I currently have a GTX 760 2GB and have been eyeing up the GTX 970 4GB (or 3.5GB) as an upgrade that would be suitable for VR (at at least 1080p) when the Oculus Rift comes out (hopefully this fall).
I am starting to see a trend though, where more games are using more than 4GB vRAM for their textures and I am thinking that 6 or even 8GB vRAM cards are not that far away. I don't want to invest in the GTX 970 4GB, only to have a 6 or 8GB version come out, as it would be a major kick in the nuts.
So...Worth waiting to see what appears later in the year, or should I suck it up and sink some of this months wages into a shiny new GTX 970?
I have an r9290 4gb and most games by default are limited to 3gb of VRam (arma 3 for example) and you have to make your own parameter changes to allow them to use more of it.
I used to have the 760 2GB. I now have the 4GB version. More mods, and I can play GTA V almost maxed out, with the exception of the advanced settings. @snowBlind623 said it perfectly. Good advice here
Thanks for the feedback guys. I was going to get a GTX 970 at some point, so I decided to get one as the prices in the UK are not that bad at the moment (£260).
I have an incomplete system (i5 2500K, 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM, Gigabyte mobo, 650W PSU) sitting here that needs a videocard to complete (the Gigabyte mobo has no VGA output for the i5 Intel graphics), so will put the GTX 760 in it and sell it as a complete, mid-range gaming system and make some money back.
Sorry for this long post, but I've been aiming to make a post about this in general.
I have a 760 4GB edition because I wanted to SLI 2 of them (if you check around, there are plenty of tests I found that show that the 760 is uncannily good in SLI for a cheap card). I ended up not doing that, but it means I can relate to your situation and here's what I found.
The high vram cards are worth it.
Plenty of people went crazy with anti 4gb 760 hate; you can find specifically titled posts on reddit, easy. The idea is that these high vram edition cards aren't even fast enough to use the extra vram, so it doesn't matter. This is not true. It's entirely dependent on the software. Guild Wars 2 runs me 20% framebuffer usage or less; it's a CPU heavy game, not GPU. Hawken? 80-90% framebuffer usage, constantly. Yes, framebuffer is a portion of vram, not another word for it, but you get the idea--Hawken is designed to use as much vram as possible to aid performance, so my lil 760 gets me 60-120FPS (variables, of course, but I never have bad FPS in that game is what I'm saying), no stuttering, etc. I doubt I'd have that performance with a reference 760. I'm dumbing it down, but the idea is that some games don't need a lot of vram while some will literally double in performance with double the vram: Hawken is one of them, I've found.
I do agree with dwn that you should way for a DX12 card, especially with everyone being excited for Maxwell. There's no telling what's coming this fall. That's my plan, but hopefully this answers your question. Yes, even at just 1080p some games will benefit from more vram.
Thanks for the advice folks. I went ahead an bought a GTX 970 4GB. I figure that I was going to buy one anyway at some point, so I might as well grab one now...After watching the settings differences in GTA V I don't think I am going to regret it. The difference in the texture quality alone is massive.
Basically, I just want something that I will be able to comfortably run Elite: Dangerous, Skyrim and GTA V in VR with an Oculus Rift. The 760 might have actually done that ok, but the 970 shouldn't have any problem with it at all at a comfortable framerate and resolution of 1080p or greater.
If you want a new gpu now and will enjoy it go for it. Come 6 months, 9 months time if you want better on sell it and grab what ever is the new kid on the block. A 970 compared to a 760 will be night and day. @ 1080 p the current crop of gpu's should pull their weight for awhile yet. (>=4gb (or 3.5)). Id be tempted to grab a decent 290 as its bang for buck is pretty darn good.