[Hexus] Palit GeForce GTX 780 JetStream 6GB in SLI

[SlowSpyder]

I dunno, I could say that I used 680 sli for ages at 1600p. How many VRAM issues? Oh yeah. None. But I didn't go silly with OGSSAA. So tell us what your experience with 1600p is please, go for it.

I could also be silly and link reviews from objective websites showing performance benchmarks between 2 and 4GB at 1600p. Guess what the performance difference is. Guess. It's a number between zero and..........zero. You get more mods and more SSAA with more VRAM. MSAA is unaffected, you can use all the MSAA you want. But once you go into stupid zone with SSAA, that's when VRAM use doubles or triples. That's also the same SSAA that chops your framerate by one half or more. Same with mods, if you want to go nuts with mods in Skyrim, you can do that with more VRAM. But saying more than 2GB is *required* at 1600p, nope, wrong. More SSAA, SGSSAA, SGSSAA, modding. That's about it. Performance difference: none. I'm not saying that if you want more VRAM it isn't valid, but you don't need more VRAM unless you're doing a silly resolution such as 7680x1440. 3GB is fine for 4k. I'd say 4-6GB is the area for 7680x1440/1600.

Shall I get you those reviews since you made the smirk in your post?

I've never had a 1600P monitor, so can't tell you... but that's not really how we do things around here anyway. Almost everyone here knows the FX CPU's are poor at gaming without having owned one, right?

2GB is probably ok at 1440P for most people. But if you don't want to limit yourself, I'd suggest a card with at least as much vram as the card I bought 2.5 years ago now, if not more... certainly not less. New consoles, new ports. Mods, higher AA levels. I'll take more vram than less at higher resolutions.

What is the benefit of less vram?

 

[blackened23]

2GB is probably overkill for most games if you run everything at the lowest settings. :sneaky:

When I say overkill settings, i'm referring specifically to various form of override SSAA. You can still max out your settings and use whatever MSAA setting you want up to 8X MSAA with 2GB of VRAM at 1600p. This I promise you. You're welcome to try it as well if you have a 2g 680 lying around - any MSAA setting, any game maxed out minus override SSAA or OGSSAA, you will not hit a VRAM wall. MSAA raises VRAM use but not ridiculously so. SSAA is the VRAM and performance killer, so I find any use of SSAA to be questionable at best. Frankly, if anyone wants to use SSAA as a justification for more VRAM - i'd have to seriously question what they're thinking because SSAA also carries a SIGNIFICANT performance detriment.

SSAA chops your framerate in half or more most of the time, as i'm sure you're aware - I never use SSAA unless the game is extremely old. You can use any MSAA setting you want, so this "lowest settings" statement is not accurate. You can use whatever settings you want. SSAA is what kills VRAM use, and mods can too. There's one game , well two games that I mod. Dark Souls and Skyrim. At this point, two years past release, Skyrim is pretty long in the tooth.

Your GPU will run out of horsepower well before VRAM is an issue with SSAA. VRAM doubling from SSAA use in surround is half the issue. Your framerate dropping by 50-75% is the much bigger problem. Now there are instances where more VRAM makes sense. But buyers need to use common sense here. Do you need 3-4GB for 1080p? No. 1440p? No. Would I get 6GB (with a 780) if I were using 7680x1600? Absolutely. At the super high surround resolutions, this is where more VRAM makes sense. But there are posters here pining for 3-6GB at 1080p/1440p. That just isn't needed.

What BC stated earlier is spot on. Seeing 3-4-6GB being touted for 1080p or 1440p is headscratch worthy. It isn't needed. This has been proven by websites TIME AND TIME AND TIME again. The additional VRAM helps at super high surround resolutions, but it isn't needed at the more common resolutions. If you want SSAA which can use the VRAM and all of it, I do hope you have 2-3 GPUs to handle it, cuz you aren't gonna run crysis 3 maxed out with SSAA unless you have 2-3 GPUs to spare. Basically you run out of GPU power well before the VRAM is an issue.

 

[SlowSpyder]

What if 20nm GPU's arrive and 28nm based cards are selling cheap and someone wants to go SLI say a year from now? Keep in mind new games from the new consoles that eat more resources. I'm not saying spending a lot more for more vram is a good idea necessarily, but 2GB for 1440P if you're planning on keeping the card for a bit? I assume most people that are looking at GTX770 level cards and has a 1440P monitor are somewhat a gamer/enthusiast. I can't get behind 2GB as a good idea for that resolution.

 

[blackened23]

I have a difficult time seeing it happening. The next gen consoles really aren't all that, and while I do like certain genres of gaming on consoles, there's no denying their lack of power. (to be clear, I do enjoy consoles, even if they're not technologically amazing)

At this point x86 programming is well known by developers. Despite this fact, we have a situation where the next gen barely handles 720p or 900p at 30 fps. This is a stark contrast to the PS3 and XB360 which were technologically very advanced at their time of launch; in fact the X360 had a more powerful GPU at launch in 2005 than any PC dGPU. That situation reversed very quickly, but put that into perspective. X360 had the most powerful gaming hardware when it launched, even higher than PC (GPU wise). The current "next gen" consoles are very weak in comparison.

It could happen, but if it does, it will be several years from now. But I still question whether that will happen. The next gen consoles are still extremely weak machines and we will still get slightly improved PC ports over that. Being that the consoles are the baseline, I just can't see any dramatic shift in VRAM use based on next gen console ports. If anything, the next gen consoles may hold us back.

 

[SlowSpyder]

The new consoles are lacking mostly to computer enthusiasts. It doesn't matter, though. That's not the point. The point is look at what console ports from the Xbox 360 and PS3 can require as far as resources already with their meager hardware stats. The Xbox 360 has a GPU capable of 240Gflops. The XBox One GPU is capable of 1330Gflops, the PS4 1840Gflops. Even if the console hardware is light by our standards, the ports should be more stout than what we get now, which can already be resource hogs.

*edit - I'd also like to add the Xbox 360 uses 512MB of shared memory (plus 10MB edram), the PS3 is 256MB + 256MB (system/vram) vs. 8GB in the current systems. Vram use is very likely to go up.

 

[Silverforce11]

Max Payne with 4x MSAA chokes on 2gb cards at 1600p, as I recall. No mods, just default max settings.

With mods, lots of games choke with 2gb, given ultra HD texture packs.

 

[blackened23]

That is NOT true. Obviously your recollection is incorrect. I played Max Payne 3 fully from start to finish at 1600p with MSAA and sli 680s near launch. The game ran completely fine with no issues , with 2GB. And no, there were no VRAM issues.

1600p MP3:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012...per_overclocked_edition_review/4#.U3VONvldXis

 

[Silverforce11]

"If you look in the second menu screenshot above we have selected 8X MSAA on the 3GB Radeon HD 7970 and you will see that with the highest settings plus 8X MSAA it exceeds the total VRAM of the video card."

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012...formance_preview_reviewers_guide#.U3VShPmSxSk

The one you linked to me only uses FXAA.

This one goes up to 4x MSAA, and look at that stutter on the chart, massive dips to 20fps or lower.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/06/12/max_payne_3_performance_iq_review/5#.U3VSjPmSxSk

 

[mindbomb]

I think we should pretty much stop phrasing like "x graphics card isn't fast enough to make use of y gigabytes of vram". Graphics cards and software are now versatile enough to where I can imagine applications that can use tons of memory but not need much processing power and vice versa. They're basically independent properties in my mind.

I mean, with cpu's, I wouldn't say something like "that cpu isn't fast enough for 32gb of ram," rather than just advising ppl that there are perhaps more fruitful ways to spend that money.

 

[blackened23]

"If you look in the second menu screenshot above we have selected 8X MSAA on the 3GB Radeon HD 7970 and you will see that with the highest settings plus 8X MSAA it exceeds the total VRAM of the video card."

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012...formance_preview_reviewers_guide#.U3VShPmSxSk

The one you linked to me only uses FXAA.

This one goes up to 4x MSAA, and look at that stutter on the chart, massive dips to 20fps or lower.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/06/12/max_payne_3_performance_iq_review/5#.U3VSjPmSxSk

Oh. Okay. You went there. The 3GB 7970 dipped to 20 fps while the 2GB 680 dipped to 18 fps. So your conclusion is VRAM issue? If you say so.

The game played 100% just fine on 680 sli at the time, this was ages ago, I was capped at over 60 fps. VRAM issues? None. If you want to make an argument for VRAM, I think you should find a different game and a surround resolution. Besides which, hitting a VRAM wall will make your game crash or run at 1 fps. I have only hit a VRAM wall without using extreme levels of downsampling, to the point that even a 6GB card would choke.

 

[toyota]

Oh. Okay. You went there. The 3GB 7970 dipped to 20 fps while the 2GB 680 dipped to 18 fps. So your conclusion is VRAM issue? If you say so.

The game played 100% just fine on 680 sli at the time, this was ages ago, I was capped at over 60 fps. VRAM issues? None. If you want to make an argument for VRAM, I think you should find a different game and a surround resolution. Besides which, hitting a VRAM wall will make your game crash or run at 1 fps. I have only hit a VRAM wall without using extreme levels of downsampling, to the point that even a 6GB card would choke.

hitting vram limit can simply make framerates drop or make a game hitch.

 

[Silverforce11]

Oh. Okay. You went there. The 3GB 7970 dipped to 20 fps while the 2GB 680 dipped to 18 fps. So your conclusion is VRAM issue? If you say so.

The game played 100% just fine on 680 sli at the time, this was ages ago, I was capped at over 60 fps. VRAM issues? None. If you want to make an argument for VRAM, I think you should find a different game and a surround resolution. Besides which, hitting a VRAM wall will make your game crash or run at 1 fps. I have only hit a VRAM wall without using extreme levels of downsampling, to the point that even a 6GB card would choke.

If you read the article, it stated that setting it at 8x MSAA actually required MORE than 3GB of vram.

As for a vram wall, my games in the past didn't crash, it would just texture swap out and you get hitches in gameplay, momentary dips into low fps.

As for your personal experience, it's up to you to decide. We have professional review sites that say otherwise.

 

[Fastx]

If you read the article, it stated that setting it at 8x MSAA actually required MORE than 3GB of vram.

As for a vram wall, my games in the past didn't crash, it would just texture swap out and you get hitches in gameplay, momentary dips into low fps.

As for your personal experience, it's up to you to decide. We have professional review sites that say otherwise.

SF here is another review/example running high resolutions which will benefit with more vram.

[H]

It may seem like overkill right now, what with current video cards having 2 or 3GB of VRAM and game's overall not demanding so much. However, we are starting to see some game's that do demand more. Hitman is one game that is extremely sensitive to VRAM capacity. We are seeing 2GB be an absolute bottleneck for the game, and 3GB not being enough either. Once we get to 4GB or 6GB of VRAM the game behaves much better at high MSAA settings at high resolutions. Another game, which came out last year, that is also sensitive to VRAM is Max Payne 3. While it doesn't seem right now that Far Cry 3 is that sensitive to VRAM, we haven't had a video card combination fast enough right now to run it at the highest in-game settings to really test that. As we move forward, we will find out. We haven't had much time to test Crysis 3 and its sensitivity to VRAM, but we will get to that when we can.

We were happy and agreed with the decision when we were introduced to the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and 7950 back in 2011 to incorporate 3GB of RAM. At the time, this seemed like a lot of VRAM back in December of 2011. However, we are seeing today how the extra RAM on the HD 7970 and 7950 have benefited some of the latest games. In this same vein, down the road, this year, the next, we may even see how more VRAM impacts games to come.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/02/21/nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_video_card_review/11

 

[blackened23]

Oh. This seems to be VRAM usage when the game is using maxed out settings, per GAMEGPU.RU:

 

[blackened23]

How about Max Payne 3 ? I know I played this game on 680 sli at launch with my stupid 2GB sli setup at the time. 1600p. Did I have VRAM issues with MSAA? No. Never. Not once. No hitching or stuttering. But i'm listening to those telling me the game did in fact have VRAM issues after having played through the game start to finish with 2GB. Whatever you say.

 

[RussianSensation]

Even with 2GB of VRAM, you can play surround 5760x1200 and never have a VRAM problem. Ever. If you have a VRAM issue, it's because you're using overkill AA or too many mods.

But yeah. More VRAM doesn't make your card faster.

Isn't the point of GPUs to provide sufficient performance at satisfactory quality settings? MSAA is definitely a part of the visual experience as some people hate FXAA/MLAA. Sometimes though, higher quality textures/resolution with minimal MSAA can bring about a VRAM bottleneck. I had an 8800GTS 320mb and tried playing Dirt 1 at 1600x1200 with 2x MSAA and the game dropped to 3-5 fps. I upgraded to HD4890 1GB and the game ran at 50-60 fps I believe. There is no way my 4890 is 10-15 faster than 8800GTS.

From AT's review of 8800GT 256mb vs. 512mb, it is evident that when the GPU runs into VRAM bottlenecks, the performance hit is severe.

Even without MSAA, due to larger textures, VRAM bottlenecks can be exposed.

There are many games where GTX570/580's 1.28-1.5GB of VRAM is a major bottleneck. For starters, Total War Rome 2 once Ultra settings are turned on.

Sooner or later with next generation games, 2GB will become a major bottleneck just like 1.28GB-1.5GB became an issue for 570/480/580.

I wouldn't touch a 2GB GPU for $300+ with a 10 foot pole in 2014. Once VRAM becomes a bottleneck like it did on my 8800GTS 320mb, that GPU is practically worthless for gaming, forcing you to upgrade or lower texture quality/MSAA. For now 3-4GB is the sweet spot it seems.

Computerbase
"1920 × 1080 pixel The official requirements are not just meaningful, for example. Vram when they are vastly wrong. 2GB is too little, just right 3GB and 4GB + are then sufficient for MSAA. But it is not yet certain whether MSAA ever comes at the moment. Therefore, my recommendation is reiterating 3GB on a high end card. Should you, however, a card like I buy for years to min recommended. 4GB Vram take. Because we know the Vram is simply irreplaceable, than by more Vram. according to user tests, the engine scales extremely well, even old laptops pack the game on minimum detail. Rome II update history: 3.9.13: DVD after installation to version 1.0 1.5 GB 6.9.13: 120MB (27MB in English) 09/07/13 23MB (23MB to english) 17/09/13 80MB Rome I at CB:"

I wouldn't sweat it too much when choosing a 3GB vs. 4GB GPU, but 2GB, no chance I'd touch that. I wouldn't spend extra on 6GB cards at all for this generation of GPUs. However, having learned from 8800GTS 320mb, I will never again buy a GPU with too little VRAM if the price difference isn't large or if the competition offers significantly more VRAM for similar prices. With current prices on R9 290s, one can pick up an XFX R9 290 for $380. Therefore, if someone is worried that 3GB won't be sufficient in 1.5 years, there are plenty of options cheaper than 780s and just as fast.

VRAM also can become a bottleneck with mods and that's a fair game imo for games like Skyrim, etc.

 

[DiogoDX]

I've learn my lesson with the 5970. Fantastic perfomance but bottlenecked by 1GB vram. Upgrade to a 3GB 7970 and will upgrade in the end of the year for a 4GB minimum.

 

[Face2Face]

I learned my lesson with a 7850 2GB @ 1080p playing modded Skyrim. I had the card for less than a week, then upgraded to a 7950. Modded Skyrim was worth the upgrade alone.

 

[KaRLiToS]

I called it here that 6GB GTx 780 will have no improvement:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36188724&postcount=4

But people were believing that it will help for SLI and higher resolutions.

Nvidia, such a milking company. :thumbsdown:

From Hexus review

The Bad

6GB buffer doesn't seem to help much
Two cards can become loud
GPU Boost speeds curtailed in SLI

:thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

 

[KaRLiToS]

Gimmick

 

[96Firebird]

Nvidia, such a milking company. :thumbsdown:

How so? They released a balanced card at 3GB, then people started complaining that they wanted a 6GB card. So they released a 6GB card. Customers asked for it. And since they are being released around the same price, I don't see how they are milking...

 

[SlowSpyder]

Gimmick

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814129185

It happens, I wouldn't get too worked up about it.

 

[KaRLiToS]

How so? They released a balanced card at 3GB, then people started complaining that they wanted a 6GB card. So they released a 6GB card. Customers asked for it. And since they are being released around the same price, I don't see how they are milking...

I noticed that you don't see it.

 

[96Firebird]

I noticed that you don't see it.

Great explanation, you should write a book! :awe:

 

[rgallant]

er I only upgrade my sli cards when I run out of vram
-most here do not run sli
-a couple of gtx580 3 gb could hold their own vs 1 gtx780 but sli 580 1.5 hit the wall some times.
with gtx 780 sli 3 gb yea they will hit the vram wall , but these cards are / were $650+, 780 ti even more -so to have to replace $1300.00 ++++ of cards for lack of vram in the future gets the thumps up . as long as it's not your cash no problem right ??