I've got a 2GB GTX 770 ACX from EVGA. I've been playing Battlefield 4 and Assassin's Creed 4 lately and noticed that both games have been using a lot of vRAM. Constantly 1800MB+ on ultra settings (4x MSAA on BF4) and FXAA on AC4. I remember playing in a forest enviornment in AC4 and actually maxed out my vRAM 2048MB.
I've been reading online and 90% of people say that 2GB is enough for gaming at 1080p. But ever since playing these next gen games I've been seeing very high vRAM usage. Even in AC4 I'm using FXAA and still getting very high vRAM usage. Maybe its because AC4 is horribly optimized for PC, but I'm not too sure if that's the reason for high vRAM usage.
So my question is, should I upgrade my 2GB 770 to a 780? Or get another 2GB 770 and put it in SLI for better performance. I'm pretty confused.
as modern games become more graphically intense, they have higher quality texture packs and therefore require more vRAM for buffereing most games can handle fine with 2gb but even now we are starting to see 3gb be not enough for certain games. If you have the money, a 3gb card is a bit more "future-proof"
The amount of vram isn't an in-game requirement. The amount of vram on any given GPU is balanced with the performance of the GPU. Or the way in which a GPU is geared for different tasks.
If a 1GB 7770 can play any game on the market, then a 2GB 770 will have no issue. The amount of vram required for next-gen games is grossly overstated. Some people purchase 4GB 760's which have absolutely no purpose - the 760 isn't powerful enough to utilise it.
So it is less about the games and more about the performance to Vram required.
If you get a card with more Vram, you might find that games will be shown to utilise a little more than 2GB. This doesn't give a performance boost. Basically, games will use more Vram if it is available, but they do not require that extra Vram to operate. It has always been that way, even before this next-gen titles emerged.
The only place where it truly makes a difference is in Skyrim. Where a 1GB 7850 will work equally as well as a 2GB 7850, in Skyrim the 2GB 7850 would actually get a boost - even with no mods installed. That's pretty much the only game where extra Vram benefits.
Since you've asked about SLI: to put two 2GB 770s in SLI, you won't see the vram stack. That means 2 + 2 = 2. Now you might think about those 4GB 770s for SLI. Well, the bus doesn't stack either, so you still wouldn't have the opportunity to utilise 4GB.
Most of this speculation that more Vram is needed basically comes from misinformed and very scared individuals who wish to purchase hardware that can somehow stand the test of time. My friend was in a game of BF4 when he heard kids talking about how they upgraded to 4GB 770s in preparation for 4K panels. Little do they know that a 4GB 770 couldn't handle a 4K panel.
Stick to what those 90% of people say and ignore the 10% that haven't got a clue.
Interesting. Basically my only worry is that games will use over 2GB vRAM and performance will tank. That's honestly my only worry. I know that with more vRAM you won't get any extra performance if the game doesn't ask for it, but its nice to have it there, right?I don't plan on moving to 1440p or 4K anytime soon. Yeah true, the vRAM won't stack in SLI, but I will get a lot more performance depending on the game. So you're saying just to stick at 2GB and I'll be fine?
And should I buy a 780 or just get another 770 to put in SLI? Thanks again!
Get another GTX 770 it's cheaper and you will get more performance than one GTX 780... but if you want to get an GTX 780 then get GTX 780 Ti and after few years get second card.
skyrim is one example but far cry 3 also seems to benefit from the extra vram... my point in saying extra vram helps is situations like this where games are very huge and open world and the extra vram helps. as more games become larger, you will need to buffer larger amounts of the world for a more "seamless" experience. if you look at linus video on the 780ti it was good in most games and almost smoked the titan but open world games really were close to the titan due to the titan having the benefit from higher vram. i really think the extra vram is worth it if you can get it for 10-15 more than the base model. i think the the 780ti with 6gb from evga is a bit excessive but 4 or 5 wouldn't be so bad
While last gen consoles are still the majority market share then 2gb is more than enough (for console ports anyway)
Cross platform titles (pc and console) for next gen will always work to a baseline so I would imagine 2gb would be fine for them too.. they can't aim to high with their minimum spec otherwise they limit their consumer audience.
I think its only the platform exclusives that will push past the 2gb boundary and these arent applicable to pc gamers.
Once devs really start to play with that 8gb of ram (minus what is used by the console os) in the next gen machines then whatever they apportion to video ram is largely up to them...
I am personally DYING to see heavy normal mapping usage in the next gen... which I am hoping they will use a lot of that extra 'vram' for
on low end kit (last gen) it can make in game models consisting of thousands of polys look like hundreds of thousands... (see gears of war in game models as an example)
for THIS gen, models consisting of hundreds of thousands of polygons will look more like millions... and all it costs is texture memory with little gpu processing overheads.
at the end of the day normal mapping is nothing more than visual trickery BUT it is damn fine visual trickery :)
