Geforce 870m 3G or 870m 6G ??

Hi,
Is it worth it to pay more money to have a graphic cards with more memories ?
I got the choice between the 870m 3Gg or upgrading it with 870m 6Gg.
Except for the GPU everything is the same.
Am I going to see a big difference or is it going to let me run bigger game ??

Here my link for comparing both together..
Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M 6GB compare Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M 3GB GPU

 

No, the amount of vram doesn't really matter unless you have the laptop hooked up to a large number of monitors. I would just go with the 3gb.

 

watch dogs can easily use more than 4GB on ultra at 1080P. Titanfall also pushes past 3GB with max textures. I would probably go 6GB from what I see now, as crazy as it sounds

 

This. Good advice again. Rep +1.
We're seeing most new titles greedily using up over 3gb vram recently.

 

You serious? Talk about overreacting because of a couple sh*ttty console ports named Titanfall and Watch_Dogs which look worse than games released 3 or 4 years ago.

 

Perhaps I am, but I doubt we've seen the last of these crappy ports. So I'd still go for the 6gb over the 3gb.

 

Exactly.

This is the reality we have to deal with. Bad ports will still be made in the future, more graphic demanding games will come out. For people looking to buy a system for the future and now, go for the highest VRAM you can possible get.

Add downsampling in the mix which I have been playing a lot with in the recent months, VRAM requirements will increase

 

I'm still waiting for benchmarks to show usage rather than just allocation.

Also you won't be playing WD om ultra on a single 870m.

 

870m will run out of power before it runs out of memory, 6GB Vram is an overkill for that little GPU.

 

Titanfall 1080p Very High settings 4XMSAA
GTX 870M: 57FPS
VRAM usage: 3513MB

Watch Dogs 1080p High Textures 4XMSAA
GTX 870M: 38FPS
VRAM usage: 3034MB

I would pick 6GB VRAM.

I agree, but there doesn`t exist any software that can measure the amount of VRAM thats being used at any given time. So VRAM usage through GPU-Z is the best we get.

 

It's quite simple, benchmark a 3 and a 6GB card, see if there is a performance differance.

 

you can use msi afterburner

 

There's been many reports of watch dogs stuttering on 3gb cards.

 

4x msaa?on notebook you dont need that..put a test without any msaa or with fxaa or smaa

 

What benchmark is capable of using over 3GB VRAM? Most of them use around 1GB I think.

What game should the benchmark represent? Just because said benchmark would exceed 3GB in usage but wouldnt have any performance hit on a 2GB card, doesnt mean a different game actually use those 3GB+ data loaded on the VRAM.

Thats the same function as GPU-Z I think. It reads all the data loaded on the VRAM, but doesnt really look at whats being utilized at the moment GPU-z reads.
But it should be taken as VRAM used, because I`m sure that just because the system doesnt really use all the data loaded on the VRAM at the current time you are looking at GPU-z or Afterburner, the system will perhaps need that data 2 minutes after that when you for example go back to a map.

 

Yep and the data would have been streamed to the gpu from ram before you need it.

system ram is too slow for processing a scene, but is fine for supplying the initial data. So long as the vram is good enough to hold the current scene data you should be fine.

 

How much more is the 6GB version? With the way the first few current-gen games are eating VRAM, I'd take the 6GB, unless the difference in price was stupid ridiculous.

The 870M can run the Ultra textures at 1090p, so the VRAM will be used.

TXAA eats VRAM in Watch_Dogs as well. I don't like how SMAA looks, so I've sacrificed some settings to run TXAA.

 

I've been doing exactly that all day.. Works just fine! AA off on a single 6GB 870M.

 

yes, that's right, better 6gb

 

10 bucks

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M 3GB DDR5 for MSI Clevo Alienware Upgrademonkey | eBay
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M 6GB DDR5 for Clevo Alienware MSI Upgrademonkey | eBay

 

870M modified vBIOS allowing for overvolting, unrestricted overclocking, has been released on Tech Inferno forums yesterday:

NVIDIA Kepler VBIOS mods - Overclocking Editions, modified clocks, voltage tweaks

Located in Post #2 in that thread.

 

Ok without making some kind of sacrifice that drops the ram requirement anyway.

 

Just flashed.. thanks for the heads up!

 

Cool, what kind of performance difference are you seeing? Been doing any overclocking with it? (The 870M right?)

 

870M 6GB, yes. I haven't OCed yet. Performance is identical so far but albeit maybe just a placebo, the fans are kicking in less and the temperatures seem to be better (rough estimation without monitoring). I trust svl7 and due to lack of time, I haven't really run any actual tests.

 

At that price you're better off buying a 780M, unless you can knock it down to below $500. But given it's upgrademonkey (ie $$$ seller), I don't think there's much room for discounts.

 

I don't think the amount of vram doesn't really matters.

 

Yes it would be good to see the same chip, one at 3GB and one at 6GB running Watch Dogs and Titanfall and check the performance difference in a same / similar use scenario. I just wish more games would include built-in benchmarks otherwise it always remains pure speculation if the results aren't repeatable, or the only repeatable part is in a low usage scenario.

But I'm with Meaker, just because it's showing 3GB as utilized, doesn't mean it's being bottlenecked by the amount of vRAM.

And it does depend on price difference. If they offer 6GB for $150 more than 3GB version, personally it's a waste of money. For less than $50 perhaps. But that's a personal decision you'll have to make.

 

Upgrading the VRAM in my desktop PC (GTX 460 --> 660) INSANELY helped my performance across the board in all games. You should definitely get the 6 GB for future proofing

 

Umgh you mean also the new Keppler chip over Ferni

 

In that case it's more the card and architecture than amount of vram. 660 with same ram as 460 would still destroy the 460.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

Looking back, After keppler, ferni is just a load of especially in the mobile space... I can't believe NVIDIA kept the ferni architecture for so long...

 

It's Kepler and Fermi.

 

The 660 being nearly 2x the speed of a 460 surely helped just a bit more than any VRAM difference.

 

Yet, this shows the mentality of the masses. More vRAM is better. Obviously not true. But I've seen low level chips like 540m or 720m with 4GB vRAM.

 

Yeah yeah.. You know what I mean.. Stop being a spelling nazi

 

There should absolutely be some balance between GPU power and VRAM amount. In an ideal world. Graphic card makers milk it for all its worth to the people who are not aware though.

 

It just seems like it's an expensive marketing ploy though. I mean 4GB of vRAM vs 1GB of vRAM that those cards could only really use would cost the company at least $50-60 difference. That's a lot on a laptop with that dGPU that probably isn't really a high end one. Then again, if they can have the customer pay the cost for it, it may be worth it.

 

Yeah, but on the brightside at least they'd be able to run Titanfall with Insane Textures, everything else on low at 640x480! ;-)