Hello all i am building a PC this november, im buying the parts at black friday. My plan is to get a i5-3570k unless i can find a better CPU for a better deal on black friday. I havent decided on the mobo yet other than i need to get one with SLI. Im stuck at the GPU, i plan to SLI in the future, should i get the GTX 760 2GB or pay the extra 70$ (or whatever it is off on black friday) for the FTW 4GB edition?
Really good article explaining ram on gpu's
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-ram-4870,2428.html
I have hear of more recent games (such as max Payne 3) using a little over 2 GB on max settings, 1080p. shouldent hear in the coming months the average game start to utilize over 2GB?
It's all in how soon you may be looking at upgrading again. It never hurts to have room to grow, but you're probably not going to notice any need or difference before a card twice as good will be the same price a few years down the road. The 2GB card will hold you over fine for the next couple of years and approximately 2-4 years from now the Titan will probably be at the GTX 760 price level.
IMO I would get the 4GB card for MY needs, but I use a lot of Hi-Res packs at high resolutions, run 2-3 monitors, and do digital art and production. I NEED the extra VRam where as you may never have a need for it. It's a hard question to answer because everyone has a different situation and workload.
Games allocate more vram than they use, that means that the vram usage in specific games you read about is inflated. The vram usage is mainly determine by the AA, Screen Resolution and texture size. If you run out of vram your pc will use system ram which will lead to lag spikes depending on how how fast your ram is and how good the game is optimized.
Examples:
2x2gb 750mhz cas5 dual channel ram + 768 mb vram
--> Skyrim with mods @1080p ->only medium textures and fxaa or i get lag spikes
-->Skyrim with mods @1440p-> nope
--> Dirt2 max @1080p-> no problemo with 4x msaa
--> Dirt2 max @1440p-> 0x msaa or i get problems
6x1gb 1066 mhz ddr3 cas 7 tripple channel, 1024mb(1gb) Vram
Skyrim with mods@ 1080p-> no problems
Skyrim with mods@ 1440p-> no ultra texures
Dirt 2 1080p and 1440p -> no problem
Bioshock infinite @1440p, medium-high textures and fxaa or i get some fps dips.
Bottom line
If the 4 gb version is more than a few % more expensive get the 2 gb version, the 2 gb vram will last you longer for 1080p than the performance of the card. Sell it in 2-3 years and get a gtx 970 or something with2-3x the performance for it.