8gb vram already a limitation at just 1440p in Doom Eternal with ray tracing on?

jobert

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I was using a 2080 ti on ultra nightmare settings at 1440p with ray tracing and hardly ever dropped below 100 fps with fps in the 120s or more quite often. I bought a 3070 for the hell of it and on the exact same settings I was only in 30s and 40s with drops even into the 20s at times. I lowered textures one notch and no difference so lowered them one more notch and then returned to normal framerate I was getting with 2080 ti. Odd thing is that if I then go back and put textures on ultra nightmare then the framerate remains ok as if the game does not actually apply that setting. If I restart the game though on ultra nightmare textures then the framerate tanks and I have to lower it 2 notches to get it back.

EDIT: Yep lowering the textures gets applied when playing but raising the textures does nothing until the game is restarted. This needs to be made clear because if you fire up the game and crank that setting and start playing you will think there is no issue. You get a reality check when restarting the game though as ultra nightmare textures or even just nightmare textures are too much for 8gb of vram to handle with raytracing on even at just 1440p and you have to go down to ultra.
 
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Well yeah I guess 8GB VRAM is already a little limiting in 1440p.

The 3070 probably has the power to do some 4K but the VRAM limit almost forces you to get a 3080.
 
The only other case where 8gb was an issue at only 1440p was also another Bethesda game which is Wolfenstein Youngblood. If you manually crank the image streaming to uber with every setting maxed with ray tracing on then the game will stutter and eventually crash. You have to stick to the ultra image streaming which is standard in the maxed out preset. Most people will never encounter this as that probably think the maxed out preset is actually fully maxed.
 
For a brand new current gen GPU that's supposed to be 'future proofed' for another 2 years or so, this doesn't bode well, ALTHOUGH you can argue that the 3070 is a lot of card for $500 if you can find it at SRP (don't get me wrong, it is!).

Just that I don't think a lot of people buy 1440p monitors and cards just to turn down the IQ settings, if not now then maybe (?) a year from now.

In the meantime, I'm happy with my 1080/144hz and am targetting a 3060TI or a 6800/XT when pricing normalizes.
 
Will be interesting to see how DirectStorage and Resizable BAR helps with this as it's been said in one interview to reduce VRAM usage considerably.
 
From what I've seen and been told from videos like DF in their Doom Eternal RT analysis video, there's little to no difference between Ultra/Nightmare/Ultra Nightmare Texture pool setting in regards to actual texture quality. I think there's a distinction between "Texture Pool" and "Texture quality" (which isn't a setting that I saw). The larger Texture Pool settings only allow the game to pre-load more textures in the level you're in to minimize low-res texture streaming as you move around.

FWIW too, I just started playing this game on my 2080 and at "Ultra" Texture Pool setting I see around 7.5GBs of VRAM used. Which lines up with what Alex cited in his DF review of the game recently. Going higher than Ultra on that setting will require 10+ GBs for VRAM and will have little-to-no impact on noticeable image quality unless maybe if you're doing some crazy speed-run exploits or something and moving around the level at inhuman speeds. I'm also staying around 120 FPS with all other settings on Ultra Nightmare at 3440x1440 (21:9 ultrawide) on my 2080 as well with Quality DLSS enabled. Though I tried disabling DLSS and suspiciously performance didn't change whatsoever, so I wonder if you need to restart the game when toggling DLSS as well.

So IMO, 8GB is still fine at 1440p as long as the game isn't loading an excessive amount of textures into VRAM.
 
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Just turn the settings down from ultra nightmare. You don't need everything at ultra nightmare. It's dumb to run it that way anyway.
 
Will be interesting to see how DirectStorage and Resizable BAR helps with this as it's been said in one interview to reduce VRAM usage considerably.
THIS lol is the reason for my Sig Rig i got the fastest ssds money could buy uhg ($1700) and a GPU with more then enough Vram ($4000) to have this option as i dont plan on upgrading the gpu other then repasting/padding when i see temps get uncomfortable.
 
Just turn the settings down from ultra nightmare. You don't need everything at ultra nightmare. It's dumb to run it that way anyway.
Might as well put everything on low and run 720p since you don't actually need anything more than that either. All I'm doing is simply pointing out that we can run into vram issues in some games on max settings even at 1440p on a card that's well more than capable of handling it if it had enough vram which there are people out there that still deny that.
 
I was using a 2080 ti on ultra nightmare settings at 1440p with ray tracing and hardly ever dropped below 100 fps with fps in the 120s or more quite often. I bought a 3070 for the hell of it and on the exact same settings I was only in 30s and 40s with drops even into the 20s at times. I lowered textures one notch and no difference so lowered them one more notch and then returned to normal framerate I was getting with 2080 ti. Odd thing is that if I then go back and put textures on ultra nightmare then the framerate remains ok as if the game does not actually apply that setting. If I restart the game though on ultra nightmare textures then the framerate tanks and I have to lower it 2 notches to get it back.

EDIT: Yep lowering the textures gets applied when playing but raising the textures does nothing until the game is restarted. This needs to be made clear because if you fire up the game and crank that setting and start playing you will think there is no issue. You get a reality check when restarting the game though as ultra nightmare textures or even just nightmare textures are too much for 8gb of vram to handle with raytracing on even at just 1440p and you have to go down to ultra.
Honestly, not sure why you got a 3070. It absolutely is a downgrade from the 2080ti at higher resolutions. This is part of the reason why I skipped the 3080, even the 10GB of VRAM just isn't even enough for 4K. The 11.5 on the 2080ti is barely enough for some games at this point.
 
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Honestly, not sure why you got a 3070. It absolutely is a downgrade from the 2080ti at higher resolutions. This is part of the reason why I skipped the 3080, even the 10GB of VRAM just isn't even enough for 4K. The 11.5 on the 2080ti is barely enough for some games at this point.
Oh it does seem like a dumb thing to do but I have a couple reasons why. First off I paid out the rear end for the 2080 TI so I was thinking about just trying to sell it and get rid of it while I can still most of my money back on it. And I was able to get the 3070 at retail price which in this market is considered a hot deal. And also my 2080 TI is a little bit loud for me especially with that little bit of coil whine since I'm very very picky and my case is really close to me. The 3070 has probably less than half the noise and is almost impossible to hear unless I just stick my head up against the case. I had tried the founders edition 3080 TI and found it to be obscenely loud and completely unacceptable.
 
Well, a 3070 isn't a 3080 or a 3090. Nt sure why someone would buy a 3070 nd expect ultra maximum epic settings. It's only a tad bloody bit above mainstream economy 3060.
The 3070 is marketed even by Nvidia as matching the 2080 TI. And 1440p is not a high-end resolution so it's perfectly reasonable to expect not to run out of 8 gigs of vram at that resolution and you even know that. And also the point you seem to miss is that the card itself has plenty of horsepower left over to otherwise handle those settings if not for the vram limitation. Without the vram limitation I'd be at 100 FPS or more most of the time and that's with Ray tracing and not even having to use dlss at that resolution. Really go look at reviews because the 3070 hardly even struggles at all on max settings at 1440p for even the most demanding games so your comment is a little bit off. Hell it can run the vast majority of games at 4K just fine. A 3080 or especially 3090 is not a card that most people would ever even run it just 1440p as for one thing you'd be laughably CPU limited in many games plus the architecture itself is quite limited at lower resolutions. On top of that I just play games at 60 or 75 Hertz so I don't even care about high refresh rate. Anyway just remember this thread when you get people saying that 8 gigs of vram is plenty. It was beyond stupid for NVIDIA to equip the card with only 8 gigs.
 
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The 3070 is marketed even by Nvidia as matching the 2080 TI. And 1440p is not a high-end resolution so it's perfectly reasonable to expect not to run out of 8 gigs of vram at that resolution and you even know that. And also the point you seem to miss is that the card itself has plenty of horsepower left over to otherwise handle those settings if not for the vram limitation. Without the vram limitation I'd be at 100 FPS or more most of the time and that's with Ray tracing and not even having to use dlss at that resolution. Really go look at reviews because the 3070 hardly even struggles at all on max settings at 1440p for even the most demanding games so your comment is a little bit off. Hell it can run the vast majority of games at 4K just fine. A 3080 or especially 3090 is not a card that most people would ever even run it just 1440p as for one thing you'd be laughably CPU limited in many games plus the architecture itself is quite limited at lower resolutions. On top of that I just play games at 60 or 75 Hertz so I don't even care about high refresh rate. Anyway just remember this thread when you get people saying that 8 gigs of vram is plenty. It was beyond stupid for NVIDIA to equip the card with only 8 gigs.
Well, marketing is marketing. Yes, in lower-resolution cases or games that don't use much VRAM the 3070 is as good, possibly better from a compute standpoint.

The issue is that the 8GB of VRAM just isn't enough once you're moving beyond 1080p. Plus, it's got way lower memory bandwidth which makes a large FPS impact in many different types of games. This is why, in my opinion, even the 3080 is a poor replacement for the 2080ti. It's a side-grade at best. The 3080ti (Or a 3090) are the only cards worth moving to from a 2080ti.
 
So it's fine then. Just one game that strugglea!
Well only two of the games that I have tried require lowering any texture settings. This thread was not some hyperbolic dramatic thread by any means and it was really more me being shocked that I ran out of vram at 1440p. It's not a very good feeling to already have to lower settings because of vram in any game at just 1440p with a brand new 70 class card and there will probably be some true next-gen games that will tax the 8 gigs too. Really the resident evil games are maxing out the vram but I haven't seen any bad side effects at all it just 1440p so it's apparently just allocating it in those games but I wouldn't doubt if there were issues at 4K with those games.
 
I hate to say it, but I think Doom Eternal is the "Killer App" for the RTX 3080 Ti and 3090. At 4K maxed + RT without DLSS, I will get occasional stutters and FPS dips on my RTX 3080. Turning on DLSS at any level solves this. Bear in mind, it isn't constant, and in fact, DLSS Quality sometimes resolves more details than native. DLSS is cool like that.

We finally found an instance where 10GB VRAM is the limiting factor for the RTX 3080... damn....
 
I hate to say it, but I think Doom Eternal is the "Killer App" for the RTX 3080 Ti and 3090. At 4K maxed + RT without DLSS, I will get occasional stutters and FPS dips on my RTX 3080. Turning on DLSS at any level solves this. Bear in mind, it isn't constant, and in fact, DLSS Quality sometimes resolves more details than native. DLSS is cool like that.

We finally found an instance where 10GB VRAM is the limiting factor for the RTX 3080... damn....
Yeah even before ray tracing the game needed 9 gigs of vram at 4K with ultra nightmare so ray tracing could easily push that over 10. And yes I'm talking about needing not allocating.
 
Running everything maxed out including Raytracing on Doom Eternal uses over 10GB for me at 4K, so yes, 8GB isn't going to be enough unless if you want to disable Raytracing or turn down some graphical settings.
 
THIS lol is the reason for my Sig Rig i got the fastest ssds money could buy uhg ($1700) and a GPU with more then enough Vram ($4000) to have this option as i dont plan on upgrading the gpu other then repasting/padding when i see temps get uncomfortable.
You paid $4000 for a NV 3090 FE? Are you insane?
 
This was all predictable and was noted will be an issue eventually, in this case sooner than expected. Newer games have more objects thus more textures and polygons (all taking more vram), more level of detail for distant objects so more objects in vram, higher quality textures (some are even HDR meaning larger in size), more shaders, and RT takes normally 1gb+ additional VRAM due to mostly BVH but also due to less culling of objects since needed for raytracing. The 6gb RTX cards are even more limiting when it comes to modern games and RTX, built in obsolescence. How about the $599 MSRP for the 3070 Ti which is also 8gb? To me that card is a waste of money.
 
Might as well put everything on low and run 720p since you don't actually need anything more than that either. All I'm doing is simply pointing out that we can run into vram issues in some games on max settings even at 1440p on a card that's well more than capable of handling it if it had enough vram which there are people out there that still deny that.

Not sure if you missed it, but I addressed why and how anything above the "ultra" setting on Texture Pool is fruitless in terms of image quality. Pretty much any 8GB card can completely max this game out at 1440p/60+ outside of that one setting that is reserved for people to feel good about the premium they paid for their 16+ GB card despite having the exact same experience as they would if they kept that setting at "ultra".

There may be a legitimate case or two where 8GB is still limiting at 1440p, but I don't think Doom Eternal is one of them in my experience.
 
Not sure if you missed it, but I addressed why and how anything above the "ultra" setting on Texture Pool is fruitless in terms of image quality. Pretty much any 8GB card can completely max this game out at 1440p/60+ outside of that one setting that is reserved for people to feel good about the premium they paid for their 16+ GB card despite having the exact same experience as they would if they kept that setting at "ultra".

There may be a legitimate case or two where 8GB is still limiting at 1440p, but I don't think Doom Eternal is one of them in my experience.
Yeah I was just being a bit sarcastic. Anyway I decided to keep the 3070 for now as I already sold the 2080 ti about an hour ago. Hopefully I can still get a founders edition 3080 in the near future.
 
If there isn't enough difference between graphics settings that you can immediately tell when they changed, then it all seems pointless to me.
 
does anyone use the DSR (Scaling to 4K) is it the same or is it complete Cr@p? have a nice 32" monitor was looking into taxing this 3090 but was thinking is virutal 4K the same or much worse then actual 4K monitors.
 
does anyone use the DSR (Scaling to 4K) is it the same or is it complete Cr@p? have a nice 32" monitor was looking into taxing this 3090 but was thinking is virutal 4K the same or much worse then actual 4K monitors.
Well of course its not as good as native 4k but its not far off. I have native 1440p but use 4k and even 5k for some games along with other resolutions in between.
 
does anyone use the DSR (Scaling to 4K) is it the same or is it complete Cr@p? have a nice 32" monitor was looking into taxing this 3090 but was thinking is virutal 4K the same or much worse then actual 4K monitors.
Yeah, I've used DSR and it works well. Originally tried 4K (on 1080p) and also 5K on my 1440p ultrawide, and it does actually look significantly better. Obviously not real 4K quality, but closer than you might assume.

If you have the performance to spare, or like to revisit old games, it's a good way to breath new life into an old monitor.
 
Yeah, I'd recommend trying it on an old game like HL2 so you can crank all the settings and still get high refresh rate.
 
With a 3090 there is no reason to run any game at 1440p if you don't have to.
 
Yeah, I'd recommend trying it on an old game like HL2 so you can crank all the settings and still get high refresh rate.
If anyone wants to know what 8K DSR looks like for HL2 on my CX55…

Pardon the mess. Getting ready to move.
 

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Yeah but it was cad so basically paid $1000 or more above usd MSRP. Worth it if gonna last least 3-4 years
$1000 USD is a lot! I hope for your sake that the rumors about the next generation of cards being twice as fast as this generation are untrue ;)
 
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