insane - yet each one of those settings ramps up the VRAM usage to a ridiculous amount That is just poor optimization on their part.

there IS massive stutter and framerate issues on a GPU with 1.2 gb of ram.... i can confirm that first hand considering i ran the game on the first day on a GTX 570. insane settings was completely unplayable because of the stutter and framerate issues.

all i see you doing is making up what ifs and fantasy scenarios to support your claims. the fact of the matter is i am right... but you apparently dont want to give up a little bit of your imaginary e-cred to admit it.

Just for your complete lack of knowledge let me school you on something called "support" and "optimization".

1. Driver support for your card - the older the card is the less likely Nvidia and AMD will thoroughly update them for specific games
2. Game developers tend to optimize for GPU's that are currently being sold

In game A: a GTX 780 runs faster than a R9 290 and in but in game B: the R9 290 runs the game faster than a GTX 780... Why is that?... Surely a faster card would be better in every game?...

When it comes to Titanfall VRAM is not the issue people with HD 7770 and HD 7790 with 1GB VRAM are playing Titanfall at 1920x1080 on High with 50-60FPS... My iMac with a 750M 1GB plays Titanfall at 1920x1080 on High with 40-50FPS.

Seems like you have an ego issue... Professional's and reviewers have it all wrong and your right.

Whats funny is that he totally ignored the benchmark results showing a 1gb GTX 750 beating a GTX 580 with 1.5gb Vram issue my butt lol.

actually it is just the butt buddy crew of the 3 of you, GTR12, Grey eye, and 04dcarraher that agree with eachother.... and ALWAYS agree with eachother in every thread... and you are almost never right and always inflammatory.

noone around here needs an education around here except the three of you. but i honestly just dont care anymore.

Someone's butthurt with the facts at hand....

You should have explained what "facts" mean, I don't think he understands benchmarks.

I agree with this statement.