Why more VRAM is needed in GPU?

[UaVaj]

8gb on psu is all marketing. we all know ps4 will never stack up to a pc. all the ps4 will ever be is a nice HTPC that can game.

back to the vram question. looks like some of you folks are not even exercising high resolution much less any eye candy. hence the low vram usage.

 

[willomz]

I'd certainly expect to see 8GB cards, just as we some 4/6GB cards now.

But just as now I expect these cards to be an expensive luxury.

 

[toyota]

In two years would 8 GB be out of the question? Just two and a half years ago (the release of HD 6970 and HD 6950), 2 GB was unheard of, and now it is standard on $175 cards with higher end cards having more.

I certainly expect most cards to have at least 4 GB in two years, and I also expect some future games (even console ports) to use it. So there is no harm in investing in that level of memory now. Most of the Titan price isn't for the extra RAM.

2GB was not unheard of 2.5 years ago. in fact the 5870 2GB was released over 3 years ago.

 

[blastingcap]

I'd certainly expect to see 8GB cards, just as we some 4/6GB cards now.

But just as now I expect these cards to be an expensive luxury.

Are you new to the semiconductor industry? Just wondering.

 

[willomz]

I'm not in the industry, are you?

 

[blastingcap]

I'm not in the industry, are you?

Are you familiar with "Moore's Law"? It's not entirely appropriate for video card RAM, but the lesson is similar.

 

[willomz]

As you've just said Moore's law is irrelevant here, even if we imagine that it continues forever, which it won't.

 

[blastingcap]

The point is that the cost of VRAM will go down over time. And we aren't yet at the end of miniaturization.

At this point in time, I do not think it's worthwhile to buy a card with more than 2GB VRAM (for 2560x1600 or lower) or more than 3-4GB VRAM (for triple-monitor depending on the sizes of the monitors up to 3 x 2560x1600).

But by the end of 2014, I would be surprised if the flagship single-GPU cards came with less than 4GB VRAM. 4k is coming. Consoles are coming. And triple-wide gaming is already here for some of us.

I also think buying a video card now to try to future-proof vs PS4s is silly because GPUs depreciate so quickly, and by the time you really need >4 GB VRAM there will exist video cards that are much better performing. At that point you can upgrade for a lot less (e.g., buy the then-equivalent GTX 650 Ti or HD 7850 or whatever).

 

[futurefields]

RAM is cheap nowadays so they give you more than you need.

It's nice not having to worry about RAM anymore. Anybody remember the 90's I remember when my parents spent $200 on 4 megs of RAM so we could run Doom better.

 

[Pottuvoi]

There is very little performance hit just from higher resolution textures. A 7950/7970 can still run skyrim fine with the high res texture packs.

This.

Mipmapping and texture caches pretty much nullifies variation in bandwidth requirements caused by texturing.
Meaning if texture fits in memory 128000 x 128000 texture is as fast to render as 2048x2048, if you keep texel size below size of a pixel.

In case of texture magnification the cache utilization does improve performance when VRAM bandwidth is a bottleneck.

 

[lagokc]

In two years would 8 GB be out of the question? Just two and a half years ago (the release of HD 6970 and HD 6950), 2 GB was unheard of, and now it is standard on $175 cards with higher end cards having more.

I certainly expect most cards to have at least 4 GB in two years, and I also expect some future games (even console ports) to use it. So there is no harm in investing in that level of memory now. Most of the Titan price isn't for the extra RAM.

I guess that depends on what GDDR6 prices will be like next year *fingers crossed* just in time for the 20nm GPU refresh in Dec 2014 if we're lucky.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Will miss the budget 1gb and 2gb cards if the next generation just offers 3gb+ cards,when i game i put my settings to where my 7850 can sustain 60fps at all times,i play BF3 on medium 1200p no msaa while most others do a mix of ultra and high and for the most part i never touch 1gb of usage on my 2gb card.

 

[imaheadcase]

...unless you are into modding. Skyrim looks much better when using 3 GB than merely 2 GB for example. I think if all cards had say 4 GB, new games would use close to 4 GB too.

Yah and that one excuse is not really for %99.9 of gamers.