Does larger vram allow for less system ram in gaming?

[biggles]

When comparing, for example, a gtx 1070 8 gb vs a gtx 780 3 gb, does the increased vram help to cover any inadequacies in system ram?

I read in the Steam forums that Rise of the Tomb Raider performs better with more than 8 gb of system ram. Especially on Geothermal Valley where the game notoriously performs worse vs early parts of the game.

Also, most articles on the subject of ram say 8 gb of system is still enough for normal users. But there are a few exceptions, perhaps this is one of them.

 

[jeffo911]

I guess in a way yes... But not necessarily. You will be able to push out more res with more GPU ram however a lack of system ram will more so hurt your frames for sure.

 

[RamonGTP]

I’ve had 2gb, 6gb and 11gb video cards in my current system. Never have I seen more vram substitute for system ram.

 

[haz_mat]

I'm no expert on the internal architecture, but I believe windows does a good deal of shadowing between vram and system ram. So more vram may mean more system ram needed.

 

[Azrak]

The video card driver will allocate some system RAM for storage of textures in cases where the video card does not have enough memory onboard to store all of the data.
This is why on some games a video card with more RAM, such as a GTX 1060 6GB, runs better than the same game running on the same system but with a GTX 1060 3GB. The texture swapping between system RAM and video card RAM slows things down which reduces frame rates and can introduce stuttering or not-as-smooth fps on the card with less RAM.
Since the video card driver is reserving some system RAM for this texture data storage, it reduces total system memory available for the game and the rest of the software running (OS, etc.). If this impact is large enough, it could result in increased swap/page file usage and in extreme cases even "out of memory" errors or crashes, but I don't think this happens much in reality. Drop the graphics down a notch and the VRAM usage will decrease enough to make any issues disappear.
Today, I'd build a gaming system with 16 GB. 8 GB is still "enough" for most games, but for longevity I'd save up for 16 GB, even in today's ridiculous market.

 

[euskalzabe]

Watch this, one of the most recent analysis on how much ram/vram affect performance. In short, yes, the more vram, the better you can get away with just 8gb system ram. 16gb is clearly becoming the new sweet spot for gamers though.

 

[auntjemima]

I went from 8gb that everyone who cannot afford more will constantly tell you is enough to 24gb and the difference was very noticeable. I had 8gb in 2007... It's time to move on.

 

[Tweak155]

I went from 8gb that everyone who cannot afford more will constantly tell you is enough to 24gb and the difference was very noticeable. I had 8gb in 2007... It's time to move on.

Haha, I went from 16gb down to 8gb and didn't notice any difference. Sounds like someone just trying to justify their spending here.

 

[Wade88]

Then you use your pc for more pedestrian tasks, Tweak155.

 

[Tweak155]

Then you use your pc for more pedestrian tasks, Tweak155.

Actually I mainly play titles that are at least 2yrs old or older right now, waiting until I go back to 16gb before I attack newer titles

 

[RamonGTP]

If I dropped down to 8gb I’d probably throw my PC out of a window.

 

[auntjemima]

Haha, I went from 16gb down to 8gb and didn't notice any difference. Sounds like someone just trying to justify their spending here.

Actually I mainly play titles that are at least 2yrs old or older right now, waiting until I go back to 16gb before I attack newer titles

So you DO need more than 8 and you're just being pendantic. Neat.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

the rig I have is maxed out at 32GB and the video card has 8... not too worried about not having enough to go around...

 

[buttons]

Last year i built my first ryzen 1700 with 16gb and noticed zero difference, but i have read a few reviews where it does make a difference. Going from 4gb to 8gb on my work pc was a HUGE difference though. I do some VR, overwatch, cs:go, witcher 3 (mostly surf the web and mine though)

 

[FlawleZ]

I went from 8gb that everyone who cannot afford more will constantly tell you is enough to 24gb and the difference was very noticeable. I had 8gb in 2007... It's time to move on.

As much as people want to trash talk 4GB cards for their lack of VRAM, it's still far more important to have sufficient system RAM over an abundance of VRAM.

 

[KazeoHin]

The main issue with people stressing the importance of VRAM/System RAM is that by lowering texture detail from 'highest' to 'next to highest' or even a notch lower will reduce your VRAM usage by 50-75%, and hardly impacts image quality at 1080p. Yes, at QHD and 4K, the higher resolution textures make a big difference, but there's no point in 8000 pixel wide textures when your screen only has 2000 pixels to render with horizontally.

So by reducing the texture resolution by an imperceptible amount, you end up making lower specc'd card and systems MUCH more viable.

 

[SvenBent]

I guess in a way yes... But not necessarily. You will be able to push out more res with more GPU ram however a lack of system ram will more so hurt your frames for sure.

Unlesss you are runnig 16x AA incresaing res has little to say on vram usage.
However increasing res has a big toll on vram I/O speed.

 

[misterbobby]

If I dropped down to 8gb I’d probably throw my PC out of a window.

Same here. I cant even imagine having less than 16 gb at this point and really even that no longer cut it for me so I upgraded to 32 gb a couple of years ago when it was dirt cheap. Hell I had 16 gb way back in 2011.

 

[misterbobby]

Unlesss you are runnig 16x AA incresaing res has little to say on vram usage.
However increasing res has a big toll on vram I/O speed.

It seems to vary from game to game as some use quite a bit more vram on higher resolutions while others do not.

 

[Nauseous]

Same here. I cant even imagine having less than 16 gb at this point and really even that no longer cut it for me so I upgraded to 32 gb a couple of years ago when it was dirt cheap. Hell I had 16 gb way back in 2011.

how many tabs you got open in your browser?

 

[misterbobby]

how many tabs you got open in your browser?

Over 50 so quite a bit. I also have Steam, Origin and Uplay running. I am sitting at 12 gb of ram usage right now. I have easily gone over 20 gb of system ram usage while gaming though.

 

[JargonGR]

Over 50 so quite a bit. I also have Steam, Origin and Uplay running. I am sitting at 12 gb of ram usage right now. I have easily gone over 20 gb of system ram usage while gaming though.

That is not many tabs. I use many browsers (Firefox, Firefox Developer Edition, Chrome, Chrome Canary, Opera, Opera Developer + Edge for quick links) and sometimes I launch 2 or 3 of them.
Now Firefox for example is for work and has about 12 windows with 30 to 40 tabs in them. Opera Developer has 4 windows avg 35 tabs on each. So yes with two browsers I might have 300-400 tabs open but bear in mind not all of them are loaded unless you click on them. And yes I need all those tabs + 8,000 bookmarks to work on my projects / clients. We do web development and also watch Google Anlytics / Adwords / Social Media for several clients.

The above is until next week on a system with 8GB of RAM and yes I get 'Out of memory messages' if I launch Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator on top of this with a moderate sized file.

I was so deprived of RAM that I got myself 64GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 3600 (for my new system). The RGB is to celebrate my return to good hardware after sometime....

 

[SvenBent]

It seems to vary from game to game as some use quite a bit more vram on higher resolutions while others do not.

Its not for the higher res. its might come form other stuff that the game scales up.
but increase in resolutions directly affect increassed ram usage for framebuffes and z buffers. All effects we can calculate for sure and its not a variabel thing

Do you have any numbers for games where the increase in vram usage is largely more than just for increase in framebuffer and z buffer size?
Or if you could inform where the increase in vram usage that comes from if its not just from Framebuffers and zbuffer size.
I would be highly interested

 

[FlawleZ]

That is not many tabs. I use many browsers (Firefox, Firefox Developer Edition, Chrome, Chrome Canary, Opera, Opera Developer + Edge for quick links) and sometimes I launch 2 or 3 of them.
Now Firefox for example is for work and has about 12 windows with 30 to 40 tabs in them. Opera Developer has 4 windows avg 35 tabs on each. So yes with two browsers I might have 300-400 tabs open but bear in mind not all of them are loaded unless you click on them. And yes I need all those tabs + 8,000 bookmarks to work on my projects / clients. We do web development and also watch Google Anlytics / Adwords / Social Media for several clients.

The above is until next week on a system with 8GB of RAM and yes I get 'Out of memory messages' if I launch Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator on top of this with a moderate sized file.

I was so deprived of RAM that I got myself 64GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 3600 (for my new system). The RGB is to celebrate my return to good hardware after sometime....

300-400 tabs? C'mon that's a little excessive. How could you possibly need that mamy web pages loaded and actively running simultaneously for just 1 person? You don't have that many monitors to even view them all at the same time. Sounds like it would easily be managed with just bookmarking and accessing when necessary.

 

[Tweak155]

So you DO need more than 8 and you're just being pendantic. Neat.

No, the point is that it is scenario specific, the point just flew way over your head and into your extra system memory.

 

[auntjemima]

No, the point is that it is scenario specific, the point just flew way over your head and into your extra system memory.

Incorrect. You dropped down your memory requirements which hinders you from playing new games. You've relagated yourself to older titles because you gimped your system.

 

[Tweak155]

Incorrect. You dropped down your memory requirements which hinders you from playing new games. You've relagated yourself to older titles because you gimped your system.

I don't own any newer games than what my 8gb is plenty for. So no, you're wrong.

 

[horrorshow]

I checked my RAM usage a minute ago, it was over 9GB.

All I was doing was surfing the interwebs with a bunch of tabs open....

(Granted, a couple of the tabs, like theChive for example, are insanely unoptimized garbage-time websites....)

Point I'm making: if you're cool with closing various programs/windows before starting up a game (like it's 2006), then I'm sure 8GB is fine.

 

[GoodBoy]

When comparing, for example, a gtx 1070 8 gb vs a gtx 780 3 gb, does the increased vram help to cover any inadequacies in system ram?

Perhaps modestly it helps, since less textures would need cached in system ram. More VRAM is always good, because games will use all of it they can, which improves the overall game experience.

If you are at 8Gb system ram, you should consider upgrading it to 16gb. There is a difference. I run 64Gb ram, and have the swap file disabled. It makes for a strong base system. If you have performance issues in any game, you will need to turn down the graphics settings until it is a smoother experience.

But it sounds like you are trying to decide on a video card upgrade (to one with more Vram), vs upgrading system ram which I understand is at 8gb... If you can give us more details on your system, what gpu, what cpu, current ram amount and type, we can help you decide on something effective.

 

[auntjemima]

I don't own any newer games than what my 8gb is plenty for. So no, you're wrong.

Whatever helps you convince yourself.

 

[biggles]

Perhaps modestly it helps, since less textures would need cached in system ram. More VRAM is always good, because games will use all of it they can, which improves the overall game experience.

If you are at 8Gb system ram, you should consider upgrading it to 16gb. There is a difference. I run 64Gb ram, and have the swap file disabled. It makes for a strong base system. If you have performance issues in any game, you will need to turn down the graphics settings until it is a smoother experience.

But it sounds like you are trying to decide on a video card upgrade (to one with more Vram), vs upgrading system ram which I understand is at 8gb... If you can give us more details on your system, what gpu, what cpu, current ram amount and type, we can help you decide on something effective.

System specs in signature. Yes, trying to determine upgrade options. This is taking longer than previous upgrades due to the increased cost of ram and video cards. Ram might actually be cheaper than a gpu upgrade at the moment. It is complex, depends on selling old hardware too.

Regarding 8 vs 16 gb ram, also trying to determine how this impacts my usage given modest 1080p 60hz monitor. The only game that might have had negative performance impact was Forza 6 Apex. Apex stuttered despite lots of tests of different game settings and I never isolated the problem. Also, I have heard that Forza Horizon 3 and Batman Arkham Knight also need more than 8 gb but I do not have those games.

 

[JargonGR]

300-400 tabs? C'mon that's a little excessive. How could you possibly need that mamy web pages loaded and actively running simultaneously for just 1 person? You don't have that many monitors to even view them all at the same time. Sounds like it would easily be managed with just bookmarking and accessing when necessary.

They are not running simultaneously actually. Each browser window is organized (and named) by topic. For example I am developing a web site for a client so he gets its own window that can easily contain 30 tabs. Usually I handle 3-4 clients (3-4 windows). Then I need 2-3 windows for e-markets (digital assets), some for coding (CSS/HTML/Javascript), others that contain purely design related material (news, tutorials, inspiration) and so on. I also need Google Analytics and Social Media to watch and manage Digital Advertising for my clients. Firefox developer edition is used only for work related items.

Firefox (normal and developer edition) is the only browser that can handle all this reliably, and always able to recover them after a crash (yes those happen) for me.

Then I use Opera for PC related stuff. One Windows with all forum related tabs - threads I watch. One Window with e-shops open, one window with normal news sites to watch over what is going on in the world.

I use chrome for Google related stuff mostly, edge for e-mail links and all browsers for testing web sites.

I use a lot of bookmarks too but before items move to organized bookmark folders they need to be assessed first and this cannot always happen upon opening them - some might stay open for 2-3 months before it's time for me to work on this topic.

Finally, tabs are not all loaded (in firefox & chrome) until I access them so they are not all active at the same time - just their browser window so they use less resources. But honestly, I do have that many tabs open for the last 10 years and this is how it works for me. I've learned to live and work "drown" in a sea of information.

 

[jeffo911]

Unlesss you are runnig 16x AA incresaing res has little to say on vram usage.
However increasing res has a big toll on vram I/O speed.

True my friend

 

[noxqzs]

I am still trying to wrap my head around how many tabs you have open. For me it would be counter-productive. If I may chime in, I think the majority of users do not work in files that are really large. The largest file size I usually work on is usually no larger than 20MB and that usually is my whole project file, although I can see how large datasets can max out a system. It really depends on ones needs I think.

Just last night I was finishing up some pcbs. I had Photoshop open with all my templates. EagleCad with the main project open. Kodi with the HDHOMERUN plugin, BlueOrigin running in background streaming video feeds from 5 1080p cameras, and during all this I fired up a couple of rounds of Playerunknown Battlegrounds. This is all with 8GB of RAM and 3 screens. My camera feeds were live on one screen, liveTV on 2nd and game on main @ 2560x1600. Gameplay was perfectly normal and switching back and forth between open programs and screens was instant.

 

[FlawleZ]

It really depends on ones needs I think.
.

Pretty much this. One of my previous jobs I would batch a large number of images in Photoshop often times working with the raw image initially so it was nothing to see Photoshop use 4-5 GB on it's own. At the same time, I've worked with older systems that if stripped down to just the bare OS (Win 7 or maybe 10) you can effectively play most titles quite well with just 4GB of RAM.

 

[The Cobra]

I have 32 GB of system RAM and 16GB (x2) with my Vega FEs. I'm good. For machines at my school where I work. All teacher laptops have 16GB of ram in them. 8GB for the student laptops.

 

[GoodBoy]

System specs in signature. Yes, trying to determine upgrade options. This is taking longer than previous upgrades due to the increased cost of ram and video cards. Ram might actually be cheaper than a gpu upgrade at the moment. It is complex, depends on selling old hardware too.

Regarding 8 vs 16 gb ram, also trying to determine how this impacts my usage given modest 1080p 60hz monitor. The only game that might have had negative performance impact was Forza 6 Apex. Apex stuttered despite lots of tests of different game settings and I never isolated the problem. Also, I have heard that Forza Horizon 3 and Batman Arkham Knight also need more than 8 gb but I do not have those games.

Yeah, with GPU prices being crazy, you should consider a ram upgrade. DDR3 isn't that expensive if you look around, a 16gb corsair DDR3 2400 (2 x 8gb PC19200, which is faster than your current 1866 PC14900) is $85 on newegg. So depending on how many open ram slots you have, and the size of the current sticks, you might need 1 more 8Gb, or 2 4Gb sticks, or just this new set of 2x8's. The sets of 2x4Gb are $60 to $70, so I would just get the 2 new 8's for $10 more, and both sticks will match (better for system stability).

Wait awhile for a GPU upgrade, the prices are crazy atm.

 

[biggles]

Yeah, with GPU prices being crazy, you should consider a ram upgrade. DDR3 isn't that expensive if you look around, a 16gb corsair DDR3 2400 (2 x 8gb PC19200, which is faster than your current 1866 PC14900) is $85 on newegg. So depending on how many open ram slots you have, and the size of the current sticks, you might need 1 more 8Gb, or 2 4Gb sticks, or just this new set of 2x8's. The sets of 2x4Gb are $60 to $70, so I would just get the 2 new 8's for $10 more, and both sticks will match (better for system stability).

Wait awhile for a GPU upgrade, the prices are crazy atm.

Would you post a link to the $85 2x8gb pc19200 Corsair ram on newegg? I could not find anything near that low in price. Or send pm.

Cheapest I have found on 2x8gb was $125 for Patriot ram on amazon. And that is the slower 1866 speed, with some reviewers complaining it was really 1600 speed and needed overclocking to reach 1866.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...3-992f-4bde-81b0-de270e0ead5a&pf_rd_i=desktop

 

[GoodBoy]

Well crap, looks like I had found a 2x4Gb set for $85 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...0233599&cm_re=8gb_ddr3-_-20-233-599-_-Product
This 2x8Gb pc14900 gskill ram set is $132: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...0231528&cm_re=8gb_ddr3-_-20-231-528-_-Product

Be careful of some of the cheaper brands, some are not compatible. One specifically states that it works on AMD only. Those 2 linked above will work, and match the speed of what you have.