New New video card How much better will it be with 4GB of ram

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apopleptic

Limp Gawd
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I recently bought an MSI 7870 and it had issues with the audio.
Returned and exchanged for a brand new one and it had basically the same issue.
The audio would sound distorted and there would be a pop and then the audio would be OK for a while.
MSI suggested that their cards may not work with a TV and only with a monitor (sounds crazy to me) so I brought the card back and got my money back.

Now I'm looking for a new card again.
Thinking about dropping the extra couple of bucks and getting a GTX760 this time.
They start at like $250 but for $35 more I can get one with 4GB of ram.
Worth it?
Cooler looks kinda lame, and I imagine the single fan is going to be a bit loud.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130937

Gaming is at 1080p for now.
 
apopleptic said:
I recently bought an MSI 7870 and it had issues with the audio.
Returned and exchanged for a brand new one and it had basically the same issue.
The audio would sound distorted and there would be a pop and then the audio would be OK for a while.
MSI suggested that their cards may not work with a TV and only with a monitor (sounds crazy to me) so I brought the card back and got my money back.

Now I'm looking for a new card again.
Thinking about dropping the extra couple of bucks and getting a GTX760 this time.
They start at like $250 but for $35 more I can get one with 4GB of ram.
Worth it?
Cooler looks kinda lame, and I imagine the single fan is going to be a bit loud.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130937

Gaming is at 1080p for now.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I don't really think its worth the 4GB especially at 1080p res. It'll only be worth it if you play skyrim with a ton of texture mods, but even then just for one game it really isn't worth it. I actually bought a GTX 760 windforce rev 2.0 a couple days ago and it's suppose to arrive soon. Real nice price/performance for only 259.99 and I'd imagine it'll be cool and quiet which is way ahead in terms of my current reference 6870. But yeah I'd go for either the newer windforce model or the twin frozr iv model if you were gonna get the GTX 760.
 
this topic has been beat to death more than any other I can think of. its the same answer now as its been for the last year which is 2gb is fine for a single card at 1080. only exception is also the same one that has been mentioned for the last year which is Skyrim with insane texture mods.

that said, if you plain to keep the card for a long time then maybe having more than 2gb can be helpful if games start having really hi res texture options.
 
cannondale06 said:
this topic has been beat to death more than any other I can think of. its the same answer now as its been for the last year which is 2gb is fine for a single card at 1080. only exception is also the same one that has been mentioned for the last year which is Skyrim with insane texture mods.

that said, if you plain to keep the card for a long time then maybe having more than 2gb can be helpful if games start having really hi res texture options.
Click to expand...

I usually don't agree with a lot of what cannondale says, but hes spot on with this. If you are going to upgrade again in a year, don't worry about the memory. If you are a person who upgrades once every 3-4 generations, the extra memory could come in handy.
 
well, the last card I bought was an 8800gtx, and that has been on the shelf for a while.
I don't think I'll be buying another card for at least a few years.
I would most likely upgrade my screen before I upgrade this card.
I guess what I'm getting at is for $30 I can double the memory, or I can save the $30 and get one with a 'nicer fan' and a 'factory overclock'
 
yeah it kind of sucks that is the only 760 now with 4gb of vram. that appears to have the reference 670 cooler which is not something I would want.
 
I've used the reference 670 cooler, it's alright (not as loud as some previous gen fans).

If you're going single card at 1080p, just find a 2GB card. 4GB is useful if you're going to SLI them for larger resolutions.
 
Eureka! said:
If you're going single card at 1080p, just find a 2GB card. 4GB is useful if you're going to SLI them for larger resolutions.
Click to expand...

^^ This

Generally speaking if in the future you do come across a game that goes above 2GB of Vram usage, chances are the GPU wont be able to keep up anyways. SLI would be the only reason I see.
 
I went with 2 GB GTX 770
my reasoning was:

I'm sticking to 1200p and won't change displays untill there are cheap 4k or oleds.(so 2-3 years from now at least).
It's enough for current games
Games released in 2014 will be cross-generation games made for both current gen consoles and next gens.
By the time 3-4GB are needed 770 will be equivalent of mainstream part
Worst case scenario I'll use worse textures or less AA. Untill replacing it with next gen.

Also chances are current cards won't be fast enough to push true next gen games with high levels of AA anyway.
 
I was actually just considering the identical scenario. Skyrim with a ton of hi-res textures is intriguing all by itself. That old Oblivion mod where absolutely everything was visible, no pop-in, might be interesting with a 4GB card.

These do seem like pretty limited situations though, and with the lower clocks + louder fan it doesn't quite seem to be worth it.
 
When AMD gave us Eyefinity with HD58xx they came with 1Gb of ram and it just was not enough for 5760 x 1080 surround gaming. They addressed with the HD 69xx with 2Gb but still not cutting it ,with the HD79xx and 3Gb of ram allows for higher settings to be played in Eyefinity and where the best use's of the ram is because the demand has been placed on the gpu , with 1920x1080 it's a balance cpu/gpu and the lower you go is cpu demand and why most reveiw sites test at 800 x 600 for a new cpu review.
 
Michaelius said:
I went with 2 GB GTX 770
my reasoning was:

I'm sticking to 1200p and won't change displays untill there are cheap 4k or oleds.(so 2-3 years from now at least).
It's enough for current games
Games released in 2014 will be cross-generation games made for both current gen consoles and next gens.
By the time 3-4GB are needed 770 will be equivalent of mainstream part
Worst case scenario I'll use worse textures or less AA. Untill replacing it with next gen.

Also chances are current cards won't be fast enough to push true next gen games with high levels of AA anyway.
Click to expand...

I agree with your reasoning. Bought a 770 2gb also. LOL. So maybe I'm biased. :)
Don't plan to change video cards for another 2 years, or unless I get a huge tax refund check and next gen is ready by then. LOL.
 
cannondale06 said:
yeah it kind of sucks that is the only 760 now with 4gb of vram. that appears to have the reference 670 cooler which is not something I would want.
Click to expand...
Yup, that cooler is atrocious :(.

I would only go with a 4gb gtx760, if you plan on picking up another one or two down the line. Another option to look at would be the 7950, when it's on special.

2gb is plenty for 1080p atm.
 
Interestingly enough, evga is going with the single fan cooling solution for its FTW 2GB models.

I recall reading in at least one review they found the evga ACX solution to actually be louder than the nvidia reference model, although I cant seem to find that reference now.

EDIT: Here we go, although the difference is probably imperceptible to all but an audiophile. Still, a custom solution that is louder than stock seems silly unless it provides exceptional cooling. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_760_SC_ACX_Cooler/26.html

The cooling is better than stock, but roughly not as good as the ASUS or MSI solution, based on the same techpowerup article.

Certainly the MSI solution is quieter than the evga solution though.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/452...egment-cooling-and-noise-levels-evgainno3dmsi

and a review that compares the evga sc acx to ... nothing. Very useful. :rolleyes:

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1025&page=19
 
Chances are you r using 500MB-1500MB in any PC game, so moving to 4GB @ 1080p could very well be a waste. Install MSI Afterburner and check the boxes for memory usage to be displayed and check your games in game for the 411.
 
BF4 with max settings and 4xaa could take up more than 2gb of Vram at 1080p.
 
Booo! they raised the price of this card today... I hate when that happens. Now I'm back to looking for a used card, or waiting for one with a better cooler.

I'm certainly not going to go with MSI after what their tech support told me when I called in.
"Our cards don't always work with televisions, only monitors. Even though HDMI is a standard, it isn't standard."
That may have been enough to convince me to never try them again.
 
I've got two 6950s and play at 1200p. Their 2GB buffers have absolutely no issues. I haven't noticed any games even coming close to filling the whole 2 gigs. 4GB is a waste IMO.
 
My 780 gtx touches 2.8 gigs of VRAM playing bio shock infinite. Ofcourse I do play at 2560 x 1600, so unless u're playing above 1440p, there's no real need for more than 2 gigs of VRAM.
 
Every generation we have this conversation. Really, games will start to use more and more VRAM, but that increased VRAM budget comes with increased GPU demand. So it makes sense to buy something like a Titan, that has tons of VRAM, but also has the GPU balls to back it up, so that when games get to the point of using all that ram, it has the power to utilize it. A midrange card with tons of VRAM is not as practical. Once the games get to the point of utilizing the 4gb buffer, will a 760 have enough grunt to really push them?
 
KazeoHin said:
Every generation we have this conversation. Really, games will start to use more and more VRAM, but that increased VRAM budget comes with increased GPU demand. So it makes sense to buy something like a Titan, that has tons of VRAM, but also has the GPU balls to back it up, so that when games get to the point of using all that ram, it has the power to utilize it. A midrange card with tons of VRAM is not as practical. Once the games get to the point of utilizing the 4gb buffer, will a 760 have enough grunt to really push them?
Click to expand...


Couldn't have said it any better. If the Titan ushers in a new era of SLI like performance via a single chip as the new "top-end" line generation to generation, then yes increasing the VRAM could make a difference long term as more and more people will see it as a way to future proof their system without having to deal with the SLI non-sense. We've already seen a explosion in the amount of VRAM coming on modern GPU's in the last 10 years and I suspect they'll continue to increase at the same rate with what we know about Nvidia's Volta Generation bringing stacked DRAM on the die.

Your 2GB card will last for as long as any other card you ever owned. Hell, my GTX 260 with 896MB of RAM lasted me all the way until this Spring and I hardly noticed anything major playing at 1080p. Settings were slightly less than max of course but hell when I first bought it that was an ungodly amount of RAM. By the time you replace it in 2-5 years the new standard of that time will probably be double what it was anyway.

Not to mention that PS4/X-Box ONE news where the new consoles are only coming with roughly 4GB of usable RAM for development. With regards to consoles, 4GB cards are future proof, but it'll be a long time before that even comes close to being the bottom line you see in every game.
 
ritatud said:
Skyrim with a ton of hi-res textures is intriguing all by itself.
Click to expand...

It is, but even then unless you're doing some crazy modding, 2GB still seems to be enough according to users around here.
 
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I expect next gen console games will result in PC games that can use >2GB vram at 1080p. Even if they only have 4 of 8GB to work with, there will be some 3/1 and 2.5/1.5 splits with most of the available memory going to graphics. That said, PC games will still scale down and at worst a 2GB card will just have to turn down a few settings. Maybe turn down textures a notch. The other important piece of the puzzle is the marginal cost. OP says it's an extra $35, so we're not looking at +$100 like it was for 680s a year ago. For +$35 I'd get the 4GB card.
 
The huge increase in console RAM available to developers is a strong reason to get 2GB instead of 1GB, but I wouldn't pay too much for 4GB on a 760. You're better off buying the 2GB version and upgrading it when it starts to get slow. Buy a 760 w/ a good cooler.

or buy a 7950 w/ 3GB, they're getting cheaper by the week.

The Asus 660 Ti w/ 3GB is down to $225.
 
760 GTX is really a 670 GTX. If people were buying a 4GB 670 GTX last year, the same rule of thumb would apply to the 760 GTX this year.

I guess one could SLI 2 x 760 GTX's with 4GB of VRAM if he were to use a resolution of 1600p. Otherwise I see no use of that VRAM.
 
zandor said:
I expect next gen console games will result in PC games that can use >2GB vram at 1080p.
Click to expand...

How can you expect this when you talking of crossfired gpus with raw power less than half of a 760? You truly believe that games will run out of memory before they run out of graphics juice? At 1080p, a resolution that has never been high-end for games since at least Directx 7?

It is impossible, with a non-bugged game engine, to even talk about 2GB being too little. yet you dare to consider that a half-assed GPU from a console, that is nothing more than a glorified integrated graphics to demand more memory resources than their bigger siblings in PCs?

Do you even realize that Microsoft has announced tiled resources at the tech behind XBOX games, that will change the way game engines deal with textures, surfaces and memory, so we can game using less hardware, like, for example, these consoles?
 
geok1ng said:
How can you expect this when you talking of crossfired gpus with raw power less than half of a 760? You truly believe that games will run out of memory before they run out of graphics juice? At 1080p, a resolution that has never been high-end for games since at least Directx 7?

It is impossible, with a non-bugged game engine, to even talk about 2GB being too little. yet you dare to consider that a half-assed GPU from a console, that is nothing more than a glorified integrated graphics to demand more memory resources than their bigger siblings in PCs?

Do you even realize that Microsoft has announced tiled resources at the tech behind XBOX games, that will change the way game engines deal with textures, surfaces and memory, so we can game using less hardware, like, for example, these consoles?
Click to expand...
so in your limited scope mind, console games are only ever going to use about 1 to 1.5 gb of ram and nothing will happen with the rest that's not needed by the system? :rolleyes:

without a doubt there will be more vram usage in next gen games because they will use things like higher res textures which dont even require more processing power.

hell current consoles only have 256mb right now but most pc versions can easily use over 1 to 1.5 gb of vram already.
 
The more vram, the better.

Next year the newer cards will probably have ~8GB of vram, and game designers will be taking that into account.

The "2GB of vram is enough" argument is silly. It's enough now, but it is absolutely short-sighted to believe that it will be enough down the road. Unless you're involved in the expensive hobby of card-hopping every few months, in which case you can afford to go for more vram anyway.
 
game developers know that 90% of cards, including high end, will have only 2gb of vram so I doubt it will be an issue anytime soon. we will probably get a few games next year with optional features that easily go over 2gb but I think it will be at least another year after that before we see 2gb being a real limitation. its easy to see the pros and cons but I say unless you plan on keeping the card more than 2 years that a single card is still fine with 2gb. then again if its only a little more money then nothing wrong with going for a little more vram now.
 
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