When is more than 2GB of video memory necessary?

[Caveman]

Got a good deal on a GTX 770 2GB.

Current max resolutuon I'll be playing at is 1920 x 1080. Will 2GB be enough? Assumption is I'd see negligible (if any) benefit from a 770 card with more than 2GB when playing at these "low" resolutions. Yes?

At what resolutions do I need to consider 3GB or 4 GB?

Thanks for help.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Got a good deal on a GTX 770 2GB.

Current max resolutuon I'll be playing at is 1920 x 1080. Will 2GB be enough? Assumption is I'd see negligible (if any) benefit from a 770 card with more than 2GB when playing at these "low" resolutions. Yes?

At what resolutions do I need to consider 3GB or 4 GB?

Thanks for help.

If you plan of using a lot of Anti-Aliasing and game mods, then 2GB will be very low, even for 1080p.

What is the good deal you just had?

 

[Caveman]

Well [embarrassed]... It was a good deal when I bought it 9 months ago at ~$300 bucks... I see now that I can get a 4GB for that when on sale. Just getting around to building a new rig now...

Admitedly I am very surprised that a 1920 x 1080 gets close to using 2GB... I would have thought I'm a long way from having to worry about this and that 3GB and 4GB are for guys that have 30" monitors at ridiculous resolutions.

I did not know AA had anything to do with video RAM. Thinking 4X AA is max I'd ever really need... This is for flight simulation and there's no "game mods" per se... Keep in mind I've been out of the loop for 5-7 years and I was tickled before running 1600 x 1200 on a 20" monitor with no AA at all or 2X max. I just want to at least equal that on a new 23" monitor at 1920 x 1080...

 

[alyarb]

It may not be easy to justify at first, but over the useful life at the card, lean towards the extended memory version of the card you want and you will be happier overall.

I made the mistake of a 512 MB 8-series and a 1 GB Radeon 5850... never again.

 

[tg2708]

Most AA except smaa just blurs the image and make less sharp or vibrant, its probably the game not using it right but it still is. I don't even turn it on but just use sweetfx and get higher quality imagery if the game supports it. AA also kills performance so if the card is not powerful enough fps will drop considerably especially for the more expensive methods.

 

[biostud]

In most demanding games when it comes to video memory usage you can just lower texture resolution one notch (from ultra to high), and you will not notice any difference between 2 and 4 gb.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Agreed people are being too aggressive. Barring Skyrim that's running a ton of mods 2GB is fine. Also most of the time increasing a cards memory beyond what it was designed for doesn't help either. Bottom line a 770 is supposed to have 2GB adding an additional 2GB won't be a huge benefit because the gpu wasn't engineered to have that much memory.

 

[TreVader]

2GB is not enough for anything more than 1080p.


I wouldn't want to run a ton of AA on a 770 anyway so I guess I think 1080p should be fine. 2GB is what my macbook has... so....

 

[lopri]

I play Skyrim with everything maxed including 8xMSAA @2560x1600 and GPU-Z reports ~1.5 GB usage max. No texture mods.

 

[rgallant]

When is more than 2GB of video memory necessary?

that would be when you buy a 2gb card this late in the game
also being in a transition period of the new generation of new gaming engines not yet released vs old ports being benched today.
-at least one game will have the pc as lead then ported down to next gen. consoles so we'll have to see what late 2014 -early 2015 games bring to the table as far as 1080+vram needs might be , not that far away now.

 

[Bateluer]

I play Skyrim with everything maxed including 8xMSAA @2560x1600 and GPU-Z reports ~1.5 GB usage max. No texture mods.

Not even Bethesda's official high resolution dlc?

 

[Cloudfire777]

2GB is not enough for anything more than 1080p.

Not even 1080p

 

[Flapdrol1337]

2GB is fine if you dont max out textures.

high levels of antialiasing eat up a bit of memory too, but you'll probably get very low fps before you actually run out of memory.

If you want to max everything it's not enough. Some games are smarter than others though, and detect how much vram there is at startup, then they stream assets in and out depending on how much is there and where you are on the map. In these games low gpu memory isn't much of a problem. In lazy "nextgen" console ports this is often not the case, so you'll want a lot for those.

 

[Headfoot]

Max settings 1080p you will not have enough VRAM in a few current games and increasingly more as time goes on.

If you're fine with turning down AA and Texture size you'll get years out of the card

 

[KentState]

2GB is fine if you can't afford more. Just how computers are. Budget and live with what you have.

 

[RaulF]

If you keep aa off or low and do that also for textures you will be ok for the foreseeable future.

But we don't know what the next gen of games might bring. Since consoles have higher ram amount developers might make use and hinder PC Cards with low ram. They might tune the game to work with lower ram cards but nothing is guarantied.

 

[KentState]

If you keep aa off or low and do that also for textures you will be ok for the foreseeable future.

But we don't know what the next gen of games might bring. Since consoles have higher ram amount developers might make use and hinder PC Cards with low ram. They might tune the game to work with lower ram cards but nothing is guarantied.

They have 8GB total, or about 5GB of unified memory available. Hard to directly compare, but at 1080p, they won't be using much more than what we already have on video cards.

 

[dn7309]

to answer the the op question... When you play Watch_Dogs and possibly Assassin's Creed Unity

 

[3DVagabond]

^^^ ...and that's today. Six months from now, the list is most likely to grow.

 

[blastingcap]

Q: "When is more than 2GB of video memory necessary?"

A: "When you want to retain a triple-digit resale value for your video card by the end of 2014, at which point some of the true next-gen console ports may start to arrive and expose VRAM limits at higher resolutions."

 

[96Firebird]

A single 770 will not be able to push anything that requires >2GB VRAM at acceptable (to me) framerates. If adding a second card in the future is a possibility, then I can see 4GB VRAM being desirable.

 

[dn7309]

A single 770 will not be able to push anything that requires >2GB VRAM at acceptable (to me) framerates. If adding a second card in the future is a possibility, then I can see 4GB VRAM being desirable.

By adding a second card and still being VRAM capped will not help you.

 

[RaulF]

They have 8GB total, or about 5GB of unified memory available. Hard to directly compare, but at 1080p, they won't be using much more than what we already have on video cards.

I dont know, look at the whole situation with Watch Dogs, i think the problem is they (developers) were mainly concerned with consoles and the bigger ammount of memory available.

But, in the OP's situation it might not matter much, the 770 is not a card to be pushing too high of a settings on newer games, since it does not have that much hump.

 

[96Firebird]

By adding a second card and still being VRAM capped will not help you.

I'm not sure you understood me...

 

[Tweakin]

I play Skyrim with everything maxed including 8xMSAA @2560x1600 and GPU-Z reports ~1.5 GB usage max. No texture mods.

I agree with Lopri on this, and this subject is constantly debated. I have 2Gb 760's and with the games I play (Ultra and 8xMSAA @ 1080p) I don't exceed 1.2GB use and normally hover around 1GB.