Is high vram really necessary???

[dig_ut!!]

I’m not computer expert, and Since I’m not sure what vram actually achieves in a game I’m asking this question in hopes of understanding this better. This game and a game like RE4 for example use a large amount of vram. But is it necessary.

From what I’ve seen graphically I have played games at max settings and 4K, that use much less vram (5 gb) and in my eyes look just as good as these new games which use at least 10 or more. To me the games that use the 5 gb of vram look just as good at the ultra settings 4K (plus I thought that DLSS, and FSR have an advantage in playing the game at a lower resolution while seeing it at a higher resolution.

So is high vram usage that necessary for games to just look marginally better at ultra settings 4K, or is it just a way to promote the 40 series gpus on nvidia and their equivalent on Radeon (not sure what that would be, am no expert In this).

Any answers appreciated.

[kondragon]

Please, no conspiracies about promotion from the sale of graphics cards, that's nonsense. Rather, the use of textures is poorly implemented in this game.

[Cylokin]

No it is not, I maxed out Atomic Heart on 1440p native and it was not even using 5gb of VRAM, while Medium/Low textures on this game require 6gb while looking worse than PS2 era? Nah.

[WeirdScienceX]

A Japanese company Sony is not going to hobble one of their main IP's to collude with an American company to sell more GPU's which has cost them in reputation and lost sales.

[DaveTheSlayerFan]

Depends on the game's optimization, what resolution, in game settings and how many FPS you are looking to achieve. 8GB of VRAM should in theory still be plenty for most titles in 2023. We're seeing games like TLOUp1 use alot more though. I feel like this, and this is just my opinion... Games are going to start to use more VRAM because consoles have a larger pools of VRAM. I think PS5 has 16GB of VRAM. Why would developers of AAA games worry about optimizing for PC? They send out poor ports and patch it down the road. Again this is my opinion... I wouldn't buy a new GPU with less than 12GB of VRAM. And yes, DLSS does help with allocated and dedicated VRAM in my experience. Unfortunately that leaves us all with NVIDIA because let's face it, DLSS is better than FSR right now. The new AMD GPU's seems fine for pure FPS with no upscaling and they have huge pools of VRAM. I expect they will age well. My card? 3080 with 10gb of VRAM? Thank god for DLSS. PC ports from console are going to use more and more VRAM. A and AA PC games will run fine and do run fine.

[episoder]

Este comentario está esperando un análisis de nuestro sistema de verificación automática de contenido. Estará oculto temporalmente hasta que comprobemos que no incluye contenido dañino (por ejemplo, enlaces a sitios web que intenten robar información).

[GoldInfinit7]

Publicado originalmente por WeirdScienceX:

A Japanese company Sony is not going to hobble one of their main IP's to collude with an American company to sell more GPU's which has cost them in reputation and lost sales.

Or maybe it’s not to sell more PC GPUs, but to frustrate people into buying more PS5’s. Per the logic: “see what frustration PC get’s you? PS5 is the answer to your prayers”

[Mexicola9302]

In 3-6 months all the ppl that say "you need more v-ram" will shut up, because then the game will (hopefully) run fine. Then they probably can't even remember that they told ppl that 8 or 10 GB V-RAM is totally outdated by now. Then they make it look like they said completly different things.

"Why should i care what i said yesterday right?" :D

[C1REX]

We are in unique times when PC have less VRAM, less CPU cores, slower nvme and less tech boosting performance and somehow games should still run better than on consoles.

[Blacksmith77K]

Publicado originalmente por episoder:

there are different techniques to achieve texture detail.

ima refer to tlou only

1) "photopraghed" textures. they take alot of vram. and are unique. have no repetition. can be seen on long walls, foliage and ofc unique assets like all sorts of props.

2) procedrual textures. they are puzzled together by the shaders. an example for this is the clothing materials, weave details, ground textures with random moss overlay and such.

in general: the more unique textures are in the scene the more vram you need.

about the engine budget, framebuffers and 4k:

the game uses deferred rendering. that means alot of textures need to be allocated at the scale of the rendering resolution, that is albedo, normals, specular, roughness, ambient occlusion, subsurface, transparency, reflection... and so on. you also require shadow maps in varying sizes for the sun shadows and spotlight shadows and point light shadows, also reflection textures in 4k and so on. the engine also uses a form of voxel textures to generate lighting computation data.

most of the core rendering is compacted into a so called g-buffer. the shadow maps still reside on their own. same as reflection textures. this is a bit of data.

some numbers: an estimate of a fulll blown 4k gbuffer with 8 targets of 4 channels high precision data consumes a lil bit over 1 GB. a 8k shadow map at full precision requires 256 MB. a point light cubemap of 2kx2kx2k requires 100 MB. at 4kx4kx4k it requires 400 MB.

do the math how many lights and shadows you see on screen.

I have no idea who you are and what your job is. but kudos for your post!!!

You are one of thousands who understand why 8GB VRAM is not enough since 2016 (GTX 1080ti 11GB).

I skipped the 20's AND 30's nVIDIA series because they offered idiotically little VRAM

Only with the release of the 40 series and 16GB+ did I return to nVIDIA. :o)

[WeirdScienceX]

Este comentario está esperando un análisis de nuestro sistema de verificación automática de contenido. Estará oculto temporalmente hasta que comprobemos que no incluye contenido dañino (por ejemplo, enlaces a sitios web que intenten robar información).

[MancSoulja]

Este comentario está esperando un análisis de nuestro sistema de verificación automática de contenido. Estará oculto temporalmente hasta que comprobemos que no incluye contenido dañino (por ejemplo, enlaces a sitios web que intenten robar información).

[dig_ut!!]

K, interesting. Lots of info. Again don’t know as about pcs not an expert by no means, but I think I get a few things now not going too deep into computer jargon.

So it seems to me that in a case like Sony’s or other companies that cater to console first, they develop the games with the console in mind. If that console has more vram on It they’ll use that vram for the game. This doesn’t mean that those same games cannot run with the same graphics on lower vram, but just that the developers have to develop that game or figure out a way to make it run on the pc as it does on the console.

For myself and all you fellow pc owners this is unfortunate because clearly games are being designed with the console in mind. And so people who have pcs with gpus cpus etc stronger than what a console would offer, and spent more money than console owners are left behind thinking “why did I spend all that money on a pc when I could’ve just spent it one a console”.

I’m going to assume that based on how developers make their games the console market is more lucrative than the pc market. Otherwise, why develop most AAA titles with the console in mind?..

Hopefully one of the commenters on here is right mentioning that in a few months when the game and vram usage is fixed to run on a variety of pcs, people will stop mentioning the need for high vram usage, and everyone will enjoy the game the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

Let’s all hope that’s the case!! Because those of us who have pcs stronger than a PS5 should be getting the game at a higher quality than the pc is capable of.

Just my take, after reading all the answers.

[dig_ut!!]

Publicado originalmente por DaveTheSlayerFan:

Depends on the game's optimization, what resolution, in game settings and how many FPS you are looking to achieve. 8GB of VRAM should in theory still be plenty for most titles in 2023. We're seeing games like TLOUp1 use alot more though. I feel like this, and this is just my opinion... Games are going to start to use more VRAM because consoles have a larger pools of VRAM. I think PS5 has 16GB of VRAM. Why would developers of AAA games worry about optimizing for PC? They send out poor ports and patch it down the road. Again this is my opinion... I wouldn't buy a new GPU with less than 12GB of VRAM. And yes, DLSS does help with allocated and dedicated VRAM in my experience. Unfortunately that leaves us all with NVIDIA because let's face it, DLSS is better than FSR right now. The new AMD GPU's seems fine for pure FPS with no upscaling and they have huge pools of VRAM. I expect they will age well. My card? 3080 with 10gb of VRAM? Thank god for DLSS. PC ports from console are going to use more and more VRAM. A and AA PC games will run fine and do run fine.

Thanks for the answer, some good info here!

[Chris J]

You need to get a high VRAM card like an RX 6900XT or 7900XTX or an RTX 3090 and up yeah it costs alot but thats life your paying for a big card with alot of VRAM. NVIDIA really did skimp on the VRAM for the mid range cards like 3070ti and 3080

[Kain Mightyena]

The game's vram consumption is simply beyond broken. Take a look at a true next gen game like cyberpunk and max out the textures on that game and youll quickly see it doesnt chew through all your vram, the exception being if you try to play that game at 4K with ray tracing. Tlou doesnt even have ray tracing and medium textures shouldnt look ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WORSE than the ps3 version of the game but here we are. Id strongly suggest to ignore anyone saying you need more vram, as they are just idiotic shills who dont know a thing about how pcs work. One horribly unoptimized port is not and should not be used as a metric to determine the future of games and thier vram requirements.