VRAM and SLI or Xrossfire

[knght990]

Do you think the amount of VRAM would effect the performance of SLI or XrossFire?

 

[Nebor]

No.

 

[toyota]

Yes.

 

[knght990]

lol, thanks, that was very definitive

 

[toyota]

lol, thanks, that was very definitive

I figured I would help as much as he did...

yes vram can matter. the whole point of getting an additional card is to get better framerates and/or crank the settings. the types of games that can make having SLI/crossfire worth it will usually be games that can utilize more than 1 gb of vram with settings cranked.

just like your other vague thread about clocks and vram though, it will really come down to the exact cards you are talking about and the settings you are wanting to use.

 

[amenx]

Definitely, at higher resolutions and higher AA settings.

 

[GotNoRice]

You guys are confusing two completely separate issues.

Does having more memory increase crossfire performance? Nope.

Does having more memory increase performance in general? Yes, if you are in a situation where you can actually put that extra VRam to use.

The amount of memory on your cards has absolutely no affect on crossfire.

 

[bryanW1995]

In normal cards, even 1 gb is typically enough ram that the fps have tanked to single digits before you run out of vram, anyway. The reason that cards like gtx 480/580 and 6970 have more ram is that in some very rare situations the core is powerful enough that it can handle more than 1 gb of vram. However, most often the extra vram comes in handy in extremely high resolutions, either multi-monitor or 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF type situations. Many/most users with these types of setups use sli/xfire, sometimes even 3 or 4 gpu setups. With something like that even a gtx 570 sli can run out of ram quite often before it runs out of Horsepower so to speak, while this is much less common with gtx 480/580 and pretty much nonexistent with 2gb + cards from either camp.