Who is more happy today?

mohit9206

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Jul 2, 2013
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960 2gb or 4gb owner?
R9 380 2gb or 4gb owner?
RX 480 4gb or 8gb owner?
1060 3gb or 6gb owner?

Once you guys answer this question we can discuss further about why i made this thread.

You could also consider a few more examples like 7850 1gb or 2gb owners, gtx 770 2gb or 4gb owners, 780 3gb or 6gb owners etc.
 
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VirtualLarry

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I don't think that such things are so cut-and-dry. I think that you need to consider the "opportunity costs" to people. You seen to be assuming that the purchasers of those cards, have unlimited funds.

Who is happier, the person that is gaming TODAY on a GTX 1060 3GB, versus the person that ISN'T GAMING AT ALL, because they're "saving up" for the 6GB variant.

That said, I generally advise people to shoot for the higher-VRAM variants of cards, IF THEY CAN AFFORD IT.

Another viewpoint, TechDeals on YouTube, made some videos around when the RX 550 and RX 560 came out, he advised AGAINST getting the 4GB variants, because of, I think, two reasons:

1) Games that require more than 2GB VRAM, won't be very playable anyways, even if you had the VRAM capacity, on such lower-spec GPUs, and
2) Why waste the money for future-proofing foolishly.

I can see his point. I did initially pick up a 4GB Sapphire Nitro RX 460 card (now dead, of mysterious causes), but am currently running a 2GB RX 560 Sapphire card, that I bought refurb for a really nice price a few months ago. It would have cost me nearly DOUBLE for the 4GB variant, given the deal that I was getting.

Seeing as I play games so rarely, I didn't think that the extra VRAM would matter all that much. I mostly do 2D work on my 4K UHD screens, and occasionally watch a YT video or two (@ 4K).

Recently, though, I have been advising people to get the 8GB VRAM variants of the RX 570 and 580, for more future-proofing, as the minimal standard for AAA games these days seems to be the 6GB GTX 1060, so you need at least that much VRAM to play properly.
 
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mohit9206

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I don't think that such things are so cut-and-dry. I think that you need to consider the "opportunity costs" to people. You seen to be assuming that the purchasers of those cards, have unlimited funds.

Who is happier, the person that is gaming TODAY on a GTX 1060 3GB, versus the person that ISN'T GAMING AT ALL, because they're "saving up" for the 6GB variant.
Lets say the people had funds to buy both so in this case they did have the budget to buy the higher capacity card or in the worst case scenario maybe had to save up for a month for the additional vram model but were given wrong advice by forum members and hence bought the lower vram model because the forum experts said " the card will run out of gpu horsepower before it can even utilize the additional ram" and "look at these charts, games don't benefit from the additional vram so get the lower vram model".

The point of discussion of this thread forum members on internet giving wrong advice to potential buyers which makes me upset.
 

SPBHM

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it depends on how long they are keeping the card...
and how significant the price difference is, and what other options exist at that price point.
 

mohit9206

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it depends on how long they are keeping the card...
and how significant the price difference is, and what other options exist at that price point.
Most people don't buy a card for a year. I guess maybe 1% of people do that. Price difference between the two vram models is important but if the person was capable of affording it then why not? Lot of people have been screwed over by buying lower vram models and regretting a months or a year or two later and having to upgrade earlier than they would have otherwise had to. I like to read old forum threads and articles and come across people saying to not buy the higher vram model when history has shown time and again that vram requirements keep increasing. You can bet RX480/580/570 4GB owners will be forced to upgrade earlier because their cards runs out of vram quickly at higher settings or suffer playing at lower settings all because they were advised to save a few bucks. They sure saved a bit of money but they will be spending even more because they will have to upgrade early as well. Some forum members have in the past advised the buyers to get the higher vram model because they said vram requirements will keep increasing and your card will last longer and looking back i really appreciate their advice and the people that benefited from it.
 

VirtualLarry

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Lets say the people had funds to buy both so in this case they did have the budget to buy the higher capacity card or in the worst case scenario maybe had to save up for a month for the additional vram model but were given wrong advice by forum members and hence bought the lower vram model because the forum experts said " the card will run out of gpu horsepower before it can even utilize the additional ram" and "look at these charts, games don't benefit from the additional vram so get the lower vram model".

The point of discussion of this thread forum members on internet giving wrong advice to potential buyers which makes me upset.
I like to read old forum threads and articles and come across people saying to not buy the higher vram model when history has shown time and again that vram requirements keep increasing. You can bet RX480/580/570 4GB owners will be forced to upgrade earlier because their cards runs out of vram quickly at higher settings or suffer playing at lower settings all because they were advised to save a few bucks.
But it also depends entirely on the GPU in question.

For the types of games (e-sports) that one would be playing with an RX 550 or 560, the extra 2GB of VRAM matters little (other than for mining, as Eth mining requires 4GB VRAM minimum at this time).

For the types of games that one would be playing with a RX 570 or 580 (now 590), I believe that I have almost always recommended going with the higher 8GB VRAM, even if it did cost $50 more.

The fact that you seem to consider ANYONE who DOESN't ALWAYS recommend more VRAM, without taking the GPU and games selection into consideration, is a little disconcerting.

Extending this argument out a little further, to cover gaming CPUs, do you likewise consider those that might recommend an i5-8400 for gaming (for someone on a budget), ALWAYS WRONG, because they don't ALWAYS automatically recommend an i7-8700K for gaming?

Your fallacy of everyone not having to worry about budget at hand seems "WRONG" to me, personally, and poor advice.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
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PS. Please provide examples, of games that will not play on a 2GB RX 550, but will play acceptably on a 4GB model. I'm waiting.

Edit: PPS. For my non-gaming usage, I AM "happier" only having to pay $69.99 + tax for a *refurb* RX 560 2GB, rather than pay $140 new for a 4GB variety. (Of which, I would have paid $150 for a 4GB RX 570. Which, I don't think would have necessarily been an unwise choice.)

Edit: I seem to have killed this thread with my replies. Anyways, I guess, I wouldn't shoot for a rule-of-thumb, of "always" recommending the higher VRAM amounts, but, take into consideration, price, budget, GPU in particular, and games that they want to play.

Again, anyone who recommended a GTX 1060 3GB, well, that didn't turn out so well, did it? (I bought an HP "Power Gaming PC" from Walmart last Dec. that was a left-over BF special from last year. It came with an OEM GTX1060 3GB card, with a mediocre heatsink. It works, although I think I have yet to try using it for gaming, but I wish it was the 6GB variant. Then again, the whole shebang was only $500 + tax OTD, of which I added a 240GB SSD for the OS, as did many of the buyers of this PC, because they left a free SATA port and drive mounting bay.)

Is it wiser to recommend getting the greater VRAM variant? Well, I would say, probably, in the majority of cases. But we've also had a bit of GPU stagnation on the market, too, so games are getting bigger, and we're largely stuck with the same group of cards to play them with.

For next-gen cards, I wouldn't be surprised to see them with a minimum of 8GB VRAM, if not 12GB and 16GB, or something thereabouts. (NV's weird DRAM busses/ROP counts notwithstanding.)
 
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mohit9206

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No i am not referring to entry level gpu's like 550 or 1030. In my OP i have mentioned examples of only mid range and hi end gpu's. Also i'm mostly not referring to esports games although even in esports games vram requirement will not stay constant forever and even esports gamers will want to keep their cards for a few years so this could apply to them as well. I'm mostly referring to people who buy mid or hi end cards to play all kinds of games including AAA games which tax the system a lot.
 

SPBHM

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Sep 12, 2012
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Most people don't buy a card for a year. I guess maybe 1% of people do that. Price difference between the two vram models is important but if the person was capable of affording it then why not? Lot of people have been screwed over by buying lower vram models and regretting a months or a year or two later and having to upgrade earlier than they would have otherwise had to. I like to read old forum threads and articles and come across people saying to not buy the higher vram model when history has shown time and again that vram requirements keep increasing. You can bet RX480/580/570 4GB owners will be forced to upgrade earlier because their cards runs out of vram quickly at higher settings or suffer playing at lower settings all because they were advised to save a few bucks. They sure saved a bit of money but they will be spending even more because they will have to upgrade early as well. Some forum members have in the past advised the buyers to get the higher vram model because they said vram requirements will keep increasing and your card will last longer and looking back i really appreciate their advice and the people that benefited from it.

the 960 is well over 3 years old, a lot of people bought it used it and upgraded by now

at some point these cards are so slow that you are forced to compromise settings quite a bit because of other factors, so going further because of vram might not be a big deal...

480 was over 2 years ago and the 8GB version was 20% more expensive,

I've checked the BFV benchmarks and the 4GB 580 performs the same as the 8GB 580, so for now, 2 years later the 480 4GB was probably better value (not that simple because in this specific case I think there was also a clock difference)

but sure, more ram won't hurt
for extremes like the 7850 1GB, at the time it could match the 2GB most of the time, but by 2014 some games had serious limitations with 1GB, I remember very clearly how horrible Thief and WatchDogs looked with 1GB,
the turning point was perhaps the new gen of consoles in late 2013

maybe we will see that again in 2020 with the PS5, but at the point I'm afraid the 480 will be 4 years old and so slow that it might not make much of a difference!? we will see!
 

Ottonomous

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May 15, 2014
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So you can establish a baseline (acceptable framerates at 1080p for instance) and you realize that anything beneath the 970/290 would require replacement before the VRAM becomes a problem?

Mid to low-mid range cards work nicely then if you maintain a 3-4 year replacement rate
 
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I have an 8GB card. And i always advise people to go for the 8GB when choosing between 4G or 8GB or with a 1060 to go for the 6GB model.
I do not see much games use that much memory but if bioshock 2 remastered is an indication, sometimes in the settings or init file you can increase the VRAM usage.
And the game does actually allocate that much vram then as well (at least according to the radeon settings overlay monitor).
If this is useful is an individual case situation. But for me it helpt together with some other settings to reduce crashes for this particular game.
It used up to 5GB after modifying the settings in the ini file to use 6144MB.
Now of course every game is different and every setup is different but the most important thing for me to go for 8GB is that i do not replace my graphics card until really needed.
Since it has enough grunt to run all the games i have so far at maximum settings at 1080p @70Hz minimal fps (Yes, the monitor is 60Hz, but that is my minimal fps demand for a smooth running game.) , i have no dire need to replace it, which was my plan.
 
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mohit9206

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the 960 is well over 3 years old, a lot of people bought it used it and upgraded by now

at some point these cards are so slow that you are forced to compromise settings quite a bit because of other factors, so going further because of vram might not be a big deal...

480 was over 2 years ago and the 8GB version was 20% more expensive,

I've checked the BFV benchmarks and the 4GB 580 performs the same as the 8GB 580, so for now, 2 years later the 480 4GB was probably better value (not that simple because in this specific case I think there was also a clock difference)

but sure, more ram won't hurt
for extremes like the 7850 1GB, at the time it could match the 2GB most of the time, but by 2014 some games had serious limitations with 1GB, I remember very clearly how horrible Thief and WatchDogs looked with 1GB,
the turning point was perhaps the new gen of consoles in late 2013

maybe we will see that again in 2020 with the PS5, but at the point I'm afraid the 480 will be 4 years old and so slow that it might not make much of a difference!? we will see!
Those who bought 960 2gb will have to upgrade sooner while 4gb owners could realistically keep it for another year or two. Saving $40 in that case was not a good idea if they were playing heavy games otherwise for esports it wouldn't be an issue
 

BSim500

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Once you guys answer this question we can discuss further about why i made this thread.
Presumably it's about "VRAM future proofing for teh glorious sparkly bits". ;) Whilst I agree that if you want 4K ultra-realz then you need to spend money, when it comes to more budget / mainstream I'm going to play devil's advocate here:-

1. Budget gamers who buy 2-3GB cards tend to not buy the worst optimised AAA games then deliberately cripple them to run as slowly as possible. They'll either buy them because they know in advance they'll be playing mostly older / lighter weight games, or use common sense and run it on Med/High instead of Ultra. GTX 1050 has half the shaders of GTX 1060 6GB, whilst GT 1030 / Raven Ridge are almost half the horsepower again, and all three are 2GB VRAM. And yet people buy them for a reason - they know what they won't be playing...

2. The "rat race" of trying to overbuy vs the worst optimised future games is an unwinnable one as budgets are finite whilst the laziness of developers is literally an endless chasm. Ubisoft said it best - Assassins Creed Producer says optimising for PC not important. "But that's all the more reason to future proof!" And in doing so, you send the wrong message that further normalises less optimisation effort, which in turn 'encourages' you to overbuy even more which in turn encourages them to get even lazier, which in turn... It's a never-ending unwinnable rat-race. Some examples come to mind:-

- Everybody's Gone To The Rapture needs 3GB for these visuals to run about 60fps on a GTX 970.
- Mirror's Edge Catalyst (Hyper) needs 6GB for these visuals to stutter along on same GTX 970 due to running out of VRAM.

- Bioshock Infinite (2013) runs roughly half the speed of Bioshock (2007), ie GTX 1060 = 360fps for these visuals vs 190fps for these visuals, so that's only a 50% drop in fps after 6 years. But many 2018 games run only 1/3 to 1/4 the speed of 2012-2015 games (same or less time period) with almost nothing to show for it. Eg, with GTX 1060:-

- Dishonored 2 (50fps for these visuals) vs Dishonored 1 (200fps for these visuals)
- DX:MD (55fps) for these visuals vs DX:HR for these visuals (250fps)
- Divinity Original Sin 2 (80fps) vs DOS1 (260fps)). Visual comparison here (DOS1 left, DOS 2 right).

- Someone above mentioned Bioshock 2 Remastered using 5GB VRAM. The original uses 1.2GB VRAM. Here's the visual comparison (for half the fps & +300% more VRAM). "Huge LOL" is all I can say...

Whilst textures have obviously driven VRAM up, it's also clear for many games that a far larger part of the recent VRAM bloat has more to do with sheer developer laziness resulting in consolized bad ports, ie, x86 consoles were supposed to make it easy to port / optimise to PC, but have amazingly ended up making it so easy that developers have actually stopped "porting" altogether and pretty much repackage the raw console code in the PC port complete with the "designed for flat unified memory system" leading to VRAM hyper-inflation vs making the PC version better optimised for separate RAM vs VRAM.

What's really needed isn't declaring $1,000 GPU's with 12GB VRAM as the new "minimum" (and then $2,000 24GB GTX 3080Ti's when the next gen consoles come out with their 16GB flat memory), but rather giving games devs an almighty kick up the rear and start learning how to properly optimise for PC ports again...

Edit: So my answer to the question "Who is more happy?" is "Someone who buys what they need when they need it, and just stops worrying about winning an unwinnable rat-race".
 
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mohit9206

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@BSim500

"What's really needed isn't declaring $1,000 GPU's with 12GB VRAM as the new "minimum" (and then $2,000 24GB GTX 3080Ti's when the next gen consoles come out with their 16GB flat memory), but rather giving games devs an almighty kick up the rear and start learning how to properly optimise for PC ports again... "

That isn't going to happen so educating people to buy a card that can withstand unoptimized games seems like a good idea to me hence more vram is better.
 
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BSim500

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That isn't going to happen so educating people to buy a card that can withstand unoptimized games seems like a good idea to me hence more vram is better.
If budgets are infinite then more VRAM is certainly better, but does being forced into that artificial rat-race bring people more happiness though? We've reached the point where some games play so badly out of the gate, that instead of driving people to spend more on GPU's, they're just skipping the games and finding something else. End result - popular franchises end up being shelved due to poor sales:-

https://www.vg247.com/2017/01/30/deus-ex-series-on-hold-after-mankind-divideds-underwhelming-sales/
https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2018/...n-ice-after-poor-sales-of-dishonored-2/66489/

^ Not sure that brings anyone happiness. More frustration that consolization is getting worse not better and that the cost of trying to "brute-force" through it isn't worth it when there's so much other stuff to play / backlogs to clear.
 

happy medium

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eu...-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-vs-6gb-review_14

3gb vs 6gb tested a few month's ago.
At 1080p "high" settings you dont need more than 3gb of vram.
Most people can rarely see the difference between high and ultra settings.
4gb of vram is plenty @1080p with Nvidia cards as their memory compression techniques are superior to AMD' s. I got that from the linked review.

I don't see why you need 8gb of vram with a gtx980 4gb class card such as the 470/570/480/580.
I would have bought a 480 4gb card or a gtx1060 3gb 2 years ago and more than likely would upgraded before the 3/ 4gb vram became a limitation, which today is not a limitation unless you absolutely need to run at maximum settings which gives you no real graphical advantage.
You will have some people come into this thread giving examples with graphic mods and such but for me that's not worth the extra money to play 1 or 2 games with mods.
 
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Iron Woode

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I bought a 1060 3GB Gigabyte Windforce card and I am happy with it. This was in 2016 before the mining craze drove prices crazy. The 6GB version was more than $75 extra. My budget simply couldn't handle that.
 

killster1

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ive never had the opportunity to buy a card with two different memory sizes.. i guess when i got a 270x they offered a 4gb version long after, but with me i just give away the card and buy another or upgrade a spare machine. those all seem like low end cards anyway so im sure the people using them dont / wont notice any difference or even know how to notice or care.

how about you name a decent card that offers two diff memory sizes?
 

whm1974

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ive never had the opportunity to buy a card with two different memory sizes.. i guess when i got a 270x they offered a 4gb version long after, but with me i just give away the card and buy another or upgrade a spare machine. those all seem like low end cards anyway so im sure the people using them dont / wont notice any difference or even know how to notice or care.

how about you name a decent card that offers two diff memory sizes?
What you define as decent?
 

maddie

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Jul 18, 2010
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eu...-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-vs-6gb-review_14

3gb vs 6gb tested a few month's ago.
At 1080p "high" settings you dont need more than 3gb of vram.
Most people can rarely see the difference between high and ultra settings.
4gb of vram is plenty @1080p with Nvidia cards as their memory compression techniques are superior to AMD' s. I got that from the linked review.

I don't see why you need 8gb of vram with a gtx980 4gb class card such as the 470/570/480/580.
I would have bought a 480 4gb card or a gtx1060 3gb 2 years ago and more than likely would upgraded before the 3/ 4gb vram became a limitation, which today is not a limitation unless you absolutely need to run at maximum settings which gives you no real graphical advantage.
You will have some people come into this thread giving examples with graphic mods and such but for me that's not worth the extra money to play 1 or 2 games with mods.
Such supreme irony from someone strongly advocating the Ray Tracing effects with the RTX line of cards.
 

maddie

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Jul 18, 2010
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ive never had the opportunity to buy a card with two different memory sizes.. i guess when i got a 270x they offered a 4gb version long after, but with me i just give away the card and buy another or upgrade a spare machine. those all seem like low end cards anyway so im sure the people using them dont / wont notice any difference or even know how to notice or care.

how about you name a decent card that offers two diff memory sizes?
The mid range from both camps.

RX 570
RX580
GTX1060
 

kondziowy

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Feb 19, 2016
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I upgraded from Fury 4GB(around RX580 performance) to Vega 8GB mainly because of Vram. It was not enough. If Fury had 8GB I would still have it and would not upgrade. So nobody will tell me 4GB is all you need. I don't even want to comment on 3GB 1060 <- ridiculous.

RX590 is not even available in 4GB variant and it's still almost the same RX480 chip.
 
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