Well, over the past month I've been buying my parts for my PC, and I'm on a budget so I can't go really expensive on it. So, I was choosing to get a Gtx 770 2gb, but then I heard 2gb will be outdated for resolutions or something, so I was thinking about getting a 760 4gb.. I really don't know what to choose, I'd rather want the 770, but I'm scared the 2gb will f*** me over eventually. PLEASE HELP! (Also I googled it, but it's just a bunch of nerds gabbling about random stuff I'm not particular about. (I'm a newbie at PC, when it becomes technical.))
VRAM is most important for two things: high-resolution textures, and high-resolution displays.
While every game is different, the long and short of it is that 2GB is fine for 1080p. If you have a higher-resolution monitor (1440p or 2160p) or want to do multi-monitor gaming (not just having multiple hooked up but only game on one), go with the 770. The worst that will happen from not having enough VRAM is having to turn texture resolution down (I run a 1440p display on a 1GB card... I have to turn textures down to Medium on some games, but it still looks better than High at 1080p).
Okay, sweet.. Thanks for the input.
2gb of VRAM is fine for 1080p or 1440p at max settings depending on game if it's new. The 770 4gb usually can't utilize that much RAM anyway.
Like, I have a 780 3GB and I downsample games to 1440p and even 4k like Dark Souls and I never run out of memory. The memory bit of the card's bus matters too. 256 bit is good for 2-3 GB.
[QUOTE=Original User;45230799]The memory bit of the card's bus matters too. 256 bit is good for 2-3 GB.[/QUOTE]
The memory bus width matters more for render performance than for memory usage.
There are basically three major "functional parts" of a video card. You have the compute units, the memory bus, and the memory itself. Each affects the performance of different elements of games.
The compute units affect shader performance. Drawing a simple, flat texture requires only a simple, lightweight shader. Adding normal maps or phong makes it a bit more complex. Rendering something like water, with the reflections and refractions, gets really tough. If your compute units can't keep up, you'll get framerate hikes in parts with lots of effects going on.
The memory bus connects the compute units to the memory. Whenever a shader says "draw a pixel of color X at position Q", it has to go over the memory bus. This mainly determines performance when you have a lot of things on screen at once, or if the game is poorly optimized and has a lot of overdraw. The crucial number to look at isn't the width (256 bits) or the speed (5GHz), but the transfer rate (160GB/s). The reason is that the two companies have evolved slightly different approaches - AMD figured out how to make really wide memory buses for cheap (they top out at 512-bit while Nvidia only hits 384-bit), while Nvidia figured out how to run smaller buses at higher rates (they run 7GHz while AMD often does only 5GHz). They both get roughly the same bandwidth, but in different ways. Anyways, if you're bottlenecked here you'll just see generally low framerates, made worse when you have a lot of stuff on screen.
Incidentally, your total amount of memory has to be a multiple of your bit width. You can't have 3GB on a 256-bit card - only 2GB or 4GB (or 1GB, or 8GB, etc.). On a 384-bit card you can't have 2GB or 4GB, only 3GB or 6GB (or 1536MB, or 12GB, etc.). That's the main reason you see 6GB cards - it's overkill for gaming, but they needed the bus width and 3GB isn't quite enough for some top-end setups.
The memory stores all the stuff the GPU needs, and the resulting frames. If it runs out of space and it can't clear it up, you're screwed - if it has to go to main RAM for texture data, or worse, to disk, you'll be ruined. I'm talking a second or so between frames in the worst cases. Fortunately, the biggest users of memory are textures, so turning down texture resolution can quickly fix it (after textures are models). And since most games are still designed to run on the quarter-gigabyte on the Xb360 or PS3, you'll probably never even need 2GB for them. But it's good for the True PC Games that can actually use it all.
Although games right now won't utilize 4GB, I'm almost positive that within the year we'll be seeing higher resolution textures and denser environments. And as these guys have said already, if you're going beyond 1080p it will definitely help. 1440p might not hit the limit now, but if you're going for long term, 4GB can help.
Do NOT go for those "Doubled Vram" cards. Their memory bus speed can't even handle the extra Vram. ALWAYS buy a card with it's base vram amount. If you want higher resolution gaming, go with a 780 and above (or AMD equivalent). For 1920x1080, get a 770 (or AMD equivalent).
[QUOTE=JC2Gamer1456;45232768]Do NOT go for those "Doubled Vram" cards. Their memory bus speed can't even handle the extra Vram. ALWAYS buy a card with it's base vram amount. If you want higher resolution gaming, go with a 780 and above (or AMD equivalent). For 1920x1080, get a 770 (or AMD equivalent).[/QUOTE]
Not always true. For example GTX 650 Ti BOOST does utilize 2GB of ram and does much better in 1080p than it's base variant with 1GB. But yeah, I agree that 760 4GB for 1080p is dumb.
Go with the 770, it's a great card.
That's because the 760 only has a slightly wider memory bus. 2gb on the 650ti boost saturates it far less than 4gb on the 760
To be honest that decision would depend on how long you expect pc to do its job for you. You would also need to predict how big the take up on super high res displays will be and how fast super high games will be developed.
If you are gonna go with vram that high at this stage, get gpu with alot of juice to go with it. Like 780 or R9 290. Otherwise theres no real need with excessive vram with something like a 760.
The above assumption is based on you expecting your pc to perform well over the next 3 years.
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