Consumers and Reviewers alike are misinformed about VRM usage. The fact is, no utility exists which can measure it. Every time I say that, peeps shoot back with GPUz and tell me they can. They tell me to open GPUz, sensors tab and look at the "Memory Used" statistic. Except that doesn't mean what they think it means.
Alienbabeltech did the most extensive analysis I have seen on this and they compared a 770 2GB and 770 4GB in over 40 games. There was no significant difference in performance across the board. You might say, well that was a long time ago, well not that long and we are talking about 1920 x 1080p here, they used 5760 x 1080.
In fact one game (max payne) would not even allow you to select the 5760 resolution with the 2 GB card. So they put in the 4GB and did all the testing ... then just for "schitz and giggles", they put the 2GB card in and it ran just fine, almost identical fps and no drop in quality.
You can compare performance here:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,12.html
The explanation is here tho .....
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/213069-is-4gb-of-vram-enough-amds-fury-x-faces-off-with-nvidias-gtx-980-ti-titan-x
GPU-Z claims to report how much VRAM the GPU actually uses, but there’s a significant caveat to this metric. GPU-Z doesn’t actually report how much VRAM the GPU is actually using — instead, it reports the amount of VRAM that a game has requested. We spoke to Nvidia’s Brandon Bell on this topic, who told us the following: “None of the GPU tools on the market report memory usage correctly, whether it’s GPU-Z, Afterburner, Precision, etc. They all report the amount of memory requested by the GPU, not the actual memory usage. Cards will larger memory will request more memory, but that doesn’t mean that they actually use it. They simply request it because the memory is available.”
Think of it this way.... let's say you have a Visa card with an approved $5,000 limit. The only thing you have charged on it was your new $500 phone. When you later apply for car loan, and the bank asks for a credit report on your current liabilities, that credit report will read:
Visa = $5,000
What you have "on it" is irrelevant. What you "could put on it" is ... GPUz is essentially doing what Visa is doing ....reporting $5,000
That being said, there are games that are affected by RAM.
1. Poor console ports ... i.e. Assasin's Creed: Unity
2. DX12 games ... I have not seen an explanation yet but some games are seeing problems with DX12 that we didn't see w/ DX11. Is this a matter of card vendors being behind on tweaking drivers, is it lazy game programming, is it something else... I have as yet not found an explanation. In Techpowerup's comparison of the MSI 10760 at 3 GB and 6 GB, the only real differences they found were in 2 of the 3 DX12 games.
But it must be recognized here, that the VRAM amount is not the only difference between these cards....The 6GB has 1280 shaders, the 3 GB only 1152 As a result of the design differences, the 3GB model runs about 7% slower than the 6GB model.
On Hitman, the 6Gb model delivers 74.6 fps and drops to 62.7 w/ 3 GB (15%)
On Rise of the Tomb Raider, the 6GB model delivers 54.5 fps and drops to 41.2 w/ 3 GB (25%)
3. Hi Res Textures - Games are almost always tested at their highest settings .. and when games include extra hi-res textures these will be used in reviews. Hi-res textures OTOH can only be appreciated at higher resolutions but should you choose to load them for 1080p, you are likely to get a message that ya need more memory.
it's hard to say where this will go in 2017 ... will things get better as drivers get tweaked for DX12 ? ... after the AC:U, batman and other disasters, will game devs put in the necessary effort to produce quality console ports ? Will game devs start focusing more on 1440p (1.81%) and 4k (too small to be listed) development even tho 1080p (37.4% of market) . Only 2.22% of the market has bigger than 1920 x 1200 as their primary display resolution .. then there's 2.28% (other) that encompasses all resolutions across the spectrum whose % is too low to be reported individually
To my eyes, if budget is an issue, I wouldn't worry about it. the number of games affected by all of the above is small and the drop isn't all that great.
As for the 980 Ti... I just don't see it as a viable option. The 3GB 1060s are running $200... the 980 Ti costs 3 times as much
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