I don't know what games you are playing but I have seen plenty of new games maximize ram usage depending on how much is available. Even in the 2060 review [H] did, they saw it choke due to ram usage. If its graphically heavy game then it can easily reduce smoothness swapping in and out of memory.
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
The Nvidia 1660 TI Will Launch on February 15 at $279
- Thread starter AlphaAtlas
- Start date
I don't know what games you are playing but I have seen plenty of new games maximize ram usage depending on how much is available. Even in the 2060 review [H] did, they saw it choke due to ram usage. If its graphically heavy game then it can easily reduce smoothness swapping in and out of memory.
![Zarathustra[H]](https://cdn.hardforum.com/data/avatars/m/9/9298.jpg?1707758471){kind=avatar}
Zarathustra[H]
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2000
- Messages
- 38,835
Well, lets see, in the last couple of years I have played a variety of titles, some old, some new, all FPS (except Civilization)
- Bioshock Remastered
- Bioshock 2 Remastered
- Bioshock Infinite
- Black Mesa
- Civilization VI (and expansions)
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
- Doom (2016)
- Dying Light (and expansions)
- Fallout 4
- Left 4 Dead
- Metro 2033
- Metro Last Light
- Prey
- PUBG
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Call of Chernobyl Mod
- Singularity
- Wolfenstein: The New Order
- Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
- Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
I keep the charts from MSI Afterburner (Rivaturner) open on a side screen when playing. I don't recall seeing it go over ~5GB (6GB max, maybe?) with 4k ultra settings.
It's possible it did, and I just don't remember, but I don't think so, as it would have stood out to me.
If it is 1536 cuda cores, it will be neck and neck with the GTX1070/980ti, which is a good amount faster than the RX 580.
I am expecting it to be around 20% or so faster than 1060. We will see. I think Nvidia had to cut it down too much to save the rtx 2060.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
happymedium
Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2010
- Messages
- 886
At least 20% faster than a gtx1060. It has more 20% more Cuda cores than a gtx1060 and faster core vs core than the Pascal line.
Not what I meant. I if you are playing a graphical and texture heavy game. You can bet you will see random dips in fps when it swaps in and out of memory. Especially at ultra. To each his own. I will never recommend spending close to 400 on a card with only 6Gb of ram. Whether it’s AMD or Nvidia. I guess only nvidia can swing that. Lol!
happymedium
Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2010
- Messages
- 886
I bet when your Nvidia and you control 70% of the market the game developers will go out of there way to make sure Nvidia cards do not run out of memory with your AAA games.
And yes ,I will bet on that.
Show me a video of a 6gb card in a game @1080p that runs out of texture memory and stutters before its under the 60fps standard . Hint you won't find one without a texture pack.
How about some frametimes showing stuttering?
Last edited:
Read the 2060 review at hardocp and look at their feedback. Like I said I ain’t paying $380 for a fuckin card with 6gb of ram. Otherwise nvidia will never learn and next time RTX 3070 or whatever it’s called will be 450 and 6gb of ram, no thanks. Lol.
RanceJustice
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2003
- Messages
- 6,623
I don't think an advertisement would do anything to undermine its soonest-released, ostensibly highest priced, and long awaited high end item by considering the possibility that a much cheaper follow-up product in a couple months could occupy the same market space? Or discuss leaks for that matter.
All of the info I refer to is out there; the merit of the leaks themselves is of course as always up for debate. I won't rehash all of the various customer and user negative business decisions of Nvidia, but in recent years AMD has made openness and other behavior that benefits the user part of their brand, as opposed to Nvidia's proprietary nature , ability to throw money around to lock things down, and marketing machine. As some will point out this may not be out of the goodness of their hearts but that doesn't really matter if AMD has made certain aspects like openness (source, spec etc) part of their brand its good for us all and worth supporting. Neither company is perfect, but we've seen what Nvidia has done when they feel they have a comfortable lead and it will be nice to see AMD have solid alternatives across the vast majority of the market.
I think that 6GB is fine for now, but how long do you see 1080p
Just be glad there aren't any 3GB 2060's like they did with the 1060.
Oh wait...
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/64267/geforce-rtx-2060-models-include-6gb-4gb-3gb/index.html
Hopefully this is not true.
I think 6GB is fine without RTX, but I can't say for how long. I do feel 4GB is not enough.
These upcoming cards from Nvidia are fast enough to utilize 8GB easily.
How many of us thought the R9 390's 8GB was overkill? Looking back, I think it was a really nice move for the consumer.
Vram consumption scales up faster with image quality than it does resolution.
ie, 1080p ultra will often consume more vram than 4k high.
N4CR
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2011
- Messages
- 4,947
Yup, looked hard and far for a 8Gb 290X at one point for this exact reason. VRAM (when not gimped and slow) is almost always the limiter for lifetime in my experience so getting more always pays off. My 290X was decent for 1440p but VRAM was the limiting factor in the last few years... this is why I said the VII will last longest out of the 2080 and the rest of the stack.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
In my experience, GPUs usually run out of horsepower before they run out of VRAM. The majority of cases where I've seen VRAM become an issue have involved multi-GPU setups, which now that Nvidia has committed to making large gaming-focused (or at least more low-precision focused) GPUs that rock the top end, has become less of an issue outside of increasingly high resolution and refresh rate availability.
For the mid-range, just don't get the 'budget' cards if you're serious about gaming.
I would agree with this recommendation and further state that one should not spend $300 or more for any GPU with less than 8GB.
6GB is plenty for 1080P, but would not expect it to be a wise investment for anything 1440P or higher.
Most of you still have it backwards as far as vram goes using a midrange card.
Using 1080p on Ultra will sometimes use far more vram than 4k on even high:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pag..._graphics_performance_benchmark_review,8.html
Admittitly an extreme case, but if you are using this card, you will most likely dial back the settings as you increase the resolution, thus decreasing vram consumption - significantly in some cases.
Using 1080p on Ultra will sometimes use far more vram than 4k on even high:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pag..._graphics_performance_benchmark_review,8.html
Admittitly an extreme case, but if you are using this card, you will most likely dial back the settings as you increase the resolution, thus decreasing vram consumption - significantly in some cases.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
That's the thing: it's enough for 1440P. Hell, it's enough for 4k: what's going to hurt is the graphics fidelity settings that you won't be able to turn up regardless with any GPU in this class just due to the performance hit.
That’s the point. Navidia made a new class of 6gb cards. That’s 400 out the door lol.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
Not so much... Seems like 6GB cards have been around for a while. And as should be obvious, are a result of memory channels more than anything.
Ok, so based on this logic when the GTX 1070 was released 2.5 years ago in June 2016, Nvidia gave the card 8GB because they were feeling generous? Not because it would be an appropriate amount for a mid range GPU in 2016 to ensure no bottlenecks within 4 years of purchase? Many gamers use their graphics cards for 4 or more years. Can we say with confidence that in 2023, games at 1440P will not require more than 6GB? I would not bet $300 or $350 on it. I would rather buy a card with 8GB or more.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
In the sense that they didn't give it 4GB, yes. This is related to the memory controller, which determines the denominations of the RAM. It's why Vega topped out at 8GB, and Fury topped out at 4. This isn't complicated.
GoldenTiger
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2004
- Messages
- 29,647
(points at his title)Let's not forget the 3.5GB 970 with the crossbar
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
Let's not forget the 3.5GB 970 with the crossbar
Owned two, great cards.
[same issue applies: needed SLI to get a level of performance that actually showed the memory to be a problem, and the answer was to simply lower another setting]
I think it was a fine card. Nvidia can do some weird stuff to the memory bus if they want to. Even the 1080 ti and 2080ti are cut down to 352 bit.
GoldenTiger
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2004
- Messages
- 29,647
I'm still on 970 sli heh.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
Sure, though the 970 was a bit of a standout; it had 4GB of memory and the memory channels to boot, but the segmentation was new.
The rest, baring some low-end exceptions, are just 64bit * [some number of channels]. The 1080Ti/2080Ti can access all of that as can most GPUs. I think Nvidia would have been better off leaving the 970 at 3.5GB.
My point is the around this time anything around 250+ should have 8gb of ram. Nvidia can do whatever they want with their memory controller. Maybe they should stop gimping the cards make them 256bit. As I said to each his own though. I wouldn't be putting money in Nvidia's pocket and giving them the incentive to keep doing this shit over and over. Nvidia only does it because people allow Nvidia to do it.
AMD has been participating in raising prices and at this price range, have been more damaging than Nvidia in this regard at the 300 and below segment.
Why exactly?
It's how the RX 580 and worse yet, rx 590 have been priced and are basically same iterations of the same chip with perhaps a respin which are done on all chips to improve yields over the lifecycle of a chip. Improved yields = higher margins = more profit. These chips have minimal R and D investment and because yields improve over time with respins, should be cheaper than the previous iteration of Polaris to make and be sold for less. If the company is being honorable about this rebrand, they will kick the chip down a tier to reflect that they are cheaper to make and to prevent confusion from people who might accidentally sidegrade. E.g upgrade RX 480 to RX 580.
Normally, this has been the case for both AMD and Nvidia. Examples of this are the 7870 and 270x, GTX 680 to GTX 770, gtx 480--> GTX 570, 4870 to 4890, 290x to 390x. In all these cases, the later iterations performed better than their earlier iterations and were priced cheaper than their predecessor.
This changed with RX 580. The RX 580 was priced just 10 dollars below the RX 480. What happened here is rather than pass on some of the savings from the respin onto the consumer which normally happens, they absorbed the improvements in yields from the respin as profit.
The long term repercussions of this was price to performance stops improving significantly from AMD side. It is what happened in the CPU market from Intel. Revisions to the same chip with slightly better performance at same cost means no significant change in price to performance for consumers which lowers the bar for Nvidia to succeed on the market place.
AMD doubled down with this strategy with the RX 590. There was a tiny bit more input here but AMD increased the priced of the RX 590 significantly vs the RX 580 which was a $220 dollar card at the time to $280 which is a 27% increase in price. As a result, even when compared to the launch price of the RX 580 which was mediocre compared to jumps we have seen in the past, a regression in price to performance occurred. Add in this is the 3rd iteration of the same chip, yields are better, memory prices have gotten cheaper(AMD should have atleast upgraded the memory) and you have a particularly greedy move. What should have happened here is AMD should have kept the price the same at the very least to show it cared about consumers. Instead they got greedy and increased the price significantly on a chip that has been milked to death and the return on investment has long since been recovered. At this point, Polaris should have fallen from midrange to mainstream pricing because of the lack of investment into R and D and the decreasing cost due to yields improving over time. But through a series of rebrands and game bundles are absorbing what has traditionally been savings for consumers as profit for themselves. These game bundles cost AMD very little money as the RX 570 getting 2 of the games at prices as low as 130 dollars show.
What compounds this problem for consumers is AMD is supposed to be the value brand in the market place. AMD prices should be cheaper than Nvidia's because their brand holds less prestige and they invest far less into R and D than Nvidia.
We are seeing a dangerous trend where AMD is simply matching price to performance of Nvidia cards or in the case of the RX 590 offering worse price to performance.
When the value brand starts charging the same prices as the market leader in a duopoly, what do you think will happen? Prices will go up because at a minimum the brand with higher prestige can increase the pricing of their chips over the value brand.
This was particularly dramatic with the 7970/7870 launch. AMD increased pricing vastly across the board even over Nvidia's previous pricing and Nvidia's pricing shot up like a rock to match them after they released their cards.
As the value brand in the marketplace, AMD cannot price themselves like the competition which is vastly stronger as a brand particularly when they recycle their products so often and put far less R and D in. The later is particularly important for me I know Nvidia employs primarily a North American engineering team for graphics unlike AMD lackluster Shanghai GPU development team which have developed everything post the 290x. I would rather support North American Jobs at the same pricing then continue the brain drain of good engineering jobs going to China.
The fact that the RTX 2060 gets so much heat for being anti consumer, while the RX 590 gets none shows how distorted AMD has made these forums through viral marketing teams. The RX 2060 comes at a 40% higher price than the GTX 1060, but comes with a 50-60% performance jump, a new architecture, new memory and a chip double the size, along with a the move to 12nm. As a result, there is some justifications behind the price increase(along with the lack of competition). With the RX 590, we got a 10% performance jump for 27% more money, using the same memory, same architecture and the only thing new is the 12nm. Yet some people are okay with the RX 590 being 280 dollars, while believing the RTX 2060 should be priced at 250 dollars even though it is 45% faster than the RX 590(according to techpowerup using the newest drivers on both side in their most recent lightning Z review). Don't believe me, look at the review reception on this forum for the RX 590 compared to the RTX 2060.
Getting back to the GTX 1660 ti and your anti consumer statement about Nvidia, if Nvidia is anti consumer for releasing cards like the GTX 1660 ti(which should perform very close to a GTX 1070) for 279 dollars or about 20% faster than an RX 590, what does this make AMD for Releasing cards like the RX 590/ Radeon VII, which don't move the market forwards in terms of price to performance while being the value brand in the market place?
This right here is the perfect example of what I have been saying all along. AMD exists to give Nvidia fans better shit for cheaper price so they can buy cheaper Nvidia cards lol. Let me tell you they don't owe anyone anything. They have every fricking right to price the card close to Nvidia for similar performance. Why? Because people want AMD shit to be cheaper than nvidia because "OH they are value brand"!
AMD has absolutely no incentive to make shit cheaper. Its just making them look like that cheap brand and people bend over to Nvidia to pay higher prices and if AMD undercuts them Nvidia will just drop prices and people buy Nvidia.
LOL! Look at rx 570 and rx 580. people be buying the 1050ti to buy from a company because they have higher prestige? Haha.
I hope AMD prices their cards similar to Nvidia on the mid-range too. I think pricing them too cheap makes people think they are cheap cards because they don't cost enough. Atleast Nvidia fanboys will stop thinking AMD is here to do them favor.
AMD will be just fine selling zen 2 and eypc 2. Thats where the money is going to be for them.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
It's a sad point. There is no hard and fast requirement, which you know, and VRAM amounts are related to memory controller configuration, which you also know.
6GB is excessive for 99.9999% of the use cases for these cards.
N4CR
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2011
- Messages
- 4,947
I didn't say the 1660 is anti-consumer but was in reference to their actions in general, closed standards, only just allowing (a really shitty) implementation of freesync, paying developers to focus only on Nvidia optimisations, cheating (both are guilty here), hell, up until the 1000 series they didn't even give users more than 8 bit colour outside of DX apps ffs. Fuck Nvidia.
I also don't disagree about AMD rebrands but Nvidia is guilty of recycling low end products too, they both do it...
The 1060 is an 580 competitor and the 590 is more for the 2060 and to test 12nm as a pipe cleaner (and it failed) but yes AMD needs a new product here, hence Navi this year. SO for the next few months your criticisms are valid. But just because AMD hasn't got a release cycle quite aligned doesn't mean they should be singled out for doing the same shit. Look at a 1050Ti, people buy that over a 5xx which is faster because green logo.. that's ignorance, misinformation and lack of education and research.
7970 Was faster than everything Nvidia had at the time, even the Titan, so I don't see what the pricing issue is. I bought one within a month of launch and it was the best GPU I've ever had. 40% OC on reference edition cooler is unheard of usually.
People use the same to justify the insane 2080Ti pricing, that is nothing to do with AMD, the 2080 is matched by VII apparently so again, up to consumers to bring that price down by not buying that expensive shit. AMD isn't a charity either and just because lesser informed people or brainwashed people think they are or expect them to be 'cheaper because AMD' that's not my fault. With drivers much better in recent years and the power circuitry and card design being more robust I think AMD has a far better quality product in most cases, but no one knows or cares about that. Vote with your wallet. With CPUs, AMD has a compelling offer hence stealing market share from Intel.
I don't buy mid-low end cards, they have historically been recycled, rebranded shit from the last generation from both sides.. also I have been running 1440p since 2011.. so no dice there. Not everyone has the piles of cash like Nvidia to make a million different dies each year.
AMD has at times been the value brand when they can't compete, which has practically come to an end. They are not a charity, they are a corporation.
Aye, indeed, which is why it amazes me that you still get posts here expecting that AMD will launch a new card that offers better performance than Nvidia but at half the price. All this "2080 beater for $250" pie-in-the-sky nonsense that we saw only a few weeks ago on here.
And it's why the narrative that AMD are the good guys and Nvidia are the bad guys is a crock, too. They both want your money, simple as that. They're corporations, not moral entities.
Except the 590 has gotten little positive press given its release price. It is also down to $260 with 3 free games. IIRC, it has had free games since its release. Now, even at 260 its not really worth the extra 50-60 than a 580 unless you want the free games and 10% or so better performance. I sure as hell haven't seen nvidia offering any good 1060 deals in the past two months competing with 570/580 deals.
I won't be surprised if for the first 2 months or so, depending on supply/demand we'll see AIB 1660ti's pushing $300+. The current ram issue reminds me of the gtx 960 2gb vs 4gb deabtes. I was wrong then, the 4gb was worth the extra 25-50 bucks if you want to keep the card more than 2 years.
Edit: NE deal on the asrock 590, 240-20 rebate for $220.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
If you were planning on keeping a 960 for more than two years, you weren't serious about performance
[The 1060 pushed the x60 cards into higher territory, and the 2060 does it again, so yeah, you should avoid the 3GB versions, but 6GB is arguably fine]
Maybe good/bad guy is not the proper lingo. Businesses want to make money - we get that.
However, Nvidia catches more heat for some if their anti-consumer practices. "Do your research" is not always a viable excuse.
AdornedTV did the Nvidia anti-consumer video that showcases some of these practices. They have tried other crap as well since then. Much of this goes beyond "they are just a business like everyone else trying to make money".
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
Really, they are. They are the normal of the business world. AMD is the exception through their own failures- and act no different when they succeed.