2GB VRAM not enough for BF4?

[rtsurfer]

From the 780Ti thread again...

Look into your crystal ball and tell me when 3GB of memory will not be enough at resolutions that actually matter. 4k is pretty irrelevant.

I don't know when it won't be enough. Maybe next fall..?

The point is if I was paying 700$ for a flagship GPU, then I expect it to last more than an year...

 

[Jacky60]

I'm sure 2GB would be fine for now but buying a 2GB card is not a good idea if you want to keep it for a decent amount of time. There's a reason the 780, the 7950 and 7970 have 3GB and the 290/x have 4gb. Games will soon take advantage of the additional memory and even at 1080p some games (modded Skyrim) can go over 2gb. If I was buying now (or in next few weeks ) I'd be buying a couple of 290's with aftermarket cooling.

 

[moonbogg]

The thing is though, if you look at BF4 performance reviews, the relative standing of the 680 does not change all the way up to 4K resolution, and the 690 is only losing its relative placing at 4K(where it is very clearly bottlenecked by ram amount) with it improving at every resolution up to that as the CPU bottleneck is alleviated.

So the issue is not that the 2GB is not enough for stutter free perfection, it is that the cards are not fast enough for stutter free perfection. Semantics, but given the topic an important difference.

Admittedly the Guru 3d BF4 review does not include minimum frame rates, but it does include FCAT which doesn't show a huge difference at 1440 for the 690 vs 7990 other than what you would expect given the 7990 is faster (a bit smoother and on the whole lower given its higher FPS).

That's the thing. They ARE fast enough for stutter free perfection. My FPS on full ultra almost never even sees the 60's. Its always higher than that. Know what though? It stutters and freezes at times. Coincidentally, during those times, the Vram is pegged at either 1980MB or even 2025MB or close to around there. The GPUs are perfectly capable. The Vram is lacking.

From the 780Ti thread again...



I don't know when it won't be enough. Maybe next fall..?

The point is if I was paying 700$ for a flagship GPU, then I expect it to last more than an year...

Bingo. $1,400.00 for SLI uber power only to have hitching and skipping a year or so from now. Like I said, people with 7970's, especially in crossfire, are still laughing their asses off. Those cards are super fast in crossfire, the drivers and frame times have improved, and of course, the Vram is still capable of maxing modern games flawlessly.

 

[Daedalus685]

just a comment
what about next gen. games?
we don't have the 2014-2015 games .I'm looking at 2 gpus with blocks so nv with 3 gb @ $1400+ is a concern at @1440res.

There is no relative performance drop of the 3GB 280X compared to the 6GB titan at 4K. There is a very minor relative drop between the 7990 and the titan (1.55 vs 1.45 ratio) which is not big enough to make much of a conclusion from as the titan has more ROPs.

So unless tou expect next gen games to be as demanding at 1440 as BF4 is today at 4K you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Even 2GB is fine on the cards that have it as they are not fast enough to handle loads needing more than that anyway, so if games get that demanding it is upgrade time for the 2 and 4GB 770 owners alike.

 

[moonbogg]

There is no relative performance drop of the 3GB 280X compared to the 6GB titan at 4K. There is a very minor relative drop between the 7990 and the titan (1.55 vs 1.45 ratio) which is not big enough to make much of a conclusion from as the titan has more ROPs.

So unless tou expect next gen games to be as demanding at 1440 as BF4 is today at 4K you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Even 2GB is fine on the cards that have it as they are not fast enough to handle loads needing more than that anyway, so if games get that demanding it is upgrade time for the 2 and 4GB 770 owners alike.

He's talking about SLI performance. No way would I buy 3gb cards for 1440p today. With the GPU power available, you are going to run out of Vram in a year. Damn that would suck.

 

[Daedalus685]

That's the thing. They ARE fast enough for stutter free perfection. My FPS on full ultra almost never even sees the 60's. Its always higher than that. Know what though? It stutters and freezes at times. Coincidentally, during those times, the Vram is pegged at either 1980MB or even 2025MB or close to around there. The GPUs are perfectly capable. The Vram is lacking.

That is not observable in any of the BF4 performance reviews. You see what you see though.

Are you sure it is not another issue? I mean if you want faster get faster, and 290s are definitely faster. The data I've looked at though makes me skeptical you'd notice anything better even if you had 4GB 680s instead, at least at 1080p. But I suppose there may be very subtle affects that don't show up in FCAT or averages, as they are very small sample sizes in the long run. SLI, and crossfire especially, will drop frames and stutter at times on the FCAT data, even with the latest drivers.

 

[rtsurfer]

There is no relative performance drop of the 3GB 280X compared to the 6GB titan at 4K. There is a very minor relative drop between the 7990 and the titan (1.55 vs 1.45 ratio) which is not big enough to make much of a conclusion from as the titan has more ROPs.

So unless tou expect next gen games to be as demanding at 1440 as BF4 is today at 4K you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Even 2GB is fine on the cards that have it as they are not fast enough to handle loads needing more than that anyway, so if games get that demanding it is upgrade time for the 2 and 4GB 770 owners alike.

It is not an issue today. But it will be an issue tommorow.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/10/10/battlefield_4_beta_performance_preview/4

From the article,

One of the biggest questions that we have been getting is whether 2GB of GPU VRAM memory would be sufficient to play Battlefield 4 at high levels of performance. During our gameplay experience with each card, we observed the actual VRAM usage did not exceed 2GB for each of the tests that we performed. At the 2560x1600 resolution, we typically observed anywhere from 1800MB to 2015MB used at any given time. We find this to be somewhat surprising, as it seemed like it would be likely to exceed the 2GB of VRAM on the 3GB R9 280X. Confirming the 3GB R9 280X, we did not observe video memory usage to exceed 2GB, but it was near the max on the GTX 770.

3Gb might be enough, but it is not top of the line. Which he should be getting when paying 700$ a pop.

Personally, I would give him the same advice repeated 1000s of time on the internet.

Settle for something cheaper that works right now and save the extra money to upgrade earlier next time then you initially planed to.

 

[Chumster]

I'm curious to just how much BF4 is an outlier compared to other modern titles (like Batman:AO, Tomb Raider, etc)? Have any of the major sites benched the RAM usage in other titles?

 

[moonbogg]

I'm curious to just how much BF4 is an outlier compared to other modern titles (like Batman:AO, Tomb Raider, etc)? Have any of the major sites benched the RAM usage in other titles?

I seem remember max payne 3 maxing out 2gb at 1080p. What that meant I don't know, but it filled up 2gb. Crysis 3 is close to 2gb usage at 1080p maxed. But BF4 is the only game I know of that actually exceeds 2gb at 1080p, but BF4 is also the only game I care about which is why I'd consider an upgrade for it.

 

[Daedalus685]

I seem remember max payne 3 maxing out 2gb at 1080p. What that meant I don't know, but it filled up 2gb. Crysis 3 is close to 2gb usage at 1080p maxed. But BF4 is the only game I know of that actually exceeds 2gb at 1080p, but BF4 is also the only game I care about which is why I'd consider an upgrade for it.

Because of the uncertain usefulness of various caches the game puts in the GPU ram how much is uses is not as telling as what the performance is like.

That being said, looking at the new data from the 780Ti SLI reviews, there seems to be a memory bottleneck causing a loss of scaling in SLI for BF4 at 4K (or there is a general SLI scaling issue at 4K/driver glitch). But the scaling is pretty good otherwise.

We'll have to wait and see with the 6GB 780TIs that get released if they fix this issue or not, but there you have it. Looks like for SLI top end and 4K resolution (which if your not pushing with 3 other displays or a 4K display why on earth would you buy two $700 cards) 3GB holds the cards back.

Bear in mind this ONLY applies to SLI. all single GPU cards are perfectly fine with the ram they ship with as they are not fast enough for it to matter, they preserve their relative performance even when more RAM helps the faster configurations. This goes for single 770, 280X, 780 and so forth.

 

[moonbogg]

Because of the uncertain usefulness of various caches the game puts in the GPU ram how much is uses is not as telling as what the performance is like.

That being said, looking at the new data from the 780Ti SLI reviews, there seems to be a memory bottleneck causing a loss of scaling in SLI for BF4 at 4K (or there is a general SLI scaling issue at 4K/driver glitch). But the scaling is pretty good otherwise.

We'll have to wait and see with the 6GB 780TIs that get released if they fix this issue or not, but there you have it. Looks like for SLI top end and 4K resolution (which if your not pushing with 3 other displays or a 4K display why on earth would you buy two $700 cards) 3GB holds the cards back.

Bear in mind this ONLY applies to SLI. all single GPU cards are perfectly fine with the ram they ship with as they are not fast enough for it to matter, they preserve their relative performance even when more RAM helps the faster configurations. This goes for single 770, 280X, 780 and so forth.

This I agree with and is the way its been forever. SLI changes things because now you have a setup that is powerful enough to last longer and can take you into a generation of games that need more ram at high settings.

 

[Daedalus685]

This I agree with and is the way its been forever. SLI changes things because now you have a setup that is powerful enough to last longer and can take you into a generation of games that need more ram at high settings.

True, but it all seems moot as anyone buying a high end setup like 780 + SLI is not thinking too clearly if they are doing it in order to save money by future proofing for the long run. Unless they are factoring in not caring about the dip in FPS they see in 2 years like they do today (cataracts and all that).

I should add though that while single cards have usually always had enough ram RAM they also often have far more than enough. Some folks don't seem to understand this and buy (for instance) the 4GB 770s for a lot of extra cash when they have no intention of using it for SLI thinking instead it will help the card last longer, which is only true if they mean buying a second used later as lasting longer.

 

[vendrio]

What resolution?

1366*768 resolution..

 

[Pseudoics]

I was somewhat worried about the 2GB on my 760 OC when the BF4 usage rumors were circulating. Having played it for a few days now though, I couldn't care less. The game does not look that spectacular to me. At 1080p it runs so well and smooth I haven't felt the need to even check fps. A 4.8GHz 4770k likely aids that in MP a bit.

I fully intended buying a second 760 down the line, now seeing this game as it is - knowing newer drivers and patches will greatly enhance performance - I'm happy to sit this upgrade itch out and wait till the purely next-gen games release in a year or two (no 'scaling down' to 360/PS3 necessary). Games as boundary pushing as the first Gears of War on 360 showcasing the then-new UE3, and the original Crysis a year later. Those won't only just be worth upgrading from 2GB, they'll be mandatory.

Would not purchase a 2GB at this stage though.

 

[moonbogg]

I was somewhat worried about the 2GB on my 760 OC when the BF4 usage rumors were circulating. Having played it for a few days now though, I couldn't care less. The game does not look that spectacular to me. At 1080p it runs so well and smooth I haven't felt the need to even check fps. A 4.8GHz 4770k likely aids that in MP a bit.

I fully intended buying a second 760 down the line, now seeing this game as it is - knowing newer drivers and patches will greatly enhance performance - I'm happy to sit this upgrade itch out and wait till the purely next-gen games release in a year or two (no 'scaling down' to 360/PS3 necessary). Games as boundary pushing as the first Gears of War on 360 showcasing the then-new UE3, and the original Crysis a year later. Those won't only just be worth upgrading from 2GB, they'll be mandatory.

Would not purchase a 2GB at this stage though.

Man, those were some great times for gaming. I loved those games.

 

[Owls]

It is not an issue today. But it will be an issue tommorow.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/10/10/battlefield_4_beta_performance_preview/4

From the article,



3Gb might be enough, but it is not top of the line. Which he should be getting when paying 700$ a pop.

Personally, I would give him the same advice repeated 1000s of time on the internet.

Settle for something cheaper that works right now and save the extra money to upgrade earlier next time then you initially planed to.

I think we could agree that if nVidia shipped the Ti 4GB for $700 then maybe that would be more palatable. I personally like the best and fastest however there has to be a clear advantage not 4-7 fps here and there. The money saved between a 290x CF vs Ti SLI I could put together an awesome CPU/GPU loop that would last me years.

 

[Childs]

I think we could agree that if nVidia shipped the Ti 4GB for $700 then maybe that would be more palatable. I personally like the best and fastest however there has to be a clear advantage not 4-7 fps here and there. The money saved between a 290x CF vs Ti SLI I could put together an awesome CPU/GPU loop that would last me years.

Regular 290's in CF seem to be the best deal at the moment. You put the additional savings into aftermarket cooling and OC them even faster.

 

[wand3r3r]

On the topic of BF4, The Tech Buyers Guru has an interesting article testing various CPU modes with a GTX 780...

The effect of hyperthreading (HT) on gaming performance has been much-debated for many years, especially since the advent of HT in quad-cores back in Intel's Nehalem generation of CPUs introduced in 2008. Our previous article on this topic found that HT helps dual-cores so much that you shouldn't even bother with a non-HT dual-core if you intend to play modern games. The results on a quad-core were less clear, however, so we decided we'd take a second look at it, this time adding overclocking into the mix. And as you'll see, overclocking is desperately needed with the latest system-busting games, particularly Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4. We also test a few games we've looked at previously but which are still thoroughly modern - Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider, and Far Cry 3.

http://www.techbuyersguru.com/ochtgaming1.php

 

[cristispot]

ON:

resolution: 1680x1050
cpu: amd phenom II x4 960 t
ram: 8gb ddr 3 1333mhz
gpu: gtx 680 oc 2gb
psu: 550 w recom

bf4 works great with everything ultra, hbao ON, v-sync on.