How much vram is enough?

[Stuped Bürd]

How much vram would you say is good for high end systems? I see all these new cards coming out and some have upwards to 10gb. I'm still running fine with 2gb of vram and 8gb of system memroy. A bit ridiculous if you ask me.

[shiel]

Some games are using 4+gb VRAM at 1080p already. When you get into 1440p and 4k resolutions 8+ gigs of VRAM makes sense for a high end system.

[TΩKSYK]

Depends on the resolution you are playing, and depends on the graphics level you want to play.

6gb of vram is a must for me, i play on 1440p and i hate jaggies and low textures, so for an average gamer on 1080p i say 4gb is a must these days with the latest titles.

[𝕙.𝕓𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕒𝕤]

Even in 1080p 8GB VRAM will become standard.

Look at the benchmark results for Hyper settings cards below 6GB didn't work.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2471-mirrors-edge-catalyst-graphics-card-benchmark-gtx-1080-1070-390x

[[LTT] LinusFTW]

1GB- Died ages ago
2GB- Nearly dead
4GB- Better than 2GB but not quite enough to play games at 1080P ultra settings
6GB- Enough to play games at ultra 1080P and high 1440P
8GB- Designed for 2K and 4K
12GB- For people that think 8GB still isn't enough

[Hamzer the Conqueror (of lands)]

VRAM is getting really important in never games. 2 GB is fine for mid settings. But games like the Witcher III require 4+ GB at 1080p ultra. Why do you think the 1060 has so much VRAM?

[SundownKid]

Right now for 1080, 2gb is sufficient but 4gb+ is optimal.
For 1440p 4gb is sufficient but 6GB+ is optimal

[Hamzer the Conqueror (of lands)]

Първоначално публикувано от SundownKid:

Right now for 1080, 2gb is sufficient but 4gb+ is optimal.
For 1440p 4gb is sufficient but 6GB+ is optimal

4gb for ultra 1080p 6gb for ultra 1440p

[Lord Flashheart]

It is game dependent and also your system. If you do not quite have enough VRAM then data is shoved to it when needed. If you have enugh main memory it may not be noticable. Use msi afterburner to monitor it on screen. That should give you a better idea.

[Arya]

VRAM isn't a great way to judge GPU performance. Actual FLOPs and core clock are also important. Generally you're better off looking at reviews for a given model, rather than trying to work out from the stats whether it'll work or not.

GTX 1080s and RX480s both have 8GB of VRAM. They're not even close to equal on performance.

[Stuped Bürd]

Първоначално публикувано от Okami:

VRAM isn't a great way to judge GPU performance. Actual FLOPs and core clock are also important. Generally you're better off looking at reviews for a given model, rather than trying to work out from the stats whether it'll work or not.

GTX 1080s and RX480s both have 8GB of VRAM. They're not even close to equal on performance.

I know that. I was wondering why so much is recommended now. Whereas 5-6 years ago 1gb was a good ammount.

[shiel]

Първоначално публикувано от Traveler:

Първоначално публикувано от Okami:

VRAM isn't a great way to judge GPU performance. Actual FLOPs and core clock are also important. Generally you're better off looking at reviews for a given model, rather than trying to work out from the stats whether it'll work or not.

GTX 1080s and RX480s both have 8GB of VRAM. They're not even close to equal on performance.

I know that. I was wondering why so much is recommended now. Whereas 5-6 years ago 1gb was a good ammount.

Because games require more memory for textures, lighting, etc, than they did 5 years ago... That's kind of like saying "why won't Halo run on an n64?" The answer is pretty obviously due to more complex graphics/scripting. Otherwise I'd still be rocking my P4 and 64mb GeForce 2.

Also note that higher resolutions require even more vram due to the increased texture sizes.

[The Rock God]

Първоначално публикувано от Traveler:

Първоначално публикувано от Okami:

VRAM isn't a great way to judge GPU performance. Actual FLOPs and core clock are also important. Generally you're better off looking at reviews for a given model, rather than trying to work out from the stats whether it'll work or not.

GTX 1080s and RX480s both have 8GB of VRAM. They're not even close to equal on performance.

I know that. I was wondering why so much is recommended now. Whereas 5-6 years ago 1gb was a good ammount.

5-6 years before that 256MB was a lot.
5-6 years before that 64MB was a lot.
5-6 years before that 4MB was a lot.

Why would anyone ever need more than 4MB of VRAM? Doom and Quake are awesome with my Voodoo card. You have 1GB? Ridiculous. My computer doesn't even have that much hard drive space.

[Bad Whippet]

VRAM used to be the defining factor of a good GPU card. I remember the excitement when GPU cards first hit a gigabyte of VRAM and people thought it was just overkill, but VRAM went up and up, and any card that was tight with it gave really bad gaming performance.

It all stalled somewhat with the last console generation where many AAA games were direct ports that were never going to need very much VRAM, which meant that RAM on GPU cards started to be under-utilised somewhat, until it was all but forgotten about. However, if rumoured consoles with more shared RAM are built, cross-platform games generally will start making more use of higher amounts of VRAM for everyone. That said, I can't see much using beyond 4Gb any time soon, but I wouldn't personally throw money down on a card that's 3Gb or less today (bearing in mind you want at least a couple of years' life out of the card before upgrading).

As of today's games, only a small number of games have pushed beyond 3Gb on my card (which has 6Gb) at 1080p - including Thief and Watch_dogs (the latter exceeded 4Gb). Dying Light also came close, and Fallout 4 is being a bit of a glutton too (though I suspect that's the mountain of mods I've crammed into it)!

[shiel]

Първоначално публикувано от Bad Whippet:

VRAM used to be the defining factor of a good GPU card. I remember the excitement when GPU cards first hit a gigabyte of VRAM and people thought it was just overkill, but VRAM went up and up, and any card that was tight with it gave really bad gaming performance.

It all stalled somewhat with the last console generation where many AAA games were direct ports that were never going to need very much VRAM, which meant that RAM on GPU cards started to be under-utilised somewhat, until it was all but forgotten about. However, if rumoured consoles with more shared RAM are built, cross-platform games generally will start making more use of higher amounts of VRAM for everyone. That said, I can't see much using beyond 4Gb any time soon, but I wouldn't personally throw money down on a card that's 3Gb or less today (bearing in mind you want at least a couple of years' life out of the card before upgrading).

As of today's games, only a small number of games have pushed beyond 3Gb on my card (which has 6Gb) at 1080p - including Thief and Watch_dogs (the latter exceeded 4Gb). Dying Light also came close, and Fallout 4 is being a bit of a glutton too (though I suspect that's the mountain of mods I've crammed into it)!

DOOM uses over 4gb at 1080p...

Also one of the biggest reasons for the big jump in vram in newer cards is the popularity of 1440p and 4k. They are finally becoming resolutions people want to play at as opposed to unable to achieve with steady frames without spending a fortune on a rig to run them.

[TΩKSYK]

Yes, currently VRAM is very important, still though, many people would tell you that you don't need much VRAM for 1080p, and that it is a waste if you go with 2GB or 4GB, but you would realize youre getting out of VRAM once you start playing demanding games, and especially if you love eye-candy and push all settings up with Anti-Aliasing.