How much vRAM does one really need?

Asus couldn't care less.. They were the only OEM to use 4GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GTX 880Ms... No one else did that...

 

They were the only OEM to have cool running 880Ms, so I guess they did something right there. But that probably is due to design defects in 880M's 8GB model. Nobody will ever know I guess.

 

Well, the cooling performance was already good, and GT72 from MSI also doesn't have problems with 880m 8GB version as far as i know. So as long as cooling is sufficient, the version is meaningless.

 

Hope that's the case for the 8GB 980M then. Ordering one...

 

When I say they were the only ones to have cool 880Ms, I mean "they beat alienware by more than a few degrees" kind of cool. That's... not very normal. Or easy to do. Their cards to my knowledge have never had throttling issues either. I really would have loved to shove two 880M 4GB in a P377SM-A and see if they still have problems like Ethrem's system does. But I guess we're past that now.

 

But swapping between them does (causes hitching).

 

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Benchmarked - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

Right. But then the solution, if it's enforced - to put /everything/ into vram - is eventually just going to limit the texture quality overall. Loads of games that at every moment "only" will use about 800Mb of vram have a unique uncompressed texture budget that far exceeds 20Gb, for example.

So if the argument is that increased ram means less streaming hitches, which in turn improves visual fidelity. Then if that is to be enforced (all textures uncompressed in ram) will instantly mean that games will have an overall reduced texture quality. Even with 10 or 16Gb VRam, for example none of the battlefield games since Bad Company 2 would have been able to store /all/ textures uncompressed in VRam, usually not even for just one "setting".

Just to take a specific recent example: Shadows of Mordor: Killing Orcs and s*** has a "requirement" for the monster package for textures at 6Gb ram. And yet - many people have remarked on that the textures don't look particularly fancy, and that they are not extremely varied either. Not only that - the game still switches the texture palette out completely (grey brown to green leaf) halfway. Or more technically, they don't actually keep the textures for the entire game in the ram at all times anyway. We're also not talking about a completely seamless and perfect streaming experience even on a very, very fast PC with ssds and titan gtx cards --- so what gives?

What exactly did they spend more than 10 times the amount of vram most games use for? Like people point out, The Witcher 2 made do with appr. 1Gb on ..superultraawesome settings, generally avoiding any streaming glitches, even for very large areas. And that's not actually using an incredibly advanced stream predictor either. It does have a very large amount of possible improvements that CD Project have basically noted will be improved on the next game.

So where did the vram usage go? They're just putting everything into vram - and ultimately have to compress and reduce textures either at build or runtime perhaps, to not exceed the limit. As opposed to creating some prediction algorithm that will stream objects in the nearby nodes, and so potentially allowing you massively higher static asset quality.

Success! Next gen, people! Woot!

Anyway, whatever.

 

^TL;DR bad optimization.

 

Sup people???
I'm interested in buying the GS60 with 970m, but want to compare the 6GB vs 3GB first.
My noob questions: (kindly bear with it)

1) According to your article, the amount of vRAM reqd. for 3k, 4k gaming is a bit more than 1080p. What about the other way around, I mean playing a game scaled to 1080p on a 3K screen? what exactly happens? I mean will multiple pixels of the screen merge to form a single pixel of the frame or what? and how will it affect vRAM usage?

2) More vRAM = more heat ???? 6GB ver will be hotter than 3GB version? is the heat dissipation very high or almost negligible? It matters to me because of the extremely compact chassis.

3) What if the vRAM is insufficient? stuttering ??? or any other visual effects that may be annoying?

Enlighten me oh wise ones......

 

'sup mortal

1) 1080p is 1080p whether you scale it to 3k, 10k, or 640x480. Yes pixels will mege, dogs and cats will start living together... it will be a travesty!
2) More vRAM = More Fun! There will be added heat and power consumption but not that significant
3) Insufficient vRAM means Viagra is in your future. It can cause stuttering, or intermittent skips, as we've seen in Shadows of Mordor.

 

For a good rundown of information about how much vRAM is necessary in general and what determines that, you can click the vRAM information link in my signature. As for question 2, Sir Wingnut answered that well =3.

As for insufficient vRAM, that again depends on the game. Some games will lock the settings for you outright: Wolfenstein The New Order won't allow ultra textures unless one has 3GB or more vRAM. Shadows of Mordor will let you put ultra on a 1GB vRAM card if you wish, but it will stutter like CRAZY and generally not be usable and will stutter and slow down and all sorts of undesirable behaviour. I will be updating my vRAM guide to include that information in the future when I remember during a period where I actually have free time XD.

 

On a 3K screen laptop, the graphic card would be less stressed if scaled down to 1080p or will it be stressed less in case of 1080p screen running a game at FHD? Comparatively.

 

i dont freaking understand why is the low vram a problem when u have like 16 gb of ram? i remember i solved witcher 2 stuttering when i upgraded my ram amount back in the day

 

Bad utilization of available resources.

 

There are different implementations of OC, some good some not so...as you noticed yourself.
I don't use OC.
Today i use a different way of building any object to it's parts, physically functioning as close as possible to the reality.
I don't have texture for each object but a material library (wood, old wood, fine wood, metalX6, glass etc).
This way i can render a large amount of objects with a relatively low vRAM cost and use large textures...Having 8GB vRAM really helps here.
After that i'm only limited by Draw Calls.

 

VRAM holds what's currently being displayed on-screen at any given time. RAM holds everything else. They're separate memory pools. Data is constantly being shuffled between the two, assets streamed in and out as you look/move around/interact, etc. If more is to be shown on-screen than can fit in the entirely of VRAM, or you turn around quickly and all the old data in VRAM has to be quickly replaced by new data, there is excessive swapping between the two memory pools, causing hitching and frame rate drops.

 

I updated my vRAM and SLI guides, for whoever is interested. I had to add a whole section for how games operate if you don't have enough vRAM for the settings you're trying to use due to stupid developer optimization these days.

 

Update: Buy the 8GB 980m GTX.
Kidding.

 

Feel free to send me a pair, good sir XD

 

I wish I had the $ to do so!

 

I'll be happy with just one.

 

Could only afford one for me

 

Who changed his mind, now that games are just eating Vram like salad !

 

1080p = 2GB is barely enough and sometimes not enough. 3GB would be good, 4GB would be better, and 8GB is overkill (for now).
3k/4k = 4GB is good, 6GB would be better, 8GB is ideal, 12GB is overkill (for now).
5k = 6GB is good, 8GB is ideal, 12GB is more than needed but not exactly "overkill."

Okay, close the thread.

 

All depends on the GPU performance and vRAM bandwidth. Even though the vRAM is utilized, doesn't mean it's necessary. 2-3GB is definitely adequate for mid-range GPU's at 1080p.

 

I would recommend avoiding 2GB altogether.

 

The numbers @J.Dre posted are a good guideline. Take a look at The Witcher III's requirements. The minimum vRAM is 2GB and the recommended vRAM is 3GB.

Xbone and Piss4 both have 8GB of GDDR (shared system and video but still). Games look good on them because they have massive quantities of fast vRAM for holding massive uncompressed textures. As more games cross from these consoles to PCs the vRAM recommendations are going to skyrocket.

 

I'm not too sure about 5k, but some videos I saw were saying that GTA V was using around 6GB's at 5k. So, maybe 6GB's should be labeled as "good enough for now."