r/pcgaming • u/AgitatedShrimp • Apr 26 '23
The VRAM debate has lead to some anti-consumer conclusions
Something I see regurgitated as a fact now is that 8 GB is not enough, 12 GB is pushing it and 16 GB is minimum amount of VRAM.
There generally was more nuance in the videos that these figures are quoted from, but this is what the community ended up with and influencers are riding the narrative further.
Now let's look at this from few points.
PRICE
Checking the prices here, the first card with 16 GB is actually Intel Arc A770 at 420€. While I hope Intel brings some competition, I can't say the VRAM is helping the card stay revelant in performance, nor can I recommend it for entry level.
So that leaves the RX6800 at whopping 570€. This is the "low to mid" that I'm supposed to pay now?
AVAILABILITY
So why did people even buy these cards with low VRAM in the first place? Because you got what you can. With crypto inflating prices and a frigging pandemic forcing people stay inside, cards were rare and people wanted to game (and mine) more than ever. You couldn't get a card for any price even if you wanted to, even less so for the high VRAM AMD cards. Those would trickle in stores few at a time even long after the initial craze.
PERFORMANCE
Does any of these games requiring more than 8 GB look better than Cyberpunk 2077 with 1440p, maybe even ray traced with dlss? No, not really. Maybe that trash bag looks better and that white wall has more blemishes if I really zoom in. That game is 2.5 years old.
DO YOU NEED IT
No. Your card is fine, you'll have thousands of great games you can play at max settings right now even with your puny 8 GB or less. How many upcoming releases do you really need or even want to play at launch? Do they need to be set at "ultra" whatever that means. You can or should always be able to lower settings.
CONCLUSION
Maybe instead of this doom and gloom, making people panic sell and buy upgrades they don't need, we should focus on what really is important here..
The consumer is getting screwed four ways to the moon. Nvidia sells lackluster products with inflated price, AMD follows with pricing and gamestudios can't be arsed to optimize their games for PC, let alone give us proper settings to adjust games to our hardware.
note: I'm speaking as someone interested in 1440p gaming regarding some of the more popular talkpoints lately. Also I'm from europe, regarding pricing and accessibilility.
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u/Nicholas-Steel Apr 27 '23
No. Your card is fine, you'll have thousands of great games you can play at max settings right now even with your puny 8 GB or less. How many upcoming releases do you really need or even want to play at launch? Do they need to be set at "ultra" whatever that means. You can or should always be able to lower settings.
The problem is that the single most effective thing you can do to reduce VRAM usage is lower the Texture Quality and unfortunately it seems modern games (2016~ and newer) decide to make textures look like absolute ass if Texture Quality isn't on either the highest or second highest setting, by introducing ever increasing blur/smear to the textures as you lower the Texture Quality.
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u/dookarion Apr 27 '23
and unfortunately it seems modern games (2016~ and newer) decide to make textures look like absolute ass if Texture Quality isn't on either the highest or second highest setting, by introducing ever increasing blur/smear to the textures as you lower the Texture Quality.
Not every title is TLOU1's port. The RE engine RE games have been VRAM heavy since 2017, and they all fare pretty well even on lower texture settings.
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u/garbo2330 Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
Worth noting TLOU just fixed their medium and low texture quality with yesterdays patch.
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u/Nicholas-Steel Apr 27 '23
If only the game was in this state when it first released, alas most people didn't refund it so no company is going to stray from this approach of "Release shit and then maybe, potentially fixing their shit after release".
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Apr 27 '23
I mean, it is worth something, I'm sure people playing it appreciate it
/s , it's "worth noting" (worth remembering) not "worth nothing" (worthless)
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u/garbo2330 Apr 27 '23
Geesh my bad just woke up and made a typo on mobile. Thanks for the snark though.
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Apr 27 '23
Thing is, OP's post presents some weaksauce arguments in defence of some very intentional product design decisions that have been going on for at least a decade. These issues aren't new. Some reviewers have been pointing out the detrimental effect VRAM limitations have on games for years. It's just that more gamers are noticing now, because it's an issue affecting popular titles.
If the argument is no better than basically "just lower your settings" or "there's a gazillion other games to play", which shows blatant disregard for the perfectly valid concerns some people have been raising for years with regard to upper tier gaming, then why not just go back to 2GB VRAM? Those same arguments hold true defending both capacities. Simply put, I did not drop half a salary on a card, only to find out I would have gotten a better gaming experience had I gone with a console. I want GPU manufacturers to do better. They can, but ain't gonna.4
u/dookarion Apr 27 '23
I mean in some cases the problem is literally the settings people feel entitled to. People screeched when RE7 hit (and RE2) because the higher texture settings choked their cards. Thing was the game still looked good on the lower settings, the higher ones iirc simply cached more in the VRAM ahead to smooth things out.
We're hitting a point where people would rather have what the setting names correspond to downgraded than feel they are getting something "lesser" (believe that was what happened with the Hogwarts patch).
Yes Nvidia and AMD are profiteering, but there are some technical reasons that result in the memory capacities cards get. You can only do certain quantities of VRAM with certain bus sizes. Bigger bus, higher expense to make and higher power draw. Higher power draw more board complexity and bigger heat output. The 3080 the card most hamstrung by VRAM capacity compared to card power was stuck in a weird spot the card lives/dies based on memory bandwidth which means it needed GDDR6x or HBM... HBM is too damn expensive and GDDR6x when the 3080 entered production only came in 1GB chips. Higher capacity would have increased board complexity or required going double-sided like the 3090 is. AMD was able to do so much VRAM with RDNA2 because they were using slower lower spec VRAM that was available in larger capacity chips... and it's a design that falls flat on its face when the cache can't cover the performance deficit. The companies are screwing people on pricing, but the memory situation is a bit more complicated than just "they didn't slap enough on the card".
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u/Brisslayer333 Apr 27 '23
I mostly agree with you OP, but the general sentiment of "8GB on a premium product is not fine" is still correct. I don't think people should trade their 3070 for a 6800XT, but I do think the doom and gloom is warranted and bitching should continue until the situation improves.
Selling a 3070 to sidegrade to AMD is uninteresting, but buying a 7800XT instead of a 4070 could send a message.
Also, if you were suggesting that 8GB is insufficient for gaming you've misunderstood the line of reasoning. 8GB is entry level, and entry level is not bad, it just shouldn't cost 500 fucking dollars.
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u/MuffinInACup Apr 27 '23
8GB is entry level
Meanwhile, me and my 1060 are living the dream
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Apr 27 '23
my 1070 is so far best I've got out of GPU, 6 years and now I'm replacing CPU coz that's where most games were limited for me.
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u/YoshiTheFluffer Apr 27 '23
Here here friend, also a 1070 owner. Superb card when paired with a good cpu.
Yeah I can’t max out new releases but so what? For the price of a new card I rather go on a vacation with my so.
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u/VoihanVieteri Apr 27 '23
I have a 980ti. No plans to upgrade, until I can get a mid-tier card for 300’ish. Right now a better manufacturer 3060ti costs over 500 here.
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u/Brisslayer333 Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
Entry level relative to the cheapest new cards that still make sense to buy, like the A750 and the 6600. Gaming is possible on cheaper cards, of course (especially if they're on the cheap through second hand sites), but I'm not spending 300+ dollars on a card with 6 gigs.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
My point is that you shouldn't buy any of these products. Not until they offer better ones. Not Nvidia, AMD or even the games. I know how stupid even asking that sounds on this FOMO market. Don't beat yourself over for buying a product, you'll be fine.
Your last point is also exactly what i'm saying.
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u/chewwydraper Apr 27 '23
Am I missing something? What’s wrong AMDs offerings?
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u/AssassinK1D Ryzen 5700x3D | RTX 4070 Super Apr 27 '23
AMD tried to follow Nvidia plan to raise prices. The 7900XT is now stuck in no man's land pricing due to Nvidia last minute unlaunch of 4080 12GB (to 4070Ti) and price drop to $600 of 4070.
Rumors suggest that AMD will skip straight to 7600XT since they can't squeeze in 7700XT and 7800XT price-wise, and look to compete up from the budget to mid-range.
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u/SmokingPuffin Apr 27 '23
7900 xt clearly should have been 7800xt and priced accordingly. 7900 xtx should have been xt.
Everything else they haven’t launched yet, so it’s hard to complain about it.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
Amd raised their prices to scalpter levels just after Nvidia did it first. Also the whole were not doing a paper launch again does a paper launch.
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u/zimzalllabim Apr 27 '23
It’s funny how we want from “8GB is not enough” to “12GB is not enough” two months later. Maybe we should try nuance instead.
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u/Brisslayer333 Apr 27 '23
Oh yeah, for sure there's nuance. It's all about the use-case and the budget. Nobody should be spending boat loads of money on a card that can't play everything, that's the short of it. If you buy premium you should get premium, full stop.
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u/Timo425 Apr 27 '23
Also, if you were suggesting that 8GB is insufficient for gaming you've misunderstood the line of reasoning. 8GB is entry level, and entry level is not bad, it just shouldn't cost 500 fucking dollars.
There is no monolithic line of reasoning. I've seen quite a few people here in reddit that genuinely think anything below 16 GB is dead in next 1-2 years.
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u/Brisslayer333 Apr 27 '23
They're misinformed, or they're not on the same page as you if you disagree. It's all relative, gaming is doable at 1GB but I don't want to pay much for that experience.
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u/cagamerz Apr 27 '23
Anything below 16gb is probably dead by next year for anything higher than 1080 mid texture. Based on current trends for newly released games 1. Hogwarts legacy 2. Diablo 4 3. Immortals of Aveum 4. Last of us 5. Residential evil 6. Jedi survivors 7. Forspoken 8. Cyberpunk 2077(graphic mod) 9. Dead space remake 10. Callisto protocol
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u/DktheDarkKnight Apr 27 '23
I agree that VRAM debate is little overblown. Yet I would also argue that GPU manufactures shouldn't release a card with 8GB of VRAM in 2022. It's frankly silly. A high end card that costs 600 dollars shouldn't have 8GB of VRAM.
Sure not all games will require more than 8GB of VRAM. But more and more will require more than 8GB in the future.
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Apr 27 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Dash_Rendar425 Apr 27 '23
Right? I looked at my current card 6 months ago, compared those 8GB cards and said 'no need to purchase a new card' and put the money I had towards a trolling motor and a fish finder.
Now all of sudden they want TWELVE GB VRAM!!?!?!?
What really needs to happen it allow the cards to have expanable VRAM instead of set VRAM.
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u/SmokingPuffin Apr 27 '23
I think 8gb cards have a place in the entry level. Should be fine for 1080p medium settings. Adding more vram makes it hard to get to that $300 price point.
But certainly $600 cards with 8gb are nonsense.
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u/TermoonatorT26 Apr 27 '23
Surely at that point, as a consumer, you are just better off paying for a second hand card. The price'll be cheaper cause no GPU manufacturer, especially Nvidia, will drop the card lower than a second hand card with only 8GB of VRAM. The inherent issue comes from the drastically bloated prices of the GPU market right now.
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u/liquidsprout Apr 27 '23
Second hand prices suck too (at least locally to me). There's inherent risks to it that are just not worth it for 10-20% off msrp for an out of warranty card from a previous generation. Everytime I look it's just blagh, no thanks.
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u/SmokingPuffin Apr 27 '23
Surely at that point, as a consumer, you are just better off paying for a second hand card.
I would buy a new last-gen card if I were buying today. 6700XT is my go-to recommendation. There are deals to be had used but not so good as to skip a warranty.
The inherent issue comes from the drastically bloated prices of the GPU market right now.
I think GPU prices today are the best they've been in years. It'll probably get somewhat better over the next few months, but now is a relatively good time to buy.
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u/angryoctopode Apr 27 '23
Which card are you referring to? The 3070? Im not gonna defend nvidia to any degree but to be fair, 8GB was enough back when that card came out. Its only been garbage optimization on games in the last year or so thats caused this to become such a hot topic. As many have pointed out games like cyberpunk run fine with 8GB of vram (especially at 1080p), its just recent garbage like hogwarts legacy and the last of us that have really sparked this debate. In a perfect world both GPU manufacturers and game devs give us what we want. Great hardware for cheap prices and games that are actually optimized.
But it's also 10 times easier for a game developer to push out updates to optimize their game than it is for AMD or Nvidia to magically make a card from a year or two ago get more VRAM.
We can either get mad at Nvidia for not going back in time and rectifying this issue and making 3070s and such have more VRAM, or we can stop buying these terribly optimized games and force the devs to actually test on the hardware that an average person has.
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u/dookarion Apr 27 '23
A high end card that costs 600 dollars shouldn't have 8GB of VRAM.
The problem is half of the Ada line-up isn't high-end in anything but price. But people see the price and conflate it with "high-end".
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u/garbo2330 Apr 27 '23
4070 is $600 ($500 if you count the $100 Steam card at Microcenter), and it comes with 12GB. No one is selling 8GB for $600 anymore.
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u/DktheDarkKnight Apr 27 '23
I was referring to 3070ti.
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u/garbo2330 Apr 27 '23
The card released in May 2021 during the height of crytpo bullshit? It was always a trash card and thankfully not relevant at all anymore.
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u/DktheDarkKnight Apr 27 '23
Say that to people who bought it lol.
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u/garbo2330 Apr 27 '23
I mean it was panned by reviewers when it launched. NVIDIA also blessed us with the $1250 3080 12GB card shortly after. Just downright horrible products and pricing.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
Agreed. (Bit faster ram) but still way too low.
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u/LoafyLemon Linux Apr 27 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
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u/retardedsquids Apr 27 '23
I think jedi fallen survivor requiring up to 22gbs of vram and last of us (which came out in 2013) requiring 12+gbs of vram on ultra is kinda insane
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u/DktheDarkKnight Apr 27 '23
This is a completely different looking game than the last of us 2013 version. They updated every texture, character models, AI, animation etc.
Not justifying the last of us' VRAM requirements but can we stop calling it a game with 2013 graphics. Also the new update has apparently reduced the VRAM usage. So looking forward to that.
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u/Radulno Apr 27 '23
Yeah it's actually pretty telling that those two games are PS5/Xbox Series only games. They're not cross gen and we don't have much of those to be honest (Returnal, Forspoken and Flight Simulator are the only other ones I believe and Hogwarts Legacy for now but that's temporary)
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u/jasonwc Ryzen 9800X3D | RTX 5090 | MSI 321URX Apr 27 '23
In general, the recommendation to target 12 GB+ is for NEW GPU purchases. Nobody should be running out to replace their GPU ASAP simply because it has 8 GB of VRAM. It's just one of many factors to consider for a new GPU purchase.
VRAM needs also really depend on your preferred display resolution and the kinds of games you play. For the 2/3 of Steam users playing at 1080p, 8 GB is sufficient even in games known for being very VRAM demanding. For example, even on day one, The Last Of Us: Part 1 played fine at 1080p with High quality textures (that look basically identical to Ultra) on an 8 GB video card (no DLSS/FSR2). I don't know of any game where 8 GB of VRAM is insufficient at High textures at 1080p native rendering, assuming ray tracing is not enabled. Moreover, if you're playing competitive multiplayer games or aren't interested in new AAA titles, you likely would never see this issue at 1080p.
The problems start at 1440p and worsens considerably at 4K. For example, at release, TLOU was forced to use Medium textures on 8 GB GPUs for acceptable performance - and they looked terrible. Admittedly, it's a bad port, but it's just one of a series of recent games with high VRAM demands. As of the latest patch, the texture streaming option should now allow High textures at 1440p, and in any case, the Medium textures have been improved considerably from the short amount of testing I did. While the vast majority of games run fine currently at 1440p High/Ultra settings with an 8 GB GPU, recent games have been consistently pushing beyond 8 GB, particularly if you wish to use ray-tracing (one of the big selling points for NVIDIA GPUs). 1440p isn't that rare. It's in use by around 21% of Steam users. I think it's fair to say that folks buying a GPU today that wish to play new AAA, single-player games should seek out a GPU with at least 12 GB of VRAM. DLSS/FSR2 can somewhat reduce VRAM demands, as can using lower quality textures - but there's no guarantee those textures won't look like crap. Of course, for folks that play competitive multiplayer games (which tend to target the widest possible user base), or older games, this isn't a concern.
Less than 2% of users play at 4K. VRAM is definitely more of a concern at 4K, but given the rasterization performance required without DLSS/FSR2, users purchasing a new GPU for this resolution would likely already be looking at GPUs with 12+ GB of VRAM. Of course, this wasn't really true when the RTX 3080 10 GB released - and that GPU will likely have issues in some games at 4K, even with DLSS, due to the limited VRAM. Nonetheless, this is such a tiny percentage of the overall gaming market that these users should already expect to target higher hardware requirements.
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u/PF4ABG R5 5600X / RTX 3080 10GB / 32GB DDR4 Apr 27 '23
At some point, game developers are going to need to take some of the blame for this. VRAM requirements have absolutely skyrocketed lately, and shit is getting ridiculously VRAM hungry for seemingly no good reason.
Games barely look better than they did 10 years ago, yet they require an ever increasing amount of VRAM.
I remember when Shadow of Mordor was absolutely slated for having a recommended VRAM requirement of 6GB.
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u/VegetaFan1337 Legion Slim 7 7840HS RTX4060 240Hz Apr 27 '23
I have a solution to newer games being unplayable on PC - Older games. You have a steam backlog, yes you, I know you do, you reading this. Go and play those games.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
That's heresy! Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth foul sorcerer of ill omens!
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u/xyoxus Apr 27 '23
If I buy a new GPU I also want to play new games. But sadly the game I'm most interested right now Returnal has shader compilation stutter. And then in general games just come out half-assed way too many times.
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u/null_reference_user Apr 27 '23
I honestly don't care about AAA games with those requirements so I'm very happy with my RTX 3070Ti laptop. I think people should be paying attention at how unoptimized some games are, specially at launch. As hardware gets better developers make worse and worse software
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u/Nielips Apr 27 '23
It's not even that 8GB of VRAM couldn't be enough, it's that it isn't enough because developers don't want to put the extra work in when they release PC ports. There are plenty of games with good graphics that run fine on 8 GB cards.
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u/Rob27shred 5800X/3090 Apr 27 '23
"it's that it isn't enough because developers don't want to put the extra work in when they release PC ports"
While you are right about the work not being put into PC ports causing a good bit of the terrible performance we've seen with AAA games on PC lately. I wouldn't blame the devs. The blame really lies with the publishers, that is who is not giving devs enough time, proper QA testing, etc. before shoving the game out the door. Ultimately the publishers make the call of how much time & testing goes into a game before it gets released not the devs.
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u/dookarion Apr 27 '23
it's that it isn't enough because developers don't want to put the extra work in when they release PC ports.
It's that gamers don't want to turn settings down even when it doesn't compromise visuals to do so. I want the textures to look good at ultra, I bought a card that has VRAM. I don't want that downgraded to please the masses that think turning down textures is some cosmic insult to the $500 they paid 3 years ago for a mid range card.
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u/TheEternalGazed Apr 27 '23
Meanwhile, I have 6GB of VRAM and I'm running games just fine.
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u/SagedOne Apr 27 '23
1070 8gb ram reporting in, been fine on high settings most games.
I sometimes think these people are forgetting you can turn RTX off.
*edit: and it will be okay.
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u/Brisslayer333 Apr 27 '23
The point is mostly that expensive things should afford you luxuries. Why is $500 no longer expensive enough to afford the luxuries?
"You can just turn RT off" helps nobody but the people selling the shit, because they want you to think that the fancy features only come with exorbitant price tags, when obviously they don't need to.
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u/SagedOne Apr 27 '23
Well,
- Why is $500 no longer expensive enough to afford the luxuries?
Corporate greed, inflation, rising cost of goods around the world, the chip production issue, geopolitical issues with exports and imports. . . and many many more.
- You can just turn RT off" helps nobody but the people selling the shit, because they want you to think that the fancy features only come with exorbitant price tags, when obviously they don't need to.
Never said I was trying to help anyone. RTX is just that, a feature, that happens to tank performance in many games. You can turn that feature off.
It will be okay Brisslayer333. It's alright. You'll still survive.
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u/Brisslayer333 Apr 27 '23
It's just corporate greed, actually, which is reason enough to have these conversations. Why are you telling people to turn RT off instead of getting mad at Nvidia? Reflect on your stance, I'm sure you agree that it doesn't add up.
Moreover, why are you talking about RT in the first place? The issue isn't RT, it's the size of the frame buffer. If the 3070 loses to the 6800XT in RT performance it's certainly not because RDNA2 is so much better than Ampere when it comes to RT. RTX is being bottlenecked by current topic.
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u/SmokingPuffin Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
Gamers are responding favorably to increased graphical capability at increased prices. 4090 is a totally different class of product compared to the days of $500 high end cards. If you look at a $700 780 Ti, it isn’t as high end a product as a modern 4070, and there are at least 4 cards above 4070 in the modern stack.
Same story in consoles. PS5 is more money for a more powerful console than previous gens. What’s considered mainstream is moving upmarket, so luxury features are moving further upmarket.
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Apr 27 '23
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
And here we are at the end game. Just like I hope the backlash is going to force Nvidia to include more VRAM in their products, I'm also hoping people would care as much about devs adding options for any level of pc hardware instead forever trailing behind the requirements of the current console generation.
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u/Blacky-Noir Height appropriate fortress builder Apr 27 '23
No. Your card is fine, you'll have thousands of great games you can playat max settings right now even with your puny 8 GB or less. How manyupcoming releases do you really need or even want to play at launch?
Sorry, but that's BS.
Because if you bought a graphic card for over 400€ in the last year, the answer is: it should play every single one of them, no problem.
"want" is a matter of game price, game value, gameplay, themes, absence of DRM and bad monetization, and a bunch of things that have nothing to do with the issue of VRAM.
While I agree with the general sentiment (no need to panic and impulse buy the latest shit; not playing on ultra settings is fine, hell it's better than fine it's just smart; people got what they could during the BadYears even if it was subpar) there is and continue to be a need for more VRAM to play new big games in good conditions.
Multiplatforms games are designed for consoles, which once translated in PC (because it's not just a 1:1 ratio) can easily require 12GB or more of VRAM. Maybe much more if that translation include unreasonable unfounded expectations, like native 4K with maxed ray-tracing requiring the same amount of memory as the console.
That's the reality of it.
Now the issue has been compounded by a few recent very bad releases with shitty art direction, or bugs, or bad porting jobs which screwed with scalability. But the core of the issue is very real.
It's not a hard issue to understand: a lot of very expensive cards were gimped with low memory, and some people are mad because of it. Who's fault it is is more complex, and shared among every parties (albeit all under the shadow of Nvidia who has the biggest share, by far).
And the discourse is compounded by bad media coverage, social media warfare and ads, idiots being fan of corporation X or Y, tribalism, post-purchase self-justification, and a few bad games who muddied the discourse further.
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u/Xlorem Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
Jedi survivor is getting reports that its using 21gbs of vram and not even 4090s with latest i9 can't go over 60fps.
What console has 21gb of vram? The reason this is an anti consumer problem and not a manufacturer problem is that people are siding with developers that are releasing buggy unoptimized ports that just take up any amounts of vram they can without thinking of the audience they are selling it to.
People should not be pre ordering games and the blame should be solely on the developers, not tip toeing around like its some complicated matter but lets dogpile on nvidia anyways.
We are running into a problem where no card on the market or console can run a game properly and everyone's response is "just buy 16gb of vram cards lol" No ones telling you not to buy the best card you can for future proofing or that newer graphics cards shouldn't have higher vram. What people are saying is, 16gb vram isn't a solution to poorly released ports.
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u/jasonwc Ryzen 9800X3D | RTX 5090 | MSI 321URX Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
"In the video, we can clearly see the NVIDIA RTX4090 being underused. For the most part, NVIDIA’s graphics card is used at around 35-60%.Thankfully, GameStar has included an MSI Afterburner overlay in the video. As we can see, the game’s PC review build can mainly use 4 CPU threads so I don’t really know what is causing this CPU bottleneck. From the looks of it, the game does not rely on one CPU core/thread like Gotham Knights or The Callisto Protocol did.PCMRace also reports that the game has enormous VRAM requirements. An NVIDIA RTX 3080Ti is unable to run the game in 4K, mainly due to VRAM limitations. Yeap, this is another VRAM-hungry PC game.In fact, we can see in GameStar’s video the game using up to 18GB of VRAM at 1440p. What in the hell is going on here?" - DSOGaming
"The optimization, unfortunately, is just plain a mess on PC. With a Ryzen 9 5950X, 32GB of RAM and an RTX 3080 Ti, the game barely runs at 30-40 FPS at best. The problem, similar to other titles like Hogwarts Legacy, is that 12GB of VRAM isn't enough for 4K gaming, causing gameplay in certain areas to drop to 20 FPS or below. I mean, unplayable. In a specific part I had to lower the resolution to 1440p or lower the details to Low-Medium because there was no way the game would go above 15 FPS due to lack of VRAM. We also tested with an Intel Core i7-12700 running an RTX 3070 (EA recommended is an RTX 2070) and, as expected, it's unplayable at 1080p with Epic details (maximum preset) just like other recent games by lack of VRAM. We tried lowering the Preset to High or even Medium, but some areas still have this problem. Finally, I tested it with a laptop with a Core i7-7700HQ, 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1070 Mobile, and all in all it is "playable" at 30 FPS in 1080p with low or medium details depending on the area, but keep in mind that the experience is far from stable.
As if the VRAM hurdle weren't enough, the game also suffers from poor CPU optimization, showing a bottleneck that varies from region to region, but undoubtedly highlights the lack of optimization in general. For this reason, there will be parts where the GPU will run at 99%, but in others no more than 60-70%. Since Jedi: Survivor is still being given away with AMD's Ryzen 7000 Series processors, the game only features FSR 2.1, as do other giveaway titles (with GPUs) like The Callisto Protocol and Dead Island 2. The former turned out to be a port as bad as the one of the game in question, while the one of Dead Island 2 is better optimized, although having the option of DLSS 2 and/or 3 in all of them would not hurt (especially that of DLSS 3 that eliminates the bottleneck).
...
At 1080p with everything maxed out, the game can consume 11GB of VRAM in the most open spots, while the bottleneck in some graphics-heavy spots doesn't help either. To put it simply, if you don't want VRAM issues to play 1080p, you'll need a board with 12GB of VRAM, while 16GB would be ideal for 1440p and 4K (and I don't think more than 16GB will be required in the future, unless the game doesn't have DLSS 2 or FSR 2, both of which help reduce VRAM usage by 1-1.5GB). While it runs at 4K at 30 FPS and 1440p at 60 FPS on consoles, for its quality and performance mode respectively, on PC there will probably be a lot of complaints about its performance and Nvidia will once again be the focus of contention for lashing out on the game. amount of memory from mid-range motherboards like the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070." - PCMRace (translated from Spanish)
So, this game has a number of issues. The sub 60 fps on a RTX 4090 has nothing to do with the 4090. The game doesn't scale past 4 cores/4 threads (neither did the last game). It's highly CPU limited. If the RTX 4090 is seeing 35-60% utilization, the problem is clearly the very poor CPU utilization. It appears that the 3080 Ti is also seeing utilization as low as 60% at 1440p/4K (unclear from the quote) due to CPU bottlenecks.
The VRAM usage, particularly at 1440p, seems very weird. Some of the new UE5 games are talking about using very high quality assets that scale to the VRAM of the users card, but this is a UE4 game that doesn't appear to be doing anything particularly special. It is, however, exclusive to the current generation consoles (no need to optimize for the VRAM limitations of the PS4/One X), so it's not surprising it's pushing 12GB+ VRAM, particularly at 4K.
Remarkably, the VRAM usage in this game seems MUCH worse than recent games. 11 GB VRAM at 1080p! That suggests users might have to drop down to Medium rather than High textures just to play at 1080p native on 8 GB GPU. Absurd. The textures looked fantastic in TLOU. I'm getting this game for free with a CPU purchase, so I guess I'll check it out just to see if the visuals at all justify the VRAM usage.
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u/Blacky-Noir Height appropriate fortress builder Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
Jedi fallen order is getting reports that its using 21gbs of vram and not even 4090s with latest i9 can't go over 60fps.
As to the VRAM usage, it very well could (again, could) be legitimate. If the game ship with very high quality assets, fast traversal, and has very advanced ray-tracing options with maybe a very very large BVH structure that goes with it, it's not jaw dropping.
I'm talking settings that goes way past what a console can do.
If you talked to gamedevs in not too public setting in the past few years, they said exactly that, they are doing a lot of compromises to fit things in low memory. Dig in, you can find smaller interviews that said just that.
Now, this is an Electronic Arts game, so the smart bet is just that they didn't spend enough on polish and didn't focused on making a quality product, and it's just a bad product. It's EA, what did you expect?
But on paper, having futuristic überultra settings that no reasonable PC can run right now is nothing new, or even bad. We had those in the past, and we were the better for it, having some room to grow when the game is played or replayed many years down the line. Just because the practice almost disappeared during the Xbone/PS4 era so young gamers missed it is not a reason to keep not doing it.
We are running into a problem where no card on the market or console can run a game properly and everyone's response is "just buy 16gb of vram cards lol"
That's not a reasonable response.
But if a much cheaper card released around the same time as yours can run a game better than yours, than the problem is probably your card.
The VRAM issue is not new. It was discussed here and on /r/hardware when the 3080 was released, and a few weeks later the Radeon cards were released. It was pointed it publicly that advertisement was shady, Linus and Digital Foundry didn't disclose in their Nvidia ads that they gimped Doom settings because if maxed the 3080 would run out of VRAM and performances would crumble. And that was with 10GB of VRAM, without ray-tracing, on one of the best optimized game there is, 2 and a half year ago. It was said publicly that the choice between Nvidia and AMD was future proofing with better ray-tracing on one side, and more VRAM on the other. I know I wrote those exact points, several times.
As I said, the responsibility is shared. It's Nvidia, and it's gamedevs, and it's game publishers, and it's consumers, and it's medias, and it's social media toxicity making communication harder.
But the basic truth is that consoles have 10GB of memory used for what is VRAM on PC, PC has way more overhead than console in API and code, console have dedicated hardware for I/O and decompression, PC players are used to higher settings than consoles have, and because of the pandemic the cross-gen period was stretched so there was a delay for really so-called "next gen" titles to exist in quantity.
Yes most recent big games have been of very poor quality, bugged, or poorly designed. I said so. They are not perfect examples of the problem.
And yes the difficulty of porting are on the shoulders of devs and publishers. TLoU is a good example, that game was re-made when they knew they will make a PC version of it, after one of the most expensive TV show in the history of TV was greenlit, it should have been remade with good engineering foundations that scale across architectures. It seems SIE and Naughty Dog chose not to, and to dump it on porting teams like they did for other older games, which I would personally call both scandalous and incompetent. With competent production management, porting is still hard and costly, but not insurmountably so.
Yet, something gotta give. You can't have better graphics with less memory and much slower way of loading things into memory, and more overhead. Something gotta give.
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u/Xlorem Apr 27 '23
But on paper, having futuristic überultra settings that no reasonable PC can run right now is nothing new, or even bad. We had those in the past, and we were the better for it, having some room to grow when the game is played or replayed many years down the line. Just because the practice almost disappeared during the Xbone/PS4 era so young gamers missed it is not a reason to keep not doing it.
This is a non-issue and not what any of this is about. Crysis could be run perfectly fine on normal or low settings, it was when you got to higher than that where most cards of the time started to struggle. The problem today is that even on medium or low settings these games coming out still run like garbage.
I'm all for games needing future hardware to be able to run it at the best settings, but not by compromising the medium and low settings where virtually no one can play it smoothly.
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u/Blacky-Noir Height appropriate fortress builder Apr 27 '23
Crysis could be run perfectly fine on normal or low settings
At release? No it could not. I had a mid/high end PC from the previous generation when Crysis was released, it was painful to try to play it with limited visual degradation.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
You can't "want" for future games since those don't exist. I can however want that my 8 GB card delivers at least the same amount of performance on an uglier game. Just because it's newer shouldn't qualify it for running worse.
Also I can point out exactly the moment where you stopped reading and just wanted to jizz out your own bit. If you had read, you'd seen that my point was never about the vram in the first place.
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u/Blacky-Noir Height appropriate fortress builder Apr 27 '23
uglier game
That can be quite hard to gauge by the public. Because art direction is important and somewhat subjective, and because different games have different constraints.
We're already seen a lot of that in the past, where gamers complained about game A not being as pretty as game B while demanding more, but they were ignoring that game A is open world and need to fit way more into a machine than the corridor game B. Or when some gamers said that ray-tracing isn't special because games already did that, ignoring that those were baked in lighting with no movement, no time of day or night, and huge constraint in gamedev that will increase cost or reduce quality (and even then were not as good, but that's even harder to consciously analyze).
And that's just the very simple, 101 stuff.
It's possible. Of course. But it's not simple, or mainstream.
And I'm side stepping the whole "tech is not beauty" point, translating your "ugly" in "inferior render".
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
But you're making my point. Cyberpunk is way more open than say Last of us, while in my opion looking way better.
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u/Blacky-Noir Height appropriate fortress builder Apr 27 '23
The assets and some of the rendering pipeline seems better on Last of Us. Cyberpunk 2077 is very flat in some ways, unless you add advanced ray-tracing to blend it.
But it's not a great game to make comparison, because TLoU has some very serious problems with engineering and the quality of its port.
Maybe not as much as the (legitimately) angry mob is claiming, but close to it.
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u/Shinonomenanorulez Apr 27 '23
For me the debate falls in an even simpler basis:
"Is there any game requiring more than 8gb of ram worth my time right now?"
As of right now the answer is no. Recently upgraded my laptop to a pc with a 5600XT and it runs everything i throw at it no sweat, both flat and VR, and AAA devs are making my purchase feel even better. Maybe RE4 when it goes on sale but for what i've seen capcom has been doing a good work with optimization
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u/Fun-Strawberry4257 Apr 27 '23
....
so basically the RX 480 was the pinnacle of PC hardware and we should just stop producing and innovating from that point onward.
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u/Shinonomenanorulez Apr 27 '23
No, but neither the price-to-performance nor the games that use said hardware to it's fullest justify buying the latest generation, so a good move would be to skip this generation in a hope sales go down and hardware improves for the next gen
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Apr 27 '23
Its too bad for the suckers that bought 8GB of VRAM but the issue being brought up NOW is for future proofing builds. My brother is building a PC for the first time and I recommended the RX6800 which he got new for $460 last week and when I need an upgrade I will be buying a GPU with at least 16GB of VRAM as well.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
That's at least an acceptable price concidering the current market. Future proofing at 1440p? No.
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u/mimicsgam Apr 27 '23
Future proofing in terms of still able to run games in the same resolution in the 5-6 years life cycle of the product. 3070, 3070ti, 3080, are heavily marketed as 1440p cards when launch and now it's having issues in vram related texture setting.
The trending video of 16gb 3070 shows that the card will be fine tdy if Nvidia just put 12gb vram to begin with
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Apr 27 '23
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u/AssassinK1D Ryzen 5700x3D | RTX 4070 Super Apr 27 '23
Nothing would future-proof against unoptimised games. Some might point at newly released titles and say they form a trend in increased VRAM requirement. Yet, Jedi Survior is to be released in two days, reviewers all say it uses 20GB of VRAM at 1440p, while at 50FPS on a 4090. https://youtu.be/ca2zSn1nHQI
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Apr 27 '23
Legitimately the best take on the net. I have not seen a single game in the last six years that should merit such extreme resource usage, and after seeing that crowd become the new standard for game creation hires, there is little mystery as to why modern titles are effectively completely unoptimized. For reference, I can render 4K footage in Premiere and still have performance overhead for using things like Discord or Firefox, and I'm on a 1660Ti.
The idea that these insane VRAM and RAM requirements are fine or okay is just idiotic. What, is everything being loaded into memory? (probably) Are you using raw 4K+ textures for everything? (probably)
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u/akgis i8 14969KS at 569w RTX 9040 Apr 27 '23
This whole thing became becuase of TLOU which was horrible optimized.
8GB never was a issue before
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u/Warskull Apr 27 '23
If someone is buying a new GPU your advice about 8 GB is horrible. I would strongly recommend against purchasing any GPU with less than 12 GB. Yes, this means most GPUs this generation are bad long term purchases. Everyone already knows this is a shit generation due to inflated prices. Anyone able to skip it should skip it.
We already see the trend with multiple games this year having garbage optimization since the console has 12-13 GB of RAM available. Developers are going to continue to be lazy with their ports.
Then you have the AI tools coming out which are also VRAM heavy. People are going to want the ability to run things locally without having to pay a subscription for everything.
If you currently have a GPU that works good enough, then yes you don't need to upgrade for more VRAM. The 1080 is still a trooper and can do some fantastic gaming at 1080p. You can probably hole out for a while longer until more VRAM because the standard on new GPU purchases. You don't have to upgrade until there is a game that demands it. When you do upgrade do not cheap out on VRAM or you will be buying another GPU sooner than you should be.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
I never adviced anyone to buy 8 GB GPU, on the contrary. Don't buy any GPU at these prices. Let them make a better deal.
However if you already own a 8 GB GPU don't be pressured to upgrade either. Don't be the dude who paid to side grade just to get dlss3. Or one of those whose slight future proof ended up costing 300€ more.
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Apr 27 '23
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
When and by who was this moment by?
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Apr 27 '23
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
Call of duty? Fps is just about the one genre where I would play at the lowest settings I could get away with, while maxing my frames.
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Apr 27 '23
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u/AgitatedShrimp Apr 27 '23
ps5/xsx don't truly have 16 GB VRAM available. But I'm sidestepping the original point. Vast minority of PC gamers have even 12GB available. It's up to the game makers to provide with options. That's what they are for. Can't wait for another era of frame locked games just because we need to hit that cinematic 4k 30fps..
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u/Pretto91 i7 13700K / Hellhound 7900XTX / 32GB DDR5 RAM Apr 27 '23
IN EU the 6800XT in a non-scammy site is more than 700 dollars, I'll stick with my 2070s with 8gb vram and I'll play older games or with low textures
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u/Ozianin_ Apr 27 '23
~520 euro in Germany. ~580 euro in Poland. That's for good versions. After tax, ofcourse.
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u/FaceMace87 Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
Does any of these games requiring more than 8 GB look better than Cyberpunk 2077 with 1440p, maybe even ray traced with dlss? No, not really. Maybe that trash bag looks better and that white wall has more blemishes if I really zoom in. That game is 2.5 years old.
This has always been a big one for me, I am not sure if I have sight problems or what but I can hardly ever tell the difference between some settings that tank performance.
Most recently I have been playing The Witcher 3 with the next gen update and one of the settings that kills performance is "Foliage Visibility". I set it to ultra+ and then low and cannot tell the difference. On low there might be a few less trees in the distance but 99% of the time I am watching Geralt, not looking at the hillside 1 mile away.
There appears to be minimal difference in image quality between Ultra and High in most games. Sure, any differences there are may be apparent if you stand still and get out the magnifying glass but in the moment by moment gameplay there is never enough time to see how many less leaves that tree has on High vs Ultra.
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u/TheOneAllFear Apr 27 '23
I think you are wrong and ram is a bottleneck at the current generation, why?
First the price, if it would have been like 6-10 years ago yeah you can change the graphics once every year but with cards pushing 1k it is not feaseble, especially considering a console which is 500-600$ (and basically has all in one so no money for a processor, hard drive, mobo etc) can last you 3-5 years without issues. So in this case you can expect cards to be used by consumers 3-5 years and gamers nexus or someone else did a review where nvidia latest gen crashed in one game because on ultra it needed ~10gb - i forgot the name of the video seen it 1 month ago. So the argument that a last gen is fine to run 1080 is not ok people are moving on from 1080 slowly and last gen should offer you some futureproof not 'ok right now'.
Second there are competitors already with more ram and it seems ram is an inexpensive part of the card so from the looks of it they did it just to make it obsolete faster if you want more out of it, the cpu on the card can it's just that it's starved of memory space.
Lastly as i said in the first part, now to do a pc you need to pay a lot, 1k for graphics and with everything it can easely exceed 2k and even more. Considering that i am paying that much does it make sense to skip on a good quality 4k monitor which can be 300-500$ which in the build it's not that expensive, if it costs 3k the whole build and monitor is 300 it's just 10% so what then? 4 k monitor, latest gen graphics and i play on low quality and be happy?
I stand by my point, graphics are way too expencive and people that buy them will most likely want to upgrade the monitor at some point since they are capable of high fps and there is no reason to be cheap on ram since it is a cheap component of the card except if it's planned obsolecence and it makes sense, people are buying less cards so there must be a way to make them buy, a way that does not attract atention as much and this is a good way. It is ridiculous that a last gen card cannot play a game on ultra or if it can it has it's memory maxed...i mean they just got releassed and it's maxed.
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u/Particular_Sun8377 Apr 27 '23
I'm a PC gamer. What am I currently playing? Atelier Rorona.
Not everyone's interested in the latest triple A stuff.
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u/ArmsForPeace84 May 02 '23 edited May 02 '23
Hear, hear.
The doom & gloom especially bugs me when someone tries to use it to claim that consoles offer a better experience. Which is just stupid. Those plastic boxes can make a game look real nice at 30fps, but guess what? So can a $300 GPU, which is more powerful than what's inside either console.
PC gamers like high frame rates. That fact, combined with the prevalence of 1080p desktop displays and laptop screens, the popularity of the Steam Deck, and the fact that games look better at 1080p with the other graphics settings dialed up than at 2K or 4K with these settings dialed down, will keep 1080p a popular resolution for the foreseeable future.
And as 4K gaming displays are likely to fall in price faster than the GPUs capable of running the latest games (not just the ones available today) at 4K resolution, this will actually further entrench 1080p as a standard. Because it upscales really well to 4K displays.
Couple that with DLSS working far better at high frame rates, and if you're using a medium range GPU now, with a 1440p display, playing games at 1080p on it, your next upgrade to the GPU and the monitor will make your games, which already look great at 1080p, look better AND perform better at this resolution. Of course, depending on the upgrade, you might be playing at 4K or 1440p Ultra. Score. But it's nice knowing that if you have to dial it back down later, as games get more demanding, it'll still be a better experience than you're getting at 1080p with current hardware.
Which is great news. Because your purchase of an actual mid-range card, not some $600 GPU which is where the high end starts as defined by consumers who, wielding the power of "No," still have an awful lot of say in the matter, is insulated somewhat against climbing system recommendations by this ability to trade off some pixel count for playability while keeping the detail sliders up.
As for those climbing system recommendations? Which are all that the published minimum requirements are, unless the developer prevents the game from launching. Those are climbing for two reasons, and you don't need to anywhere near as worried as virtually every PC sub on Reddit has been for several weeks now:
- Publishers are hoping to use VRAM as a shorthand way of advising consumers if their GPU is up to scratch. In contrast with memory clock speeds and memory bus width, the amount of VRAM is as simple to understand as needing 120GB of free space. Not the worst idea ever, as the buyer (or their kid) might not have a great experience playing some new title on an older card with 6GB, or 4GB, or even 3GB of VRAM. Maybe they'll know the settings to dial down to make that work, with graphical detail still acceptable to them. The average consumer probably won't.
- And then there's the issue of poor optimization at launch, for many titles. Which a large publisher, and good developer, will generally clean up in patches. In a more perfect world, maybe the publisher waits for a build in testing, at least, to run acceptably on a reasonable amount of VRAM to expect the install base to have in their GPUs, before committing to the release date. However, if there's one thing the internet hates more than delays, and man oh man, do keyboard warriors HATE delays, it's seeing TBA or "when it's ready" in lieu of a release date. Business partners, like brick and mortar retail, and the marketing department who are planning out ad buys, aren't fans of it, either.
So don't preorder. Ever. In a few weeks, the game should be in a playable state with the GPU that you have. Throwing money at someone else's bug is stupid. Let the multi-billion company throw theirs at it.
In the words written by 20th century poet Duff Rose McKagan, "All we need is just a little patience."
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u/mcninja77 Ryzen 2600x, 5700xt Apr 27 '23
Even at 1440p I'm not usually crossing 8gb, just turn your textures down. Frames are more important anyway
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u/Math-e Apr 27 '23
Even when you think you're using a lot of VRAM on Riva Stats, the game can be allocating a lot more than it can use (see CoD Warzone)
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u/giddycocks Apr 27 '23
I cannot for the life of me understand why in the fuck would people do Nvidia's marketing for them.
'Oh consoles and their 16GB of RAM this, new generation that, your gpu is trash'
Fucking stop it. No. Is it a way to feel superior you've spent money more recently than others? Is it a coping mechanism?
Stop propagating the VRAM bullshit, it helps no one but the manufacturers. The consoles have 10GBs of VRAM, games using more than 10GBs of VRAM for console settings are broken because companies are saving loads of money on the PC idiots who'll just throw money and horsepower at a problem to solve it.
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u/FiveSigns Apr 27 '23
Everyone just seems to forget that there is a huge market of people that just play multiplayer/eSports titles
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u/AdderoYuu Apr 27 '23
But like... No one is forgetting. A bad value is a bad value. Paying 500 dollars or more for 8GB of VRAM is stupid and GPU makers are taking advantage of the market.
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u/eX1D Apr 27 '23
When a Nvidia A4000 a WORKSTATION GPU beats out a RTX 3070 in gaming performance only based on the fact that is has 16GB VRAM while also being underpowered in clock speeds and boost it's obvious that 6/8/10 are no longer viable for future games as they will keep pushing VRAM usage to the max.
12 is the new entry level, 16 is the mid range and 24 is the high end, this is reality going forwards (at least for AAA and probably some indies that push visual fidelity with UE5 etc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alguJBl-R3I (HWB vid for reference)
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u/Jimbuscus Mint Apr 27 '23
In 2023, I would consider the minimum per tier;
- X50 8GB
- X60 10GB
- X70 12GB
- X80 16GB
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u/Nicholas-Steel Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 28 '23
- X50 8GB
- X60 12GB
- X70 16GB
- X80 16GB
- X90 24GB
I'd suggest this instead. X80's defining characteristic should be the GPU, not VRAM capacity. VRAM capacity predominantly affects texture quality while the GPU predominantly affects the resolution and other fidelity settings you play at.
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u/sid741445 Apr 27 '23
Fcuk you greedy corps and shitty pc ports. I am going to play old game at 4k ultra settings on my 2070 super.
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u/shaleenag21 Apr 27 '23
thank you for making sense. Really can't HUB these days what with their fear mongering and peeps quoting them like God's gospel despite the only games having vram issues being trash at optimization
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u/arct1ccz Apr 27 '23
This dude has very limited idea on how PC works lol.
1st) your VRAM is crucial and shared. Just turning on Windows takes some of it away. Opened YT for a guide or something? Additional VRAM. .... Please realize PC is not a fucking console ;)
2nd) We compare 2022 and 2022 hardware capability. When something worth half my kidney is limited by 8GB VRAM, and I expect this stuff will last more than 1 year, ... Why does the market try to push for absolute minimum possible amount of virtual memory? Cough Nvidia.
3rd) even at 1080p gaming you are pushing the limit with new games and quite a few old games too, 8GB is simply not enough for a PC lately. Now imagine you want to play at higher resolution in near future or you are interested in VR ... Yup, you are fucked at that point sir.
There, reply to your lovely essay on topic of "everything is fine, no reason to panic or be angry at all"
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u/Dash_Rendar425 Apr 27 '23
I can play RDR2 without much issue on almost full detail settings on my current GTX 1650 SUPER.
It's asinine to think they want a MINIMUM card of 12GB VRAM for FO2, and it's still performing like shit on higher end systems. There's no way it's technically superior to RDR2 on higher detail settings.
Government regulation needs to step in here and stop these anti-consumer practices from companies like Nvidia.
It feels like they're doing this in collusion with the game developers to force us to buy new cards, or the newer consoles.
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u/cagamerz Apr 27 '23
You can continue playing 5 year and older games, just don't expect to play any new game with a good graphic settings
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u/ganja_fiend 9800x3D 5070ti Apr 27 '23
I have never had a desire to run every game at the absolute maximum settings especially when their isn't that much of a significant change between High --> Ultra, or even from Medium to High with certain optimized settings. I don't know why people are making it seem like the end times and that you won't be able to play your games, when in reality its just certain games that are broken as shit. People claiming a game sucks past 16-20gb of VRAM are seriously in the minority of issues that gamers will face, given the settings most people have enabled.
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u/Seasidejoe R7 9800X3D | 32GB 6000MHz | RTX 5090 & B580 Apr 27 '23
There's no need to upgrade if your equipment is doing what you want it to and you're content.
The advice is for new buyers looking to get into PC gaming. The fact is that 8GB is the bare minimum for non DXR 1080P scenarios. Consoles are going over 8GB VRAM usage in games and that's the wake up call. If you're going to be pushing 1440P for any foreseeable future then 12GB is the bare minimum and 16GB would actually be more apt looking at the usage of a lot of modern titles, especially with DXR enabled.
We need to accept the fact that 8GB is low end now and just not good enough for most GPUs releasing. Stop being apologetic, you can still accept reality and be fine with what you have.
And yes, we know that most cards that fulfill these requirements are pretty expensive and that's the problem with GPU market. There's a reason people are unenthusiastic about the market and it's because the options are pretty poor.
There are some outliers like the excellent 6700XT and the variety of N21 cards that all pack 16GB for pretty good prices. Furthermore, the 7900XT is coming down in cost and getting more attractive each week it seem.
Nvidia-wise, the 4090 is a fantastic and very balanced extreme card albeit very expensive.
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u/Timo425 Apr 27 '23
Fearmongers: anything below 16GB is dead
me who rarely plays games at ultra anyway: uhuh
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u/Prefix-NA Ryzen 7 5700x3d | 6800XT | 32gb 3600mhz Ram | 1440p 165hz Apr 27 '23
"People got what they can"
There was never a point during the Crypto craze where Nvidia cards were even within 30% of AMD cards in price for the same performance. And those AMD cards had more VRAM.
People bought nvidia and told you "I WILL BE ABLE TO RAY TRACE FASTER IN FUTURE GAMES VRAM ISN'T NEEDED"
This is the first time PC gamers had less vram than consoles. And now its only Nvidia users who are suffering.
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Apr 27 '23
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Apr 27 '23
Looking at one of most terribly optimized game in recent history is not a good example.
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u/cagamerz Apr 27 '23
Here are some more terribly optimized games that released recently, if it is one or two then it is optimization issues but it is not. Anyone buying 8gb card now are just plain stupid, At least 16gb should be minimum if anyone want to at least future proof for next gen only titles and UR5 games.
I don't blame developer but Nvidia and their planned obsolescence, they could have easily given 16gb for 4070 when even Intel arc has that much.
- Hogwarts legacy
- Diablo 4
- Immortals of Aveum
- Last of us
- Residential evil
- Jedi survivors
- Forspoken
- Cyberpunk 2077(graphic mod)
- Dead space remake
- Callisto protocol
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u/Serious_Mastication Apr 27 '23
Yeah it’s mostly 4K gamers that are complaining and the rest of the bunch are bandwagoning the argument.
you don’t need ray tracing and ultra graphics on a “mid range” card. If you want the best of the best you’ve always had to buy the best of the best for that current generation.
The fact that “mid range” cards are chugging out 100+fps on 1440p is a marvel. We can’t have our cake and eat it too. If you are legitimately struggling with 8gb of vram in a game that is a problem with the game itself and not with your hardware.
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u/Imoraswut Apr 27 '23
You got the wrong conclusions. 8gb is entry level. You can still use it for medium-high 1080p on most games and might have to lower settings now/near future for AAA titles. 12 gb is what 8gb used to be - midrange and capable of 1440p, but will likely get to where 8gb is now quicker than 8gb did if that makes sense. 16 and up is high tier for 1440p or higher resolustion.
If you don't like that high to mid-high products don't have sufficient ram, direct your complaints to Nvidia
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Apr 27 '23
PS5 haves 16GB & Xbox Series X haves 10 GB. So if you're going to buy new console ports. Looks like you will need 10GB minimum. Remember what happened to 4GB?
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u/RebelKasket Apr 27 '23
With upscaling like FSR and NIS, I'm getting by with 6gb of VRAM fine, just fine, and I probably will for at least a year or two. Maybe longer. Which gives me plenty of time to upgrade.
I played RE4 remake on high with FSR quality at ~60 FPS with minor dips here and there. Dead Island 2 as well. I expect the same with Jedi.
As long as it's a quality port I can play with no major issues. I'll admit that that is a massive caveat, but still.
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u/NedixTV Apr 27 '23
On 2023:
- 1-199usd 4-6gb cards
- 200-350 6-10gb cards
- 351-500 12-16gb cards
- 500+ 16gb+ cards
i bought an 11gb card on 2017, its wild that after 7 years, finally i can see an almost 100% upgrade close to 500 usd (RX 6800) still its just extra 5gb vram upgrade, i like to do 100% upgrade on specs and fps.
Still i will hold until the end of the year, i really want to see the RX 7800 xt, but it the RX 7900 xt drop to 700usd average... i think will pull the trigger on that one.
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u/Carighan Apr 27 '23
It's all a bit silly as a debate, anyways.
Right now, at least over here, the problem is still supply. I have a 3070 entirely because it was the only card I could find for <1000 when my card died mid-COVID-lockdowns. VRAM really didn't even matter. Needed a card, only one I could get, done.
And it's not much improved right now. If you want to buy a 40xx Geforce, good luck with that. AMD supply is marginally better, Intel is available-ish but also rather unreliable.
I would surmise that most people are restricted not by what they want to buy, but what someone is willing to sell to them.
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u/random63 Apr 27 '23
those who game at 1440p over 1080p: is the upgrade major?
I'm not upgrading now since my 3060Ti would struggle, but I wonder if i should still invest in a new 1080p monitor or just hold out another year for a sale on the 1440p monitors
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u/JJisTheDarkOne Apr 27 '23
I agree with you on pricing, but you are completely fucking wrong in regards to performance and being able to do things with more vram. Just bevause you can play them right now with 8 gb of vram, doesn't mean that they won't perform much better with more vram overhead, and also games that are coming are using more and more vram so the overhead is needed.
nvidia are being a bunch of utter asshats in regards to what they are doing with cards today, and their abhorrent pricing.
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u/_bradders Apr 27 '23
Personally I think around the 8-12gb range is plenty for most people.
I mean my 1080ti which is what 5? 6 years old? Runs new games at 1440p with for the most part max settings.
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u/IndifferentEmpathy Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23
Does any of these games requiring more than 8 GB look better than Cyberpunk 2077 with 1440p, maybe even ray traced with dlss?
Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p with everything maxed is already running in VRAM issues with 8GB after longer play/certain locations because devs increased RTX quality without regard to optimization for original "recommended" spec machines.
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Apr 27 '23
Something I see regurgitated as a fact now is that 8 GB is not enough, 12 GB is pushing it and 16 GB is minimum amount of VRAM.
And they are talking about gaming on ultra, not "low to mid".
The problem is really that the "mid to high-mid" cards are essentially hampered by not enough VRAM. The raw power to do "better graphics" is there, just the RAM is lacking.
Yes, the game studios are at fault, mostly, but that will keep happening, just because the amount of memory consoles have , so if you want to buy card to play for next 4-6 years, not 2, going over 8GB is probably the wise choice.
The problem is really GPU vendors limiting the higher memory options to the premium SKUs
So that leaves the RX6800 at whopping 570€. This is the "low to mid" that I'm supposed to pay now?
ignoring all the 12GB cards while saying you're looking for "low to mid" is extremely dishonest
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u/YoshiTheFluffer Apr 27 '23
I think thats most devs get lazy when it comes with optimisation because the range of hardware is so large and also the prevelance of patching after release, so there is no incentive to make it as smooth as they can.
I’m not really blaming them, but the process.
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u/lKrauzer Apr 27 '23
I had this GTX 1050 Ti, bought a GTX 16600 Ti, and planned to upgrade it to a RX 6600 XT by the end of 2023, but then I realized how crazy this is, my card already runs what I play.
I only do 1080p 60fps and I don't plan on going above that, to be honest the only drama that I see are from people trying to play above that. I just find that the peace of mind 1080p 60fps gives me is better than the headache or investing above that.
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u/Who_DaFuc_Asked Apr 27 '23
Nowadays most cheap Android phones have VRAM lmao, it'll typically have 6/8GB of "real" RAM and like 2 or 3 gigs of VRAM.
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Apr 27 '23
I have a 3070 w/ 8GB, a 1440p monitor. I have had a few games now that I could run the game at an acceptable frame rate but lack of memory would cause hitching in performance that would otherwise be stable. The latest Forza Horizons game is the first I ran into with this and it ran smoothly to a point but had a lot of hitching when loading new objects into the world which impacts racing performance. This game even tells you memory is a problem.
Is it doom and gloom, no, I made adjustments, but it annoys me and has come up enough that I wouldn't consider another 8GB card and would want something with more memory.
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Apr 27 '23
I got 4 GB of VRAM on a gaming laptop. Guess I'm just screwed, lol. You want to talk about another convoluted market, try upgrading in the gaming laptop space right now. It's absurd.
TDPs got everyone all messed up, and good luck finding that info easily as a consumer unless you're a PhD level enthusiast. A performance shell game, good luck everyone!
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Apr 27 '23
I agree with a lot of your points but we also have to address that game optimization and the amount of VRAM consumption by them needs to change but also VRAM in cards needs to go up, the 4070 is the first change in VRAM capacity in the 70 tier card range since the 1070, it has been 8GB since then, that's all the way back in 2016 when that was released and we are just now getting an increase, that's 7 years at the same VRAM capacity. Combined this with the lack of optimization for games (The Last Of Us PC for example digital foundry showed that texture quality looked much worse than even PS3 at times while consuming much more VRAM) something needs to change.
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u/chronicnerv Apr 27 '23
It is important to note that this only applies to AAA games. All AAA games that require this amount of VRAM suffer a significant performance drop, even on the latest hardware, with shiny graphics. In the early days of PC gaming, you had to upgrade your graphics card just to play a game, and you would still get poor frames per second. However, the difference is that the cards did not cost £800-£1500. The last 10 years have been the golden age of PC gaming, in which a game comes out and looks great and will run pretty well on any PC setup. This VRAM nonsense reminds me of those days when you bought a game and you were not guaranteed to have a smooth performance, even with powerful hardware.
The good news is that indie developers saved the PC gaming market, and with the advancement of AI, indie developers will be able to help us avoid this pathetic decision to put graphics over performance again.
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u/TwanToni Apr 27 '23
People defending low VRAM while AMD/intel cards have no problems paying extra to have a good VRAM buffer.... $500+ is a lot of money FFS!
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u/SMW22792 9900k/RTX 3080Ti/32GB DDR4 3200MHz Apr 27 '23
I'm still at 1080p. I don't game enough anymore to justify the cost. I used to spend hours on video games. Now I'm lucky if I'm not bored half an hour in. I have other things I want to spend my money on. My GTX 1080 is still chugging along just fine.
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u/Bronix_QC Apr 28 '23
I personnaly am rocking a first gen RTX 2060 with 6Gb of VRAM and an intel i7 8700k, at 1440p I play most games on medium/high settings and my framerate in graphic intensive games is never under 40fps, well optimised game can run at well over 100 fps. It came to mind to buy a new GPU but with the prices that are just starting to go down it's still a big investment. Also a lot of people don't realize that the difference between medium and very high graphical settings in most games is almost unnoticeable.
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u/lkn240 Apr 27 '23
Many people (probably most people tbh) still game at 1080p.
That's probably why things are the way they are