Is 10gb VRAM really enough for 1440p?

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Apr 8, 2017
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Decision to be made: 3080 vs 6800xt

I don't care about Ray Tracing, nor streaming, nvenc.

Some games, like doom eternal, and many others are already maxing out 8gb. 8gb is today clearly not sufficient (am talking about vram usage, not just allocation), let alone in 2 years.

Back to the 3080, and the question of will 10gb be enough for many years to come? I don't plan to swap my gpu every two years. I plan to keep it 3-5 years.

For those who think 10gb is enough today, will it be enough in 3+ years? Do you have stats of vram usage to support your arguments?
 
just hand on a bit the new versions are coming soon. 380ti 20gb vram 3060ti 16gb vram,
 
just hand on a bit the new versions are coming soon. 380ti 20gb vram 3060ti 16gb vram,

At what cost though?

Decision to be made: 3080 vs 6800xt

I don't care about Ray Tracing, nor streaming, nvenc.

Some games, like doom eternal, and many others are already maxing out 8gb. 8gb is today clearly not sufficient (am talking about vram usage, not just allocation), let alone in 2 years.

Back to the 3080, and the question of will 10gb be enough for many years to come? I don't plan to swap my gpu every two years. I plan to keep it 3-5 years.

For those who think 10gb is enough today, will it be enough in 3+ years? Do you have stats of vram usage to support your arguments?

You seem like a perfect candidate for the 6800XT if you can find one. If you don't care about Nvidia's strong points, you might as well just get the card with more VRAM that performs better at 1440p.
 
Simply because I can get my hand on a 3080 easily, but not the 6800xt.

The 3080ti looks very promising, If I can wait 2-3 months, I can probably grab one, but its 2-3 months of waiting. I dont have any GPU at the moment
 
Sounds like you've already made up your mind but are looking for validation.

But to answer your question, 10GB of VRAM is more than enough at 1440p and will continue to be so for quite some time. 10GB is also plenty for 4K. What a lot of people don't understand is that tools like MSI Afterburner only report requested VRAM and not actual VRAM usage. Some games will just request whatever is available and this will lead people to think they are "using" all their VRAM when this isn't at all true despite their game playing just fine. When a game actually runs out of VRAM the game will start stuttering horribly (not just little hitches but massive stalls and stops) as assets are having to be pulled from the Windows page file or system RAM.
 
spot on Lepardi! been waiting this long for a 3080 might as well wait longer for the 3080ti and get that 3090 performance and enough vram to make a difference when that smart access memory thing kicks in for NVIDIA.
 
I am favoring the 6800xt, but I would also get the 3080ti if it was available today. I had my mind set, though the more I read, the more people are divided over if 10 GB is enough or not.

Today, not many games would max out (usage) 10 GB VRAM, but the question is, what about in 2 years?

I can easily count over 6 games today that would max out 8GB-10GB (usage, not allocation). So what people who say 10 GB is enough are basing things on?
 
spot on Lepardi! been waiting this long for a 3080 might as well wait longer for the 3080ti and get that 3090 performance and enough vram to make a difference when that smart access memory thing kicks in for NVIDIA.

I mean maybe there will be some downward pressure on 3080s with a Ti release? I mean, I'd buy a used 3080 for $600-650 if I could get one for that price.
 
So what people who say 10 GB is enough are basing things on?

The fact that they have a 10GB card ;). I mean given the option of a 10GB card or a minimal cost upgrade to 20GB (say $100) with the same GPU, I bet most would opt for the 20GB version.

The Ti is tricky because you're going to get a VRAM and a GPU upgrade at probably a $300+ cost increase.
 
hear ya i think i single handedly supplied more titans in my city then anyone else since its release. in 2019 i had 4 Titan X builds, 2020 i bought 5 Titan X's. that stock is drying up fast iv got 1 left for a my htpc, id like to be ableto buy a 3000x or 6000x from amd sometime this year.
 
The 3080ti would cost about $1000. Thats a good $300 over the 6800xt. Once you pass 16 GB VRAM, its overkill. Even 16 is overkill. I think 12-14 GB is the sweet spot. The 3080Ti will have a bit more power over the 6800xt, yes, but will I need it for 1440p? Maybe, probably not though. So the way I look at it, its $300 that I dont need to spend.

BTW, the 3080 in 2022 will look kinda dumb, not many cards in 2022 will ship out with 10 GB VRAM. The trend is already going for 16+
 
spot on Lepardi! been waiting this long for a 3080 might as well wait longer for the 3080ti and get that 3090 performance and enough vram to make a difference when that smart access memory thing kicks in for NVIDIA.
What makes you think that waiting for a 3080 Ti is realistic? The 3080 Ti is going to be snatched up by bots the second it releases. Stock will be short for months to come and we'll be in the same situation if not worse than we are now.
 
Most games releasing now and probably for the next year still have last gen consoles in mind. They won’t push the VRAM limits much. There will probably be a few edge case games that will push the envelope earlier though.

But I think in 2022 when the focus is almost entirely shifted to PS5/XSX we’ll start seeing more games surpass 10GB of VRAM at 4K. For 1440p I think 10GB will be fine for the next few years though.

All speculation though, just like everyone else.
 
If 1gb is just fine for 1080p, nt sure why such huge jump for 144 nd 4k..
View attachment 315541
Ultra and high settings.
In what? VRAM usage is going to widely vary depending on game/application.

CP2077 already allocates over 9GB of VRAM at 4K today, and that is an early next-gen (technically cross-gen) game. Sure, that’s allocation but that doesn’t mean it isn’t potentially using most of it, we don’t know the buffer.
 
How can you be so sure?

Its barely enough today. Games will always allocate and use more VRAM, not the opposite. When the next round of cards are released, 16 GB+ will be the norm, so 10 GB cards wont have much of a resale value.

Putting 10 GB on a high end card really was a mistake from Nvidia. Just does not make sense
 
Food for thought, but resolution is certainly NOT the only factor that influences how much VRam gets used. If you crank up the anti-aliasing, you will use a lot more VRam. If you are in a game with a huge open world and have your view/draw distance cranked to the max, forcing it to render every blade of grass that is 5 miles away, you will use a lot more VRam.

Before my 2080 I stuck it out with my 3x GTX680 in SLI. It was an interesting configuration in that anything that made good use of SLI would give me GPU power similar to a 980ti or 1070. That was actually pretty good, but even though GPU power was not lacking, the cards only had 2GB VRam... Even at 1080p (the monitor I had at the time), that forced me to do a lot of testing with different settings in the games that I played in order to keep VRam usage lower. I found that in most games, as long as I went easy with the Anti-Aliasing and kept the view distance lower, it wasn't much of a problem. Upgrading to a 1440p monitor, wanting Freesync support, wanting DX12 support, as well as fading SLI support, etc, forced me to upgrade, but it did show me that VRam usage is something you can have a great deal of control over unless you just want to crank every setting to max and forget about it.
 
Its barely enough today. Games will always allocate and use more VRAM, not the opposite. When the next round of cards are released, 16 GB+ will be the norm, so 10 GB cards wont have much of a resale value.

Putting 10 GB on a high end card really was a mistake from Nvidia. Just does not make sense
That's just not true sorry. How did you come to the conclusion it's barely enough today?
 
Mate, what world you living in, mate? Have you looked at the bloody survey? Have a look, mate! 🤨as far as taco cn see, those leading graphics computational units are not 10+gb. Everyone must be ultra struggling trying to play games..
View attachment 315547
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

exlink the long dark. Sure it dips at times into late teens, but it's mostly solid 30(sometimes mid20) gaming!
What does a hardware survey have to do with VRAM limits? It’s PC gaming. You turn down the settings until your game plays well on your system. If you lack of the VRAM then you turn down settings.

That doesn’t mean developers won’t incorporate settings that push beyond 10GB of VRAM for those with the hardware capable of pushing it. I play on PC to get the most out of my games; I wouldn’t want to start turning down settings on relatively new hardware.
 
like I said, many games today use more than 8 GB VRAM (use, not allocate), and some hit the limit of 10 GB VRAM. CyberPunk and Doom max out 8 GB on 1440p.
That's 2 games, do you think that is "barely enough" for today? Also on doom you drop one setting down and you won't max out 8gb.
 
Turning down settings on brand new hardware released 2 months ago? Hardware that cost $700-$1000 depending what card we are talking about? Because such said cards did not ship with enough VRAM in 2020, let alone in 2022 and beyond?

This proves only that RTX is useless today, and that more VRAM is a lot more important.

There are many many games today that would max out the 3070's VRAM, not just allocation, but actual usage.

I guess I answered my own quesion: 8-10GB wont be enough. Its barely so today, how can it realistically be enough in 2022 and beyond?
 
Decision to be made: 3080 vs 6800xt
If you are stressed by vram issue, plan to play at 1440p, do not care about encoding/RT, CUDA if it was easy to simply buy a 6800xt close to MSRP, the answer seem a no brainer, why even consider the 3080 in that context ?

Most games releasing now and probably for the next year still have last gen consoles in mind. They won’t push the VRAM limits much. There will probably be a few edge case games that will push the envelope earlier though.

But I think in 2022 when the focus is almost entirely shifted to PS5/XSX we’ll start seeing more games surpass 10GB of VRAM at 4K. For 1440p I think 10GB will be fine for the next few years though.
And considering how ram starved those console are with the decision to go with fast but very "little" ram on them is a reason to expect otherwise imo, they have 16 gig for everything a standard 16 gig PC with a 8 gig VRAM one will have 24, a 32 gig PC with 10 gig of VRAM will 42 gig. AMD card come with has much VRAM than the complete system has on those consoles.

Game will have an hard limit around 8 to 10 gig they can use has VRAM on those console and will often want for marketing purpose to be able to run in some mode at 4K on them, PS5 exclusive will maybe concentrate at pure 1080p-1440p, but I imagine it will be rare they will go with dynamic 4K quite often, PC port will probably still have that ram limitation model inspired, some of them will maybe feature extra HD texture pack different than console texture too, but that could be more after 2023.
Some games, like doom eternal, and many others are already maxing out 8gb. 8gb is today clearly not sufficient (am talking about vram usage, not just allocation), let alone in 2 years.
It depend of you target FPS I feel like (i.e. if you want to run future title at 144hz with those current cards versus being ok with 45 fps where you can push everything at much higher detail level), if we compare at ultra quality 1440p:


1440p-4-p.webp

The 6 gig 2060 relative to the 8 gig 1070/5070xt does not seem to change between 1080p and 1440p, 570 vs 1060, etc... it is not 100% clear at a first look at least if 6gig of ram are starving those GPUs that much.

Setting from low to ultra nightmare between a 6 and 8 gig of VRAM does not feel that different:
Preset-2-p_1100.webp

I feel like people making future release game right now with Unreal 5 or other popular engine on this message board, could give a bit more hindsight than pure speculation, but if game are made for the new generation of console in mind and their ports have not much work done to take advantage of PC having in general more than twice their rams available, both ram and vram could stay quite stable during that generation of title.

That said you will have some future cyberpunk/Id software title made we good focus on PC or even first than ported to console mentality that will exist during that time frame as well, VR, mods, unofficial or game of the year edition/high res texture pack.
 
Mate, that doesn't happn.

What doesn't happen exactly? You mean the specific example that I provided doesn't apply to some specific game that you play? In games such as World of Warcraft for example, you can set your view distance so high that you can practically see across an entire continent if you want to, and there is a separate setting that specifically relates to how far away grass and foliage are rendered. If you just crank everything to max then you force the game to render grass (and other foliage) that is already so far away that you wouldn't be able to see it anyway. The more you load into the VRam, the more likely you will be limited by VRam.
 
Turning down settings on brand new hardware released 2 months ago? Hardware that cost $700-$1000 depending what card we are talking about? Because such said cards did not ship with enough VRAM in 2020, let alone in 2022 and beyond?

This proves only that RTX is useless today, and that more VRAM is a lot more important.

There are many many games today that would max out the 3070's VRAM, not just allocation, but actual usage.

I guess I answered my own quesion: 8-10GB wont be enough. Its barely so today, how can it realistically be enough in 2022 and beyond?
LOL you had your mind made up before you posted this stupid thread. Why even bother with it? Go buy what you want, it's your money do with it what you will. But to post this nonsense and seek advice and then when it is given to you to reject it and then boldly state the opposite is wasting everyone else's time who tried to offer advice. No one cares what you do with your money.
 
Turning down settings on brand new hardware released 2 months ago? Hardware that cost $700-$1000 depending what card we are talking about?

The alternative being what - game developers artificially place caps on the max settings so as to not offend people who bought expensive hardware and want to see big numbers?

Some of the games being released today will be played for many years to come. Why should max game settings be limited by what today's hardware is capable of?

This seems to be some kind of weird entitlement issue some people have, where they feel cheated if they can't push every slider in the game settings to max and still get 100+ fps. If they gimped the graphics in these games, these same people would be happy because that would mean they can run the game at "max settings" and have another reason to pat themselves on the back. If they got that same experience with "high" settings, but the game also had an "ultra" setting for future cards, those same people would be in tears because "my card can't run this game at max settings!!!!! why did I pay so much money for this!?!!!!".
 
Any card with less than 16 GB VRAM wont really have a good resale value in 2022 and beyond, sadly.
I'm sorry, but you don't know this. Nobody knows this. The 6800 XT is an excellent card as long as you stay at or below 1440P and don't value RT or any AI upscaling tech.

However, if you go to 4K and use RT and DLSS, the RTX 3080 becomes the clear victor and is completely dominant. The 6800 XT is already hamstrung by its 256-bit bus of slower GDDR6 compared to the RTX 3080 and 3090 with a wider bus and faster GDDR6X. The fact that people think the 6800/6900 cards will scale overtime is, unfortunately, laughable.
 
I am favoring the 6800xt, but I would also get the 3080ti if it was available today. I had my mind set, though the more I read, the more people are divided over if 10 GB is enough or not.

Today, not many games would max out (usage) 10 GB VRAM, but the question is, what about in 2 years?

I can easily count over 6 games today that would max out 8GB-10GB (usage, not allocation). So what people who say 10 GB is enough are basing things on?
Which games are you referring to?
 
Impractical. No one will ever use that detail.

Yes they will, because any setting that is available, people will want to crank it up to max. If people actually adjusted settings individually based on what made sense, then this thread wouldn't even exist.
 
LOL you had your mind made up before you posted this stupid thread. Why even bother with it? Go buy what you want, it's your money do with it what you will. But to post this nonsense and seek advice and then when it is given to you to reject it and then boldly state the opposite is wasting everyone else's time who tried to offer advice. No one cares what you do with your money.
Its a discussion, feel free not to participate. You wont gain time lurking around forums, quiet the opposite. I just want some opinions.
 
I'm sorry, but you don't know this. Nobody knows this. The 6800 XT is an excellent card as long as you stay at or below 1440P and don't value RT or any AI upscaling tech.

However, if you go to 4K and use RT and DLSS, the RTX 3080 becomes the clear victor and is completely dominant. The 6800 XT is already hamstrung by its 256-bit bus of slower GDDR6 compared to the RTX 3080 and 3090 with a wider bus and faster GDDR6X. The fact that people think the 6800/6900 cards will scale overtime is, unfortunately, laughable.
Actually, if you did some research, you will know that nvidia limited their own memory speed and bandwidth, from memory it was about only 3 Gbps less than AMD. Having faster memory wont buy you more VRAM space
 
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