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Eyefinity/3d Surround Vram

S

Spilly

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 26, 2011
Messages
165
I can' seem to find a definitive answer here. I understand that more is better for 3x1080p gaming, but do the nvidia cards have enough vram to do it at 4x AA? I am looking to upgrade my cards. So do I absolutely need 2gb of vram or will 1280mb or a little more do it?
 
I have 2 480's and play @ 3240 x 1920. (3 dell u 2311h in portrait) I have yet to run out of mem with 4x AA. Now keep in mind the 480's have 1.5 gig unlike the 570/470 that have 1.2 gigs of ram.
 
1280MB per GPU is not sufficient at 4xAA in a fair few titles, but it will serve for most. Depends on what you want to play. If you want all bases covered now, and in the future, then no, neither 1280MB or 1536MB are enough, as even at 3600x1920 the 1.5GB cards (480/580) are already stumped in at least one title, at even lightweight levels of AA. I'd say buy a pair of 2GB Radeons, unless you plump for the outlandish $600 3GB GTX580s (don't)
 
I am leaning towards the 6950's. But the 5xxx drivers were so bad, it has almost scared me away from Radeons.
 
samuelmorris said:
, neither 1280MB or 1536MB are enough, as even at 3600x1920 the 1.5GB cards (480/580) are already stumped in at least one title
Click to expand...

What title is this? I would like to test because I have yet to come across a game I cant run @ 4x due to memmory being max out. Only game as of yet was Rift and I droped that down to 2x in beta. Did not spend much time dropping other settings down to see if I could bring it back up to 4x. I was interested in playing. So please let me know what title so I could do some testing. Thanks
 
I run about 1460MB used for 4x at 5760x1080 in BFBC2 (max all quality settings) per afterburner.
 
So would it be agreeable that 1.5gb vram is the minimum recommended for 3x 1080p at 4x AA?
 
F1 2010:
HardOCP review said:
We are comparing all video cards at 8X MSAA at 5760x1200. You can see that the GeForce GTX 580 SLI is performing under 30 FPS at this setting, clearly miles away from the two Radeon video cards. We feel this has more to do with memory capacity, as when we dropped to 4X AA the game was playable, and performance shot up quite a bit as you saw in our gameplay testing above.

GeForce GTX 570 SLI is severely bottlenecked in this game, yes, we played it at 5 FPS to get you these results, it was painful. It proves a point though, memory capacity is important when running SLI or CrossFireX at high multiple display resolutions.
Click to expand...

Bad Company 2:
HardOCP Review said:
Comparing performance at 8X MSAA you can see that GeForce GTX 580 SLI is around 40% faster than Radeon HD 6970 CrossFireX! You can see why we were able to turn on higher levels of AA. The GeForce GTX 570 SLI seems to have hit a memory capacity wall at 8X MSAA in this game. Performance remained below 30 FPS, only to shoot up at the end. The GTX 570 SLI is certainly being held back by its memory capacity at this resolution.
Click to expand...

Spilly said:
So would it be agreeable that 1.5gb vram is the minimum recommended for 3x 1080p at 4x AA?
Click to expand...
Yes, and that's just enough. It may not be long before you start to see quite a few titles that won't run maxed at 5760x1080 on 1.5GB cards, as we're already right up to that limit with at least two titles.
 
Does the memory get used individually by card or counted as a total between all 2 or 3?
 
Individually by each card, plus a little extra due to the technology required for SLI/Crossfire.

If you need 800MB of VRAM to run a game, if you have two cards, you'd need about 850M on each, or 1700M total.
 
samuelmorris said:
Individually by each card, plus a little extra due to the technology required for SLI/Crossfire.

If you need 800MB of VRAM to run a game, if you have two cards, you'd need about 850M on each, or 1700M total.
Click to expand...

To add to this, the VRAM is not cumulative.
 
samuelmorris said:
F1 2010:


Bad Company 2:


Yes, and that's just enough. It may not be long before you start to see quite a few titles that won't run maxed at 5760x1080 on 1.5GB cards, as we're already right up to that limit with at least two titles.
Click to expand...
Samuelmorris, both examples are for the 570 which we know only has 1.2 gigs. On your previous quote;

"neither 1280MB or 1536MB are enough, as even at 3600x1920 the 1.5GB cards (480/580) are already stumped"

I am waiting for a 480/580 being "stumped"

Honestly I believe as graphics get better and more intensive, I dont think we will have the actual raw power to run 4x anti before we run out of memmory. I got to see this first hand in beta testing Rift 2. As it stands now I play Battlefield 2 @ 4x AA with DX11.
 
I believe the "Average Joe", such as myself, that is going Eyefinity/3d Surrond, will be budget limited. It seems the most cost effective way to go is three 1080p monitors. These can be found between $100 to $200 in a 24" easy. From what I have gathered, 1.5gb vram will work for most new game titles at 4x AA and this resolution.

And that is the information I was trying to gather. Thank you all for your help and input.
 
So how much of a bottleneck would 1GB be then? :p I know it's slightly OT but I'm trying to find out if I could save myself $100-130 by going with 2x 6870's instead of 2x 6950's... I wouldn't mind sacrificing any or all AA if I can still max everything else in the vast majority of games, but I can't find very many reviews of CF 6870's or SLI GTX 560's at 5760x1200.

I saw one review at Rage3D that benchmarked a single 6870 at 5760x1200 and it looked promising (by extrapolating CF performance, assuming 90% scaling or thereabouts), and I saw another review at HardwareHeaven that showed tri-display performance across three games (BC2 ran fine w/2XAA, could probably do 4X, F1 ran fine w/no AA, and Crysis struggled a bit); but besides that I haven't found very many similar reviews.

I wouldn't mind sacrificing AAto save myself some money... At the same time, the 6950s are probably more future proof, as much as any GPU can be anyway.
 
1GB is not a bottleneck until 4Mp (2560x1440). Of course, all typical eyefinity resolutions lie beyond that, so you will find it increasingly a bottleneck. In HardOCP's tests, in one case 1280MB was insufficient at 5760x1200, and in another, even 1536MB was insufficient.
A fair few games will run at 5760x1200 on 1GB cards without issue but a fair few more will not function with AA enabled, and plenty of them won't function even with AA off, you'll have to cut the res back to 5040x1050 or worse.
Go 6950s, you won't regret it.
 
samuelmorris said:
In HardOCP's tests, in one case 1280MB was insufficient at 5760x1200, and in another, even 1536MB was insufficient. .
Click to expand...


PLEASE SHOW ME, I have yet to find it, only thing I found was the 570/470 running out of memmory.

Honestly, If you sticking with 3 1080P monitors, I will stick with atleast 1.5 gigs of ram. Reason being @ 1.2 gig of mem you do start running out of mem on ONLY 2 games from my collection of 40 I have tested so far. Usually all the games run under 1 GIG of ram @ 3240 x 1920 @ 4x anti. The 2 games that I did see that went over was Batman AA, that one hit at 1.2gigs and Battlefield Bad company 2 was @ 1.4 gigs. Thats my FIRST hand experience on my SLI surround setup.
 
Last edited:
martinje said:
PLEASE SHOW ME, I have yet to find it, only thing I found was the 570/470 running out of memmory.
Click to expand...

Yes I'd like to see this too. The only times I ran out of 1GB vram on my 5970 were at 6060x1080 and at least x4 or x8 AA.

IMO 1-1.5GB Vram is more than enough at 5760x1080, especially if your definition of acceptable framerates is >60 and not >30 like a [H] GPU review, where Kyle benches with SILLYxAA and averages frames of 30.

If you want 60fps your rate-limiting-step is going to be GPU muscle, not memory. AA is the first thing you will be switching off to boost performance.

Unless your objective is to game at 3x30" with SILLYxAA then the amount of vram on these flagship cards is kind of a moot issue. They are more than enough for most people's needs.
 
There' so much conflicting info on this subject, kind of frustrating... :confused: For instance, take a look at this thread where a guy's comparing SLI GTX 460s' w/1GB and 2GB. At 5760x1200 with no AA, AvP, Crysis, and Need for Speed used more than 1.2GB of RAM when available. At the same res but with some degree of AA, Stalker and Far Cry 2 went over 1.5GB and Dirt 2 was close. Just Cause 2, HL2, and Burn Out Paradise weren't using more than 1GB until you cranked the AA really high...

So 1GB was a bottleneck in at 'least half those titles, and they're older games. That's definitely some of the clearest testing I've seen when it comes to VRAM usage. He tested a few additional ones (GTA4, Devil May Cry) but I'd love to know how this relates to some newer titles. Based on other reviews and posts it seems BC2 would be a light RAM user, dunno about the likes of Metro 2033, F1, Civ4, or other more recent and demanding titles.

Based on [H]ard's review it seems at 'least F1 reveals a clear RAM bottleneck (even on the 570), it's less clear on the other games, some are just better optimized for NV cards, etc. It's so borderline on some games, they're right at 1GB of VRAM usage (or right at 1.3GB), even moving from 1080p to 1200p might push some of them over... That makes it a royal PITA for reviewers I guess.
 
I guess it does make sense to invest the extra money if I can tho (6870 CF vs 6950 CF), even if I'm not sure just what games I'll be playing or what games I'd be bottlenecked on w/6870s... It looks like the 6950s will definitely have a significantly longer lifespan. A lot of this should apply to anyone mulling over a GTX 570 as well, 1.3GB is cutting it awfully close in a lot of games... Probably why it's such a pain to pick out relevant titles for a review, it varies wildly from game to game.

It'll probably be a month or so before I make my purchase but I'm definitely leaning towards the 6950s' right now, thanks for the help.
 
OK, How does 3D figure into the Vram usage. Is the usage doubled? I am trying to figure out what cards to get to do 3D gaming on 1920*1080 at the highest setting possible especially in Crysis 2.
 
The few games I have found that use the most ram so far Dirt 2 (1500 + all max 4x aa), Alien v Pred (1500 + all max 4 x aa) and BC2 1450+ (all max 4 x aa) Try putting BC2 upto 8 x MSAA not CSAA in game and you will find things like water disappear. That seems to be the way the engine copes with such a large frame buffer and vram usage. It just stops using certain textures. I have not really tried any more games recently. I am sure there are more out that can use more ram.

I am waiting to see some proper 3 gig 580 reviews to see if their is any great difference in 3 screen performance over the 1.5 gig cards. I suspect we will need to wait for the next round of cards to get enough gpu power to actually use 3 gig of ram. In saying that I suppose tri-sli 3g 580's should have enough power.
 
* 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
o Often attributed to Gates in 1981. Gates considered the IBM PC's 640kB program memory a significant breakthrough over 8-bit systems that were typically limited to 64kB, but he has denied making this remark.
Click to expand...

..........

;)
 
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