Is 4GB on a GTX 680 only for who multi-screen gamers? Other benefits?

mashumk

Member
May 19, 2012
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Obvious newbie questions.

I found a website (won't disclose so it doesn't get gold rushed) that has 670's and 680's in stock of all varieties. I see a 680 4GB for $596, no tax, few dollars shipping.

I'd like to dabble in After Effects, 3d/2d rendering, HD video editing. Mostly for the pure joy of feeling and learning like a kid. Not super interested in the gaming side - except for the rare exception like Arkham City.

Anyway, around the web, I get the general theme that nobody needs 4gb on their GPU except if they have a million monitors surrounding them.

However, in gaming, will this extra memory help with high-res textures on a large hi-res single screen? Fix pop-in, for example?

Or help with video effects/editing/3d work/basically non-gaming graphics applications?

So, would I not notice a difference if I got a 670 2GB? Or perhaps 680 4Gb is more future-proof? At some point games may actually use more than 2GB?

For that matter, why not 670 4GB? An OC 670 is practically a 680.

Disregard price for all these questions.

Thanks for reading. Hope it makes sense.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
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Get the 2GB. You can always find some silly excuse for a 4GB version. However its not something you will notice.
 

guskline

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2006
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mashumk, look at rig 2 below. Running games just fine with a single GTX 680 2G Vram on 3 monitors with a combined resolution of 5760 x 1080.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
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FO3, F:NV, and Skyrim, with texture mods and uGridsToLoad=9 or higher (loads more of the game off into the distance), would be the only ways, outside of doing your own GPGPU coding, to use much more than 2GB. Not worth it. Especially since the main reason they can use so much VRAM, with settings changes and mods, is because the base engine is rather inefficient (Gamebryo/Creation), and the sooner Bethesda and Obsidian ditch it, the better.

4GB is mostly for (a) people that can be marketed it, and (b) college kids that can't afford a Quadro with tons of RAM, but could use one.

I wouldn't get a 1GB card for $200+, today, but 4GB is largely going to be a waste.
 
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borisvodofsky

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2010
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You can finally use those super high texture mods. Although the problem has always been that they look too uniform despite being very high resolution.

Super-high AA settings.
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
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You can definitely run out of VRAM at high 3d surround resolutions at super high AA levels or tons of user mods. Its mainly for the few people that use 5720x1200, although you can use FXAA and sometimes 2X MSAA at that resolution and be fine with 2gb..
 

shaynoa

Member
Feb 14, 2010
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Can someone explain please what VRAM does in a game,
i was of the understanding that if a game is highly detailed it would remember the map layout and if you were to move quickly from one part of the map then to another and back and fourth it helped it that manner to load that part of the map.
please correct me or explain in order to understand it's purpose
shaynoa
 

boxleitnerb

Platinum Member
Nov 1, 2011
2,601
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If you use custom AA-bits and force AA, more VRAM can be a good thing. For example:

Skyrim, tons of mods, 1080p, ingame-AA: 2GB usage
Skyrim, tons of mods, 1080p force AA (smoother): 3GB usage

And that was even without special compatibility bits that would probably give an even better result.
 

shaynoa

Member
Feb 14, 2010
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I really don't know weather to buy 2 sapphire 7970 oc 3gb or wait till the new toxic 6gb vram to come out, if it ever comes out???
 

Ferzerp

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
6,438
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Can someone explain please what VRAM does in a game,
i was of the understanding that if a game is highly detailed it would remember the map layout and if you were to move quickly from one part of the map then to another and back and fourth it helped it that manner to load that part of the map.
please correct me or explain in order to understand it's purpose
shaynoa


Either you have enough to display what you're trying to display without fetching from main memory all the time and it works great.

--or--

It's full and you're always trading data out and your framerate suffers (or even is so bad that it's not even worth mentioning).



VRAM amount is not like, say, clock speed. If you have enough for what you are doing, adding more is of no benefit at all.

Think of VRAM volume as harddrive space.

If you have enough, it makes no difference at all. If you run out, it is a huge pain.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
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I think the 4GB card would also benefit someone who doesn't want to upgrade their card for quite a long time as some games may start having graphics options that eat up more than 2GB of vram.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
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I think the 4GB card would also benefit someone who doesn't want to upgrade their card for quite a long time as some games may start having graphics options that eat up more than 2GB of vram.

By the time you need 4GB the GTX 680 will be a dead slow card :p

1GB is still the standard today.
 

chimaxi83

Diamond Member
May 18, 2003
5,649
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I personally wouldn't buy a 4GB 680 unless it was two cards for SLI. Kinda like not buying a single 6GB 7970, because what's the point? Cards aren't fast enough to use all 4GB/6GB with a single GPU.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
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By the time you need 4GB the GTX 680 will be a dead slow card :p

1GB is still the standard today.

You think so? There are people who built a new PC 5 years ago and are still using a GTX 280.

1GB is bare minimum, not standard at all for new cards purchased today IMO.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
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5 years ago would be a 8800 GTS or 8800 Ultra. A GTX 280 would have been added later, due to the card they got intially having been superceded.

Games aren't detailed enough to use all 4GB/6GB with a single GPU.
FTFY. VRAM's primary purpose today is to reduce the need to get textures from system RAM. If your software can use more VRAM, then your card is fast enough for it, just like with a CPU.

Back when GPUs were primarily pushing texels, not using nearly as much of their time on AA and shaders, GPU speed really mattered, regarding VRAM amount, since a slow GPU really could not handle higher detail on textures, especially with good filtering. Now, that really only applies to the low-end mobile GPUs with several GBs of RAM.

Far more people will buy 4GB 680 cards than will utilize them well, but it's not the GPU performance that would make 4GB good or bad to have; it's how much VRAM software will need for some given settings and workload.
 

aaksheytalwar

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2012
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Considering even tenerife is going to be 3gb, any situation which needs more than 3gb VRAM will anyway be unplayable with anything less than 670 sli
 

shaynoa

Member
Feb 14, 2010
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Ok then please explain if you all will about the nvidia 680 256-bit compared to the AMD7970 384-bit what is the difference, is higher better and why,
and is nvidia going to raise the 256-bit to 384-bit on the 4gb card to come.
im just trying to understand how to select the best card for my needs
thanks shaynoa
have to go out for a while back in 1 hour
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
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you cant just add a higher bus width to an existing chip. the gk104 was intended to be a mid range chip and only has four 64bit memory controllers. all you need to focus on is how the cards you are looking at perform.
 
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shaynoa

Member
Feb 14, 2010
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thanks Toyota but my question still remains,
if a 256-bit makes no difference then why does AMD have 384-bit ? that would just be a waste of money as far as cost to the developer goes,
so what is the difference
shaynoa
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
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thanks Toyota but my question still remains,
if a 256-bit makes no difference then why does AMD have 384-bit ? that would just be a waste of money as far as cost to the developer goes,
so what is the difference
shaynoa

Can be serveral reasons. It need it to perform as it does or the design wouldnt allow for a narrower bus. AMD clearly didnt expect the performance that Kepler brought.

HD8xxx can just as well be 256bit and 2GB again.

You can always test each card to see what impact a slower or faster memory bus brings. But memory bus alone doesnt mean much.
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
0
thanks Toyota but my question still remains,
if a 256-bit makes no difference then why does AMD have 384-bit ? that would just be a waste of money as far as cost to the developer goes,
so what is the difference
shaynoa
it does make a difference. if gk104 had a 384 bit bus then it would indeed be a faster overall chip than it is now. again gk104 was not originally intended to be a high end card where the 7900 cards were. lucky for Nvidia that AMD did not really make a huge leap and also kept clocks low.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
5 years ago would be a 8800 GTS or 8800 Ultra. A GTX 280 would have been added later.

I registered my gtx 280 on evga's site in 2008. This is 2012 so that's 4 years. Still, I think people will be keeping a 680 for about that long. Not everyone, but some will I am sure

Considering even tenerife is going to be 3gb, any situation which needs more than 3gb VRAM will anyway be unplayable with anything less than 670 sli

What is tenerife? I Google it and got an island location...

Also I think you are wrong. You have been talking up amd products without end all over memory. There is no game that is unplayable on a 680 when running a single display. I don't see that changing overnight. Not when most people are not running 3d and multiple displays. There are always some that do, but even the latest games are OK on 1GB cards for many. Running 30" surround displays with SLI setups is the minority. We are just not yet at the time where 2GB is too little IMO.
 
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Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
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There is no game that is unplayable on a 680 when running a single display.

There are some modded games that will do it on a single display but that's not the norm and you can always turn IQ settings down to make it playable. Besides that small handful of games, everything else will run just fine with 2GB.
 

guskline

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2006
5,338
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Does anyone posting here actually own a 4G Vram GTX 670 or 680? I ask because I do own a 2G GTX 680 and as I said before it plays games just fine even with 3 monitors at 1920 x 1080 each.

Part of the problem answering the poster is that even 2G Vram GTX 670/680 cards are hard to find. Though EVGA and Palit list cards with 4G Vram are there actually any in circulation?