Can't get a straight answer on 2GB vs 4GB for GTX 770

Cyber Akuma

Cyber Akuma

Gawd
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Jan 3, 2009
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648
Have been reading through dozens of forums about this. And I got most of the pointers people said, but a few exceptions I can't seem to find answers for.

These are the two cards I am deciding between:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ENZRQ5U/ - EVGA GeForce GTX 770 Dual Superclocked 2GB 02G-P4-2776-KR

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EIG47JC/ - EVGA GeForce GTX 770 Dual FTW 4GB 02G-P4-2776-KR

The general consensus seems to be that 4GB is useless if you are only going to be doing 1080p at most. Fine, fair enough. But I ran into some exceptions I cant seem to find an answer to:

Many said to go with 4GB if you are going to use SLI. Which the system will.... eventually. However, I don't know if most people are saying this because they expect you to be running the game past 1080p when doing SLI. Even in SLI the system will probably not be run beyond 1080p, it will just be for increased framerates at 1080p in active 3D or just for more demanding games on Ultra... still at 1080p.

There was a lot of back-and-fourth about Battlefield 4 using more than 2GB even at 1080p. And even with this being a popular search topic on Google, I just kept getting mixed speculation. Some said that is not true, some said it is true but that it only just barely uses above 2GB, some said it definitely uses more than 2GB.

And finally, some said that while it doesn't matter now, future games will start using more than 2GB, while others said it will never be effective since the GPU itself will never be fast enough to run such games as a playable framerate if they use that much memory anyway.

So, if the system will start out as a single GTX 770 doing 2D and 3D 1080p (Preferably at Ultra with all settings maxed), and then be upgraded to a SLI setup still doing 2D and 3D at 1080p, would there be any reason to go with 4GB instead of 2GB?
 
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Even at 1080p, 4GB is useful, Watch_Dogs for Example. Brent has a nice write up on it.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/27/watch_dogs_amd_nvidia_gpu_performance_preview/3

Excerpt: "The Radeon R9 290X GPU based video card has more VRAM on board, 4GB, and this seems to have given a different and better gameplay experience in this game. None of the performance drops experienced with the GTX 780 Ti happen on the Radeon R9 290X GPU based video card. The extra VRAM has made it so that performance is smooth with no discernible lag or stuttering while loading new scenes or new textures as we move about the game. This can really be felt as you drive through the city in the open world, it is much smoother on the Radeon R9 290X GPU based video card."

So even with a 1GB difference, even at 1080p, it's better to go with 4GB...at least with Watch_Dogs. I know the reference res is 1440p, but I've heard of people having perf. issues at 1080p with standard 2GB cards.
 
By the time the 770 could use 4 GB it will easily be obsolete. At 1440p I might consider it. At 1080p you are wasting money. Put two of the 2 GB cards in SLI instead. You will have a higher frame rate.
 
On my 290x at 1080p 2xSMAA ultra quality with reduced shadows, Watchdogs has hit over 3.4GB vram use.

Op, it depends whether you want to cover all your bases + not take a risk for newer games <-- THESE.
Its worth considering that consoles for the first time have access to many GB of video memory.
Watchdogs is a console game ported to PC, so larger amounts of vram use could be a sign of things to come.
If you can afford a 4Gb card I recommend you get one.

You can get away with a 2GB card at the moment if you dont mind reducing texture quality, and/or lower levels of AA for some games.
Most current games will let you max them out with 2GB.
 
jmilcher said:
By the time the 770 could use 4 GB it will easily be obsolete. At 1440p I might consider it. At 1080p you are wasting money. Put two of the 2 GB cards in SLI instead. You will have a higher frame rate.
Click to expand...


What jmilcher is trying to say is, there is no way a 770 will be bottlenecked by v-ram, for example, a 770 would not be able to run watch dogs at high enough settings to get above 2GB v-ram however in SLI you could run watch dogs at ultra, then you will definitely run in to a v-ram bottleneck.
 
Rauelius said:
Even at 1080p, 4GB is useful, Watch_Dogs for Example. Brent has a nice write up on it.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/27/watch_dogs_amd_nvidia_gpu_performance_preview/3

Excerpt: "The Radeon R9 290X GPU based video card has more VRAM on board, 4GB, and this seems to have given a different and better gameplay experience in this game. None of the performance drops experienced with the GTX 780 Ti happen on the Radeon R9 290X GPU based video card. The extra VRAM has made it so that performance is smooth with no discernible lag or stuttering while loading new scenes or new textures as we move about the game. This can really be felt as you drive through the city in the open world, it is much smoother on the Radeon R9 290X GPU based video card."
Click to expand...

That excerpt was discussing 2560x1600, not 1920x1080.

So even with a 1GB difference, even at 1080p, it's better to go with 4GB...at least with Watch_Dogs. I know the reference res is 1440p, but I've heard of people having perf. issues at 1080p with standard 2GB cards.
Click to expand...

A single 2GB GTX 770 was benchmarked as doing an average of 54 FPS in Watchdogs on Ultra settings at 1920x1200.
 
Deimos said:
What jmilcher is trying to say is, there is no way a 770 will be bottlenecked by v-ram, for example, a 770 would not be able to run watch dogs at high enough settings to get above 2GB v-ram however in SLI you could run watch dogs at ultra, then you will definitely run in to a v-ram bottleneck.
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Thank you. That is exactly my point.
 
I would say at this point get a 290, it's cheaper or same price and has more vram. Personally I would wait it out until next gen comes out at this point. With all the talk about AMD relesasing new cards in the next few months it may just get interesting again.
 
WVwn though my sig isn't updated. I will never go back to the R9 290 series. RMA after RMA black screen after black screen. Constant throttling, yuck. Anyway OP I just bought a 780ti for around 600 at Fryes but they had 780 (non ti's) for 380. I would see if that price is floating around the web at all and go with that. Unless you are hell bent on 4gb. I would see if you can get a sub $400 780. Good luck and out of the two you posted get the 4gb one if you have to get a 770.
 
hdgamer said:
I would say at this point get a 290, it's cheaper or same price and has more vram. Personally I would wait it out until next gen comes out at this point. With all the talk about AMD relesasing new cards in the next few months it may just get interesting again.
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Kind of hard to believe consider this generation is still very new.

New nvidia cards will be coming sooner.
 
R290! R290!
Click to expand...

Guys, let's not turn this into an Nvidia vs AMD debate. :p Aside from personal preferences and past experiences, the person I am designing this for is excited about PhysX and wants to play games in stereoscopic 3D using a projector.
 
780 3GB. It's not all that much more then a 770 4GB.

BTW, I had a 770 and was using close to 2GB on Watch_Dogs, I would of gone above that if the 770 itself was powerful enough. It was not a vRam problem as to why I couldn't do 8X MSAA, and ultra textures and settings.

A 770 doesn't need 4 GB. Simple as that. It's just not powerful enough.
 
The original budget was $1000, but that wasn't doable with everything we wanted so we decided to target $1500. Every other part except the video card has been decided, and the 4GB version of the 770 will already push us closer to $1600 than $1500. The cheapest 3GB 780 would be at least another $100 over even the 4GB model. I was considering 780 vs 770 before, but then I realized the projector this PC will be using can only output 1080p at 60FPS, or 3D1080p at 30FPS, so a 780 seemed like overkill for that as a single 770 will max out most games at 1080p (and we as planning to add another for SLI later).
 
Cyber Akuma said:
There was a lot of back-and-fourth about Battlefield 4 using more than 2GB even at 1080p. And even with this being a popular search topic on Google, I just kept getting mixed speculation. Some said that is not true, some said it is true but that it only just barely uses above 2GB, some said it definitely uses more than 2GB.
Click to expand...

I will chime in here since I have first hand experience with a GTX 760 4GB card.

BF4 on only a couple maps will push past 2GB of VRAM usage at 1080p, provided you are at Ultra settings across the board and possibly using MSAA and/or increasing the resolution scale. Ultra settings, no MSAA, resolution scale = 100% and 1 monitor will be come darn close to 2GB but may never exceed it.

The 2 biggest things that push BF4 over 2GB of VRAM usage are the resolution scale setting and having multiple monitors. Resolution scale with a setting at anything above 100% will render the scene in a much higher resolution than your monitor, then down-convert to your monitor's resolution that ends up producing a sharper and less aliased image. If you use Battlescreen and run it on your 2nd monitor, you are using a couple hundred megabytes of VRAM just for it. Just having the 2nd monitor plugged in will use a tiny portion of VRAM, even if you aren't running battlescreen on it.

For example:
BF4, 1080p res, mix of ultra/high settings, no MSAA, 2x TXAA, Map=Gulf of Oman 2014 64 player conquest.
Running 2 monitors primary 24" = 1080p, secondary 17" = 1280x1024. Primary running game, secondary running windows desktop with Task manager and EVGA Precision X on it to monitor vitals.
FPS = avg 60-80fps, VRAM usage = 2.2GB

FWIW, Gulf of Oman 2014 is the only map I have been able to consistently push over 2GB of VRAM usage with the usage scenario I listed above. A couple others I have seen it happen, but it isn't consistent maybe due to game patches or something. To be honest, I didn't really settle on my game settings until the second strike DLC came out, so it may have been my setup. In BF3 the VRAM usage on that map was around 1.8GB with the same monitor setup I had before, but a GTX 560ti 2GB running similar High/Ultra settings. Gulf of Oman in BF3 consistently averaged 200MB more usage than other maps. In BF4, Gulf of Oman 2014 is consistently several hundred MB more than other maps, probably because of the dust storm.
 
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Using the highest texture quality in Watch_Dogs and Titanfall both use up to 3GB of VRAM at 1080p. A GTX 770 has plenty of power to run both of those maxed out. 2GB would artificially limit what settings you can run.

My 7950 3GB actually still has major hitching and stuttering in Watch_Dogs while driving around at 1080p with Ultra textures (have to turn textures down to High) because there's not enough VRAM (though supposedly they're fixing that in a patch soon). But the point is that there are already two games that a 4GB GTX 770 can run maxed out, that a 2GB GTX 770 cannot. And it's not like games are going to start using less VRAM in the future. 3+GB of VRAM is here to stay for console ports, and the GTX 770 will have plenty of power to run them, but only if it's not starved for VRAM.


Edit: I think Ubisoft's statement in the article linked above is telling:
&#8220;Watch Dogs can use 3+ GB of RAM on [next-gen] consoles for graphics. Your PC GPU needs enough VRAM for ultra options due to the lack of unified memory.&#8221;

&#8220;If you experience lag/stutter on a fast PC, try to lower one of those settings to reduce the GPU VRAM usage: texture quality, AA, resolution.&#8221;
Click to expand...

They're basically saying: consoles have tons of unified RAM, and PC gamers can just throw more VRAM at the problem or lower their settings, so we're not gonna bother optimizing for lower VRAM. I have a feeling this is going to be a common refrain with current gen console ports.


Edit 2:
As for SLI: as you're probably aware, VRAM isn't additive (two 2GB cards still has 2GB total). With all that extra processing power, even staying at 1080p you can easily crank up the 8xMSAA and ultra textures on all the fancy new games coming out - but those things increase VRAM usage. So in Watch_Dogs, SLI 770s would have enough raw power to run Ultra at like 90 FPS, but with 2GB of VRAM you'd still have to turn down AA and turn textures down to Medium or High, just because of the VRAM limit. To SLI two 2GB GTX 770s would be quite tragic - all of that raw power, but you still have to lower your settings.
 
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I say 4GB. As has been mentioned there are already a couple games out that require more than 2GB for highest settings and that likely isn't going to trend down on the future. Unless the price difference is huge, I'd say opting for the 4GB version for some future proofing wouldn't be a bad idea especially if you plan on keeping it a long time or moving to a higher resolution eventually.
 
I hear all these reviews say 'you need a card with 'X' amount of VRAM' but the problem is that they don't test identical cards with different VRAM sizes. Yes, Watch Dogs ran better on the 4g 290x than the 3g 780 Ti, but does that mean if you were to buy a 780 Ti with 6gb the whole situation would change? The 290x AMD the 780ti have a ton of architectural differences outside of the amount of RAM, it may be the width of the RAM bus that makes the difference, which means that really, more RAM would mean jack.

IF reviews tested a 2gb versus a 4gb 770 at identical clocks, and we could see a tangible difference between the two on these allegedly 'RAM hogging' games, then I would be happy to reccomend it, but so far I'm leaning toward saying that you are more apt to spend money on a card with a bus-width that was designed to accommodate 4gb, instead of a bus-width that was designed to accommodate 2gb, with double-density modules.

Edit: to answer the question about "4g for SLI": it's because you double a graphics system's power when you throw another card into the mix for SLI, but the RAM does not double. Which means you have theoretically TWICE the power of your 2GB card, but you don't have twice the RAM, which could lead to the RAM becoming more of a bottleneck when you are able to use the power of two cards to crank up settings that a single card could not otherwise crank up. By having twice the VRAM on both cards, you essentially reduce the chance that you will hit that wall. In other words: the power of a single card won't be able to take advantage of the double-sized framebuffer, but two cards working together might be a bit more even.
 
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They have been tested against each other. Practically no difference.

HOWEVER, I do recall coming across a review that included Watchdogs and there they did find a difference. Problem is I can't find it right now as I am on my smartphone and apparently Watchdogs is an unoptimized p.o.s. as soon as you go above 1080p.

I'll try finding the review and post it here.
 
If you plan on going SLI in the near future, go 4GB. However, I think once high-end Maxwell is released you're going to question the value of going SLI 770 though.

Also, WD is a POS that's stuttering even on 6GB Titans and 780s! I bet other games will be fine even with all of this "consoles have 8GB" nonsense given the 770 has far more raw horsepower than any console. I bet WD will be patched to run fine with 2GB as well. Probably by the time it's $5 on sale so double-win.
 
JaccoW said:
They have been tested against each other. Practically no difference.

HOWEVER, I do recall coming across a review that included Watchdogs and there they did find a difference. Problem is I can't find it right now as I am on my smartphone and apparently Watchdogs is an unoptimized p.o.s. as soon as you go above 1080p.

I'll try finding the review and post it here.
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That was a year ago. Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein and even Daylight NEED more than 2gb of vram at the settings a 770 can handle. VRAM is ALWAYS and we have reached the point 2gb is NOT enough for all games. People that are suggesting 2gb is enough are not looking at those games or looking forward to upcoming games. Things like high res textures require almost no additional gpu power but do require more vram.
 
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misterbobby said:
That was a year ago. Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein and even Dying Light NEED more than 2gb of vram at the settings a 770 can handle. VRAM is ALWAYS and we have reached the point 2gb is NOT enough for all games. People that are suggesting 2gb is enough are not looking at those games or looking forward to upcoming games. Things like high res textures require almost no additional gpu power but do require more vram.
Click to expand...

According to Steam survey, only 4% of their user base has 3GB or more of VRAM (1.4% have 4GB) while 17% have 2GB. The game designers have an interesting choice to make and I think they'll figure out this little transitional period from the new consoles soon.

As I, and many others have posted, Watch Dogs can run like a dog even on 6GB cards, let alone 3GB and 4GB cards. The consoles have 8GB so we're all, even $1000 GPUs, in a world of hurt if we need exact same memory spec as the consoles going forward. Maybe Maxwell will even the playing field? Hope so.

Dying Light has been delayed to 2015. That's a long time from now.. "Recommended specs" aside, let's not speculate until then on what can/can't be tweaked, and what IQ settings will be noticeable/unnoticeable in that game on 2GB cards.

Wolfenstein, well I'll quote from HardOCP:

HardOCP said:
"a hollow storyline and immersion breaking graphics."
Click to expand...

Brent_Justice said:
I'm playing through the game on a 6GB TITAN, and still getting texture pop-in badly, so VRAM capacity not the cure for it.
Click to expand...

If unoptimized crap games, that arbitrarily lock out features, are the future on the PC then I'm not sure we're heading in the right direction. I'll happily play through my backlog on my 2GB 770 and call it quits.
 
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aldamon said:
According to Steam survey, only 4% of their user base has 3GB or more of VRAM (1.4% have 4GB) while 17% have 2GB. The game designers have an interesting choice to make and I think they'll figure out this little transitional period from the new consoles soon.
Click to expand...

They already have.
You can lower the quality settings if you dont have enough memory for max quality.
I much rather this than losing the edge that high end PCs have.

WD runs great on ultra if you turn vsync off.
There is something wrong with their vsync implementation because I can get over 60fps constant without vsync, but when vsync is switched on, it is constantly below 60fps in some situs.
 
Nenu said:
They already have.
You can lower the quality settings if you dont have enough memory for max quality.
I much rather this than losing the edge that high end PCs have.
Click to expand...

From everything I've read, the textures in Watch Dogs do not justify how much memory they're using and since I have to repeat myself again: Who has the edge when even Titan and 780 are stuttering?
 
aldamon said:
According to Steam survey, only 4% of their user base has 3GB or more of VRAM (1.4% have 4GB) while 17% have 2GB. The game designers have an interesting choice to make and I think they'll figure out this little transitional period from the new consoles soon.

As I, and many others have posted, Watch Dogs can run like a dog even on 6GB cards, let alone 3GB and 4GB cards. The consoles have 8GB so we're all, even $1000 GPUs, in a world of hurt if we need exact same memory spec as the consoles going forward. Maybe Maxwell will even the playing field? Hope so.

Dying Light has been delayed to 2015. That's a long time from now.. "Recommended specs" aside, let's not speculate until then on what can/can't be tweaked, and what IQ settings will be noticeable/unnoticeable in that game on 2GB cards.

Wolfenstein, well I'll quote from HardOCP:





If unoptimized crap games, that arbitrarily lock out features, are the future on the PC then I'm not sure we're heading in the right direction. I'll happily play through my backlog on my 2GB 770 and call it quits.
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Yeah I pretty much agree as these games needing more vram are just not impressive looking at all. And I meant to say Daylight not Dying Light so I will go back and edit that.
 
aldamon said:
From everything I've read, the textures in Watch Dogs do not justify how much memory they're using and since I have to repeat myself again: Who has the edge when even Titan and 780 are stuttering?
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There is more than one issue.
See the rest of my post.

I agree the game isnt best optimised, but its a matter of whether you want to run them or not.
You can wait until it is patched a year later and see if things have improved.
 
Here is a straight answer for you. A single 770 does not have the power to take advantage of 4 Gb of ram. 770's in SLI do have the power to utilize the extra ram. There you have it in a nutshell.
 
Joga said:
So in Watch_Dogs, SLI 770s would have enough raw power to run Ultra at like 90 FPS, but with 2GB of VRAM you'd still have to turn down AA and turn textures down to Medium or High, just because of the VRAM limit. To SLI two 2GB GTX 770s would be quite tragic - all of that raw power, but you still have to lower your settings.
Click to expand...

Tell me about it. That's why I recommend a 4GB card...My CFX'd Radeon 7930s and SLI'd Geforce GTX670s are bottlenecked by 2GB.
 
I'd say go for a GTX780 or a R9 290. Those are better options in my opinion. I wouldn't worry too much about the VRAM issue because the two games that are supposedly bringing down 2GB or less cards are not worth it. Doubly so when you can just turn down one or two settings and have just about the same gameplay experience. Why spend a good bit more money to turn up textures when you can't even play the game set to Ultra anyway..?
 
We've been having a lively debate on this at overclock.net where I put in my two cents:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1488302/why-you-should-always-get-more-vram-gtx-770-4gb/30#post_22241187

To summarize my thoughts, 2GB is plenty for a single card, 4GB is a no-brainer for SLI. At least that's how it is today. I took two Galaxy cards that were identical aside from memory, tested them at both 1080p and 5760x1080 with several games, and the 4GB one only showed increased performance at settings that were unplayable on both cards. Watchdogs seems to be the exception to this currently but there's no telling what next year's games will need.

You could also say Wolfenstein needs extra vram, but 1) Wolfenstein has half it settings clumped into non-customizable presets which is inefficient, and 2) it still looks like a PS3 game whether it's set to medium or ultra IMHO.
 
Doesn't matter now, and when it will matter, 4GB won't be enough either, as the new consoles have 8GB of unified memory to work with. Watch dogs is just the tip of the iceberg, and it's arguably not "next gen" because it's not exclusive to ps4/xbone.
 
At 1080p the data out there indicates that you'll almost never be capped by the 2GB model.
 
4GB. Even if it's an overkill amount of memory for the horsepower this particular GPU model offers, it allows for the possibility of two things:

1. Making the most out of SLI if that is the future plan.
2. Potential for more resale value because it has more VRAM.

Personally, I would strive for a 780 3GB or 6GB model, but if it's not in the overall budget, then so be it.
 
bernaby said:
Here is a straight answer for you. A single 770 does not have the power to take advantage of 4 Gb of ram. 770's in SLI do have the power to utilize the extra ram. There you have it in a nutshell.
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Thats an incorrect and somewhat poorly worded answer. A 770 only has to be able to need more than 2gb at settings its capable of running and in Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein and Daylight it does.
 
DejaWiz said:
4GB. Even if it's an overkill amount of memory for the horsepower this particular GPU model offers, it allows for the possibility of two things:

1. Making the most out of SLI if that is the future plan.
2. Potential for more resale value because it has more VRAM.

Personally, I would strive for a 780 3GB or 6GB model, but if it's not in the overall budget, then so be it.
Click to expand...

That's like saying someone who bought a GTX580 has more resale value today. Sure maybe they can get like what five dollars more for it? LOL

And not everyone likes SLI or multi cards. People who do run multi cards are in a smaller minority.
 
Most people who buy a single card now with the thought to buy another one for SLI later end up here asking if a different version or make of that card will work in SLI with it because it isn't available anymore, or if they should just upgrade to a single one of the newest cards. "SLI it later" = "Sell it later".
 
hdgamer said:
That's like saying someone who bought a GTX580 has more resale value today. Sure maybe they can get like what five dollars more for it? LOL

And not everyone likes SLI or multi cards. People who do run multi cards are in a smaller minority.
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Cyber Akuma mentioned that SLI was going to happen in the future. As for resale value...there is always a possibility of higher VRAM parts fetching more money, hence my use of the word "potential". But, as with all things hardware related, timing is everything in order to get the most out of the used goods. One maybe two generations old? Yeah, the potential is certainly there. Two or three generations old? No way in hell.
 
I got the 4GB version of 770, but it was only $30 more, not $65 more.

But yeah, if you might SLI them to run them at a higher resolution then you want the 4GB version.
 
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