Is VRAM important in this game?

[NeonSkyline]

Will 2GB be enough? It meets recommended requirements but what about modded?
I have 16gb ram and my graphics card has 2gb vram

[CyberVibes]

Vrams used to store textures/images and some data but also helps take the load off of ram. The more Vram the better.

[link_0610]

It's still possible to go far with just 2gb vram. I done that on my old laptop

[⚔️やiͥzzͣaͫkiller⚔]

i use rx 16GB and it says you need 34GB so you have never enough but it runs.... oh and you dont need a heater in that room any more when playing cities XD but when you have all DLC 2 GB wont do it anymore friend played on laptop but since parks and stuff he cant run it anymore

[CyberVibes]

Originally posted by ExplosiveBadass:

i use rx 16GB and it says you need 34GB so you have never enough but it runs.... oh and you dont need a heater in that room any more when playing cities XD but when you have all DLC 2 GB wont do it anymore friend played on laptop but since parks and stuff he cant run it anymore

Think you might have your wires crossed, if you have a card with 16GB of vram then you would have to have one of the more recent powerful cards like the 4080 or the RTX 6800 i'd expect to see a powerful pc if you have a card like that. You can't get a GPU with 34GB of ram so i think you're getting it mixed with physical ram.

The game will run fine on 16GB with a 48000mb pagefile as long as you don't go too mad subbing to the workshop items. It's possible your friend has a old laptop but without him posting his rig and what DLC's, assets and mods he's subbed to it's hard to judge, ask him to come in and make a post to see if we can help him.

EDIT: Correction you can get a 32GB ram but it's over $7000
https://www.amazon.co.uk/NVIDIA-Tesla-Volta-Accelerator-Graphics/dp/B07JVNHFFX

[NeonSkyline]

Originally posted by link_0610:

It's still possible to go far with just 2gb vram. I done that on my old laptop

Glad to hear that 😀

[Catratio]

I have 16 GB RAM and a 2 GB graphics card RAM and it ran, but fairly jerky and prone to 10+ second lag when moving between parts of the city as it had to load in new textures from the HDD's pagefile. I got a $40 SSD last week and now all the stutters are largely gone. So you can make it work, but if you have a SSD then that's your best option. To be fair though I have nearly all the DLCs so your results will vary depending how much your game needs to load regularly.

[CyberVibes]

Originally posted by Catratio:

I have 16 GB RAM and a 2 GB graphics card RAM and it ran, but fairly jerky and prone to 10+ second lag when moving between parts of the city as it had to load in new textures from the HDD's pagefile. I got a $40 SSD last week and now all the stutters are largely gone. So you can make it work, but if you have a SSD then that's your best option. To be fair though I have nearly all the DLCs so your results will vary depending how much your game needs to load regularly.

A SSD or M2 drive are the best upgrades anyone can do with this game. But spend a bit of money on a quality one like Samsung, Also the bigger the drive the faster it will be over long term. Make sure you create a over provision so it allocates some space for the AI to help longevity of the drive.

[Tsubame ⭐]

This game is not too graphics intensive. 2 GB vRAM may get you somewhat decent performance as long as you do not play in 4k and use mods that enhance the visuals of the game.

For large cities, modded, playing in 4k, and high graphic presets, 6 GB vRAM is ideal.

I have managed to hit 11 GB vRAM usage in this game.

[Zooba]

From my experience the game fills up all the VRAM you have, but it doesn't actually *need* all of it. Anything that doesn't fit just gets put into ram. Between more vram and more ram, spend the money on more ram.

[CyberVibes]

Originally posted by Zouba64:

From my experience the game fills up all the VRAM you have, but it doesn't actually *need* all of it. Anything that doesn't fit just gets put into ram. Between more vram and more ram, spend the money on more ram.

The amount of Vram used is dependant on how high a setting of textures you have in game.

[MarkJohnson]

Without vRAM, your integrated video (iGPU) has to use your system RAM. Some can allocate up to 8GB of system RAM to run the iGPU.

So, if you have 16GB of RAM, then you could have as little of 8GB of RAM to play the game. which isn't going to be very good.

so yes, vRAM is very important. even 2GB vRAM can be very helpful.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Originally posted by Zouba64:

From my experience the game fills up all the VRAM you have, but it doesn't actually *need* all of it. Anything that doesn't fit just gets put into ram. Between more vram and more ram, spend the money on more ram.

Yes, the game tends to be allocated almost all the vRAM available, even 24 GB from a 3090 RTX, but actual usage is a different story.

[General Tso]

If the game works the way one would expect. It stores as much as it can in VRAM and then store everything else in normal RAM. As you do things like moving around on the map. The game add new items to VRAM as they come into view. And removes unused items as they go out of view.

This system should work OK as long as you have enough memory of both types to meet the needs of your current map. But if the game needs to resort to the page file and you are using a slow hard drive. Then you might have problems. Using a SSD instead of a hard drive can help with this.