You're placing too much consideration on Vram. The Vram is bottlenecked by the bus width on the card, so you'll never be able to use it. It's not future proof. People buy 4GB 770s in the hope that they will run better at higher resolution, but there's no performance difference with the 2GB variant.
Truthfully, 660s are under-performers in comparison to what you can afford. Whether they be 2GB or 3GB. 2GB is plenty.
That's not necessarily true about the 770. That running at 1440p with something like Bf4 going could use more than 2gb's. But a 660 is not strong enough to do that.
Vram is a data store, it might get full, but it will never be accessed at the same time. The bus width, the access to memory, is insufficient.
There's a difference in being "able to use it", and actually being "useful". That's why the GTX780 has a higher bus width to handle 3GB of Vram. While the 770 has a 256-bit bus which is only sufficient for 2GB and not 4GB.
780 3gb = balanced
770 2gb = balanced
770 4gb = retarded.
Make no difference at higher resolutions:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Ya buts that's benched on older games. My 4gb 770 has used more than 2gb's in Bf4. And it will use more when I run anti-aliasing at 1440p. That uses more than 2gb V-ram.
Dude, you don't understand at all. It's like adding 32GB to a system with a Z77 mobo, and then choosing a Pentium to process it all. You might have a program that can saturated that 32GB of system RAM, but it's not going to help the processor...
A 4GB 770 will store data on the Vram. That's how RAM works. If you had a 6GB 770, it might use more than 4GB. You're still going to get the same frame rate. It is pointless. It's not future proof, it doesn't do anything.
The bus width is insufficient. The RAM can store data, but you're never going to access it to make that capacity useful.
If 4GB of Vram meant anything... they would never have bothered to make a 2GB card...
I need it for stuff like Anti aliasing, that takes extra v-ram. You will need more than 2gb's on future stuff. Ya the 770 doesn't have the memory band width to use 100% of it. But for 1440p, it may come in handy. Also I needed it for some future specialty 3D editing stuff but that's a while away.
The actual memory "usage" is likely a fraction above the 2GB threshold. Maybe as much as 2.5, but most importantly, the 770 isn't bottlenecked by 2GB. Not even at 1440p. 2GB of Vram is enough for 1440p, contrary to the myth. 3GB is considered the sweet spot.
They made some pretty good architectural improvements to the memory to eliminate some limitation that occurred with the 680. I have to maintain that the 4GB model is just not worth it. It was an attempt to 1up AMD when everyone started going made for Vram. Thing is, AMD cards had the higher bus width to use it.
I may need cuda and I may be working with 4k textures but I didn't have the budget for a 780 or titan (780 ti wasn't out).
Ok. I'm not sure how it stacks up in productivity, but I stand by what I said with concerns to gaming.
Reason I have to concede that point is because of the GTX Titan. It doesn't have the bus width to game with 6GB of Vram, but apparently the GPU is a solid productivity card. It was meant to be a gaming-productivity hybrid.
Ya the titan seems like a productivity card (thus the double precision) that just happened to game well. I think if I do end up using the 4k textures and the amount of lighting and moving parts that are in the animations I'm going to be doing that I should top at least 3gbs.
I honestly don't know with concerns to that sort of thing. But I got a 780 at 1440p so I can do what the fudge I want!
The only decent software fan control is for your cpu in bios everything else sucks, period. Your never going to beat manually controlling your fans for your case and such. Cpu is fine, long proven tech, everything else dont trust.
I disagree. I've been using ASUS Fan Xpert 2 a lot and it is superb.
lol, This GPU rant over now . . .?
Thanks for the suggestions.
I have had nothing but bad luck with it myself. I dont know if it because it has to run 24/7 or not or just that it some issue within my system that doesnt allow it to operate consistently.