4GB-8GB Vram is required for future GPUs due to new consoles

[CHRONOBODI]

With the new console's 8GB RAM pool, and especially the PS4's GDDR5 variant, the VRAM usage for PC games in the future will shoot up dramatically.

Devs on both new consoles can split the RAM pool into video ram and system ram. It's entirely possible that Watch Dogs on PS4 went for 6GB VRAM and 2GB system ram out of that allocated ram pool.

The devs can do whatever they need, even 7GB VRAM is possible,but only 1GB system ram, for example.


Watch Dogs on my SLI Titans takes up 4.5 GB VRAM alone, with no AA on 4K resolution. It also consumes 2GB system ram as well. That fits within the PS4's ram pool of 8GB.


It's the new reality, Nvidia and AMD has to come out with cheaper cards with higher VRAM capacity, 4GB minimum.

So yes, it really sucks for all 2gb-3gb cards, they do have better GPU grunts than the HD 7850 in the PS4, but is utterly hamstrung by meager VRAM capacity.

[Bob the Boomer]

The OS of the consoles takes / reserves RAM afaik also, so it isnt a lump sum of 8GB available for gfx afaik it would be a bit less but agreed, the VRAM in most cards is limiting even

[trek554]

Watch Dogs and Wolfenstein have made 2gb and even 3gb nearly irrelevant for high end cards that would other wise be capable of running max settings. there is nothing to really upgrade to though at this point. I am not going to lose 200 bucks just to go from selling my 780 3gb to get a new 780 6gb.

[Ace-Educator]

I think the console's OS takes up 3 cores of their 8 core CPU's.

[MeowCats]

trek554 eredeti hozzászólása:

Watch Dogs and Wolfenstein have made 2gb and even 3gb nearly irrelevant for high end cards that would other wise be capable of running max settings. there is nothing to really upgrade to though at this point. I am not going to lose 200 bucks just to go from selling my 780 3gb to get a new 780 6gb.

I even shelled out around 1400$ for my Asus DCUII OC 780Ti's since they beat the normal Titans in performance, but have only 3GB Vram, they're the best gaming cards at the moment and not too expensive.. i never ran out of Vram but Watch Dogs is the first game that eats up all 3GB even on the lowest settings..

[Synapt]

Sonic the zombie eredeti hozzászólása:

The OS of the consoles takes / reserves RAM afaik also, so it isnt a lump sum of 8GB available for gfx afaik it would be a bit less

This.

If you want it to take up less memory, than use a lower resolution. Contrary to popular belief, most stuff is hardly 4K resolution friendly, at most games (and their requirements) are designed around a 1080p max expectation.

It's going to be a long time before things are designed with expectations of people having 4K displays in any moderately large market share, considering how long quad core CPU's have been pretty common now, a lot of games still tend to come out only dual-core optimized/capable.

At 1360x768 (on a 42" HDTV sitting like directly in front of me admittedly), I use about 3.1-3.2GB of my GPU's memory at all ultra (except water and reflections being set to high because of studdering bugs).

[blackwind777]

seems industry has decidet to focus on console.
is that a farewell for PC-gaming!?

[Synapt]

Corporatocracy777 eredeti hozzászólása:

seems industry has decidet to focus on console.
is that a farewell for PC-gaming!?

lol? not sure where you've ever got the impression that the industry has ever really only started focusing on the console. The only company that does anymore with major titles is rockstar and that's only because they're sheepishly blind to their own concepts of piracy they think it's impossible for people to pirate on the console (despite GTA V being hugely pirated even on console).

[Dunk]

Watchdogs on the PS4 cannot manage 1080p the new Xbox is even worse. so i am not sure about this.

[JTWibble]

dunkthedunk eredeti hozzászólása:

Watchdogs on the PS4 cannot manage 1080p the new Xbox is even worse. so i am not sure about this.

Consoles will always hold things back, the noticeable drop in graphics quality from the e3 videos is because the next gen consoles could not cope.

[xBread]

*OCN* CHRONOBODI (BodethIII) eredeti hozzászólása:

With the new console's 8GB RAM pool, and especially the PS4's GDDR5 variant, the VRAM usage for PC games in the future will shoot up dramatically.

Devs on both new consoles can split the RAM pool into video ram and system ram. It's entirely possible that Watch Dogs on PS4 went for 6GB VRAM and 2GB system ram out of that allocated ram pool.

The devs can do whatever they need, even 7GB VRAM is possible,but only 1GB system ram, for example.


Watch Dogs on my SLI Titans takes up 4.5 GB VRAM alone, with no AA on 4K resolution. It also consumes 2GB system ram as well. That fits within the PS4's ram pool of 8GB.


It's the new reality, Nvidia and AMD has to come out with cheaper cards with higher VRAM capacity, 4GB minimum.

So yes, it really sucks for all 2gb-3gb cards, they do have better GPU grunts than the HD 7850 in the PS4, but is utterly hamstrung by meager VRAM capacity.

Uhuh tell that to my laptop with a 512mb gt 640m that plays low settings 1080p at same fps as the PS4.

[no3y3h4nd]

lol its one extreme to another man. we had years where our 2 GB was wasted on shoddy DX9 console ports with blurred as hell textures no we jump straight to an era where the unified ram on the consoles has made us obsolete. doh!

[Tox Laximus]

Consoles run this game at 30fps, 8gb of gddr5 lol, they are both piss weak.

Crappy hardware encased in a insulating plastic shell with one crappy fan blowing the wrong way, real cutting edge.

[MeowCats]

Tox Laximus eredeti hozzászólása:

Consoles run this game at 30fps, 8gb of gddr5 lol, they are both piss weak.

Crappy hardware encased in a insulating plastic shell with one crappy fan blowing the wrong way, real cutting edge.

Because ubisoft cannot make proper games.. have you seen Infamous Second Son, Killzone Shadowfall? those are two great games with amazing graphics and good gameplay.. i do still enjoy both.

[[HTP] Johnny Utah]

Most of us in the hardware world have been telling people to "future proof" for the last 5 years. ALWAYS get as much VRAM as you can on cards. I picked up Titans and have not looked back. Yup, expensive but now you can get the 780 with 6gb and I would highly urge those of you that can afford it for your next build.

[Lobstersaurus]

"780Ti.

The 780 6GB will never, ever outperform the 780Ti 3GB.

Better explanation:
The reason that more Video RAM is needed on better cards is because those higher-end GPU's can crunch more data such as larger textures or processing anti-aliasing.

Currently there isn't a single game that uses more than 2GB of VRAM so requiring 3GB is a pretty big stretch. Some people will cry "but SKYRIM can with lots of mods" so while that IS possible your frame rate would also plummet. If you've got so many mods that a GTX780 is using 3.5GB of VRAM but running at 30FPS because the GPU isn't fast enough it's a rather silly situation IMO.

Battlefield 4 has also been improperly tested and it turns out that 1.8GB is closer to the MAX value with a GTX780 (It can use 2.2GB or so but anything above 1.8GB in the test turned out to be WINDOWS data which would actually be buffered to System RAM anyway if you started running out of VRAM. This exact issue is why many tests are completely WRONG as it's possible to fill up VRAM memory before a game even starts but again this can be automatically reclaimed.)

Why have a 6GB card?
The ONLY benefit to the average gamer is so they can run a super high-resolution game like with a high-res TRIPLE MONITOR setup. And for that, we're back to the GPU limitation so you'd then need one or two more 780's to bring frame rates high again.

OTHER:
Microsoft is working on Shared Tile streaming for games in DX12 in the future. It works by having a lot more texture data stored in the System RAM (i.e. DDR3) and efficiently streamed to the Video RAM. Not the stuff that has to be super-fast, but the stuff that any lag wouldn't be much of an issue.

So you'd likely benefit from more than 8GB of DDR3/DDR4 but this could be two or three years away so no rush. Luckily you can just buy more and drop it in your motherboard if you do benefit.

Between this feature, Tessellation, and some other optimizations many experts have said they can HALT the continued need for more video memory.

With the XB1/PS4 being so close to modern gaming PC's, cross-platform games will be designed around a core program then optimized for the target platform so we won't tend to get the same crappy ports as before. Since these consoles have roughly 5GB of shared memory (VRAM and System) the PC versions will be heavily influenced by this. Yes, they will use more memory at times but I don't think we'll stray very far from this. So, you can STREAM in almost real-time from System to VRAM (Shared tiles), as well as pre-stream texture data from HDD to System RAM (we pre-stream levels already, but in the future will pre-stream more texture data).

Finally, future anti-aliasing methods are going to be far less VRAM intensive. It's been discussed a lot. You can use a LOT of memory by cranking up the AA level but that will change.

So that's my long-winded way of saying 3GB is more than enough for many years with THAT card."

Quoted from, (Photonboy) from...... Tomshardware.com




So basically are some of the people here saying the future games will take up much VRAM?

BTW... I don't agree with the article or disagree... I want to hear your opinions on it... On this topic..