PSA - The issues with VRAM on modern games

SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

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This is very worth a look.

New games coming out, Hogwards Legacy and Last Of Us Part 1, Resident Evil 4 and Forespoken to name a few, are showing that 8Gb VRAM is really causing quite serious performance issues, and they're saying that upcoming releases are quite possibly not even going to run on anything 8Gb or less.

This is quite a large concern when buying a new PC, you're not buying the PC for your current needs, you're speccing it with longevity in mind, GPU upgrades will need to be done whatever, but you don't want to be speccing an RTX 3070ti or lower at 1440p or higher at all in any circumstance really.


www.digitaltrends.com

Why your powerful PC still can't handle the latest games | Digital Trends

New games are pushing even powerful last-gen GPUs to their limits and exposing a big problem with graphics cards: VRAM limits.
www.digitaltrends.com www.digitaltrends.com

overclock3d.net

8GB is no longer enough VRAM for High-end 1440p Gaming - AMD Claims

AMD is upping their VRAM allocations with the Radeon RX 6000 series. Are AMD more
overclock3d.net overclock3d.net
 
S

Steveyg

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This honestly seems like lazy optimisation more than anything to me or worse cynically a way to force you to buy a GPU upgrade
 
stegor

stegor

Bright Spark
Steveyg said:
This honestly seems like lazy optimisation more than anything to me or worse cynically a way to force you to buy a GPU upgrade
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Probably a bit of both. The decision is easy at the moment for mid range gaming, i.e. buy AMD and force Nvidia to up their game. Unfortunately if you aren't at all technical minded then you may end up buying the wrong card.
 
B4zookaw

B4zookaw

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Hadn’t planned on upgrading my 3070TI any time soon, but will a future AAA game force my hand….
 
S

Steveyg

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
There is no way this is going to be the prevailing trend guys, doesn't the vast majority of the market still use a 1060? It would be really really really dumb on the part of developers to keep forcing stuff onto the VRAM
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

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Steveyg said:
There is no way this is going to be the prevailing trend guys, doesn't the vast majority of the market still use a 1060? It would be really really really dumb on the part of developers to keep forcing stuff onto the VRAM
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Although a good way to get people to force upgrade at a time when sales have dropped off a cliff. That's a conspiracy theorists opinion, but I certainly wouldn't put it past nVidia.

According to the latest Steam Survey though, the 3060 is the current most used card? That seems unlikely?

 
S

Steveyg

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
SpyderTracks said:
Although a good way to get people to force upgrade at a time when sales have dropped off a cliff. That's a conspiracy theorists opinion, but I certainly wouldn't put it past nVidia.

According to the latest Steam Survey though, the 3060 is the current most used card? That seems unlikely?

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Yeah that seems like a DRASTIC increase in March

Just on the whole VRAM thing doesn't forcing literally GB's of textures not seem like the worst possible way to utilise the VRAM itself?
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

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Steveyg said:
Yeah that seems like a DRASTIC increase in March

Just on the whole VRAM thing doesn't forcing literally GB's of textures not seem like the worst possible way to utilise the VRAM itself?
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I certainly wouldn't think it was particularly sustainable and all the games doing it are generally very poorly optimised, I don't think that's a coincidence.
 
S

Steveyg

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Yeah I'm honestly not worried about it, eventually there will be backlash and things will get sensible again but the first couple years after new consoles launches are always hairy on the PC side

I'll just do the old vote with my wallet and not buy from dev's/publishers who are doing this kind of nonsense there's just no need for it
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
I'm thinking I'll sell my entire PC on as a whole with the 3070Ti and use the money to get something current. I don't like the vRAM trend and think I'll need to be quick to get the most out of my card unfortunately.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

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Scott said:
I'm thinking I'll sell my entire PC on as a whole with the 3070Ti and use the money to get something current. I don't like the vRAM trend and think I'll need to be quick to get the most out of my card unfortunately.
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I'm going AMD and just hoping they can pull it out of the bag with the next FSR update
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
SpyderTracks said:
I'm going AMD and just hoping they can pull it out of the bag with the next FSR update
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I've been considering this. There isn't a great deal of data on MSFS though, which makes it difficult to decipher. Most outlets only consider the 4090 level of cards in their figures, the ones that check other cards tend not to compare VR etc, so it's a bit of a minefield.

I'm going to budget £1k for a card. If I can get the 4080 for around that I'll probably opt for that, if not.... 7900XTX is looking prime.
 
stegor

stegor

Bright Spark
Steveyg said:
Yeah I'm honestly not worried about it, eventually there will be backlash and things will get sensible again but the first couple years after new consoles launches are always hairy on the PC side

I'll just do the old vote with my wallet and not buy from dev's/publishers who are doing this kind of nonsense there's just no need for it
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But the trend is always more of everything, not less. It may stabilise for a while but for new AAA games going forward 8GB is going to be entry level. For high settings with RT 12-16Gb will be the norm within 12 months.
 
S

Steveyg

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
stegor said:
But the trend is always more of everything, not less. It may stabilise for a while but for new AAA games going forward 8GB is going to be entry level. For high settings with RT 12-16Gb will be the norm within 12 months.
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Yes while more of everything is the trend I don't think what we are seeing is a trend

This is devs using a VRAM cache as a lazy way out instead of properly optimising their games. Loading everything onto the VRAM is probably the most ineffective way to use that VRAM possible and they are using vast swaths of it for nothing but textures which is just plain silly. This is I'm sure due to time constraints on PC versions, an engine problem (looking at you Unreal 5) and a budget problem. Not enough people working in too short a time frame forcing people to make these decisions

We aren't seeing more because the new level of fidelity demands it, we're seeing more because it's currently the easiest way out. Which is why I don't see it being the prevailing trend
 
stegor

stegor

Bright Spark
Steveyg said:
Yes while more of everything is the trend I don't think what we are seeing is a trend

This is devs using a VRAM cache as a lazy way out instead of properly optimising their games. Loading everything onto the VRAM is probably the most ineffective way to use that VRAM possible and they are using vast swaths of it for nothing but textures which is just plain silly. This is I'm sure due to time constraints on PC versions, an engine problem (looking at you Unreal 5) and a budget problem. Not enough people working in too short a time frame forcing people to make these decisions

We aren't seeing more because the new level of fidelity demands it, we're seeing more because it's currently the easiest way out. Which is why I don't see it being the prevailing trend
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Laziness is the trend and that won't change, but remind me in 12 months. We'll see.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
stegor said:
Laziness is the trend and that won't change, but remind me in 12 months. We'll see.
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I'm going all out, I'm going with a 7950XTX with 24GB VRAM, and then I'm going to A-Team meld a couple of 7600MHz 32Gb RAM DIMMS onto it for MOAR POWER!!!!
 
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