4gb of VRAM

[tsaun13]

I'm considering getting a 970 OC but my main concern is the vram. I would like to install GTA 5 graphics mods, and I know GTA 5 eats up a ton of vram.

I would probably opt for the 1060, but I can get a 970 oc for about 180. What do you guys think? Should I just eat some money and go with the 1060?

Also, can regular ram help with any of the tasks of Vram?

 

[Decends]

I'm considering getting a 970 OC but my main concern is the vram. I would like to install GTA 5 graphics mods, and I know GTA 5 eats up a ton of vram.

I would probably opt for the 1060, but I can get a 970 oc for about 180. What do you guys think? Should I just eat some money and go with the 1060?

Without a doubt the 1060 will perform better than the 970. But by how much is the question. In this case it will be like Comparing a GTX 980 to a GTX 970 in GTA V. Just dont expect to max out GTA V. Even a GTX 1080 can struggle against GTA V @ 1080p if enough settings are turned up/on. Question is if your mods will improve performance and graphics or not. But the extra vram would be useful because this game eats over 4 GB on my 1070. Not to mention the slower 512mb partition of the 970's 4GB of Vram.

 

[tsaun13]

I'm considering getting a 970 OC but my main concern is the vram. I would like to install GTA 5 graphics mods, and I know GTA 5 eats up a ton of vram.

I would probably opt for the 1060, but I can get a 970 oc for about 180. What do you guys think? Should I just eat some money and go with the 1060?

Without a doubt the 1060 will perform better than the 970. But by how much is the question. In this case it will be like Comparing a GTX 980 to a GTX 970 in GTA V. Just dont expect to max out GTA V. Even a GTX 1080 can struggle against GTA V @ 1080p if enough settings are turned up/on. Question is if your mods will improve performance and graphics or not. But the extra vram would be useful because this game eats over 4 GB on my 1070. Not to mention the slower 512mb partition of the 970's 4GB of Vram.

Thanks for the reply.

The 970 OC performs a tad better than a 1060 stock (3-5 fps more).

If it ate more ram than you had I'm guessing it would cause stuttering? Does regular ram help the Vram with any tasks?

 

[geofelt]

VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
A more current set of tests shows the same results:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/page5.html

And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.

 

[Decends]

I'm considering getting a 970 OC but my main concern is the vram. I would like to install GTA 5 graphics mods, and I know GTA 5 eats up a ton of vram.

I would probably opt for the 1060, but I can get a 970 oc for about 180. What do you guys think? Should I just eat some money and go with the 1060?

Without a doubt the 1060 will perform better than the 970. But by how much is the question. In this case it will be like Comparing a GTX 980 to a GTX 970 in GTA V. Just dont expect to max out GTA V. Even a GTX 1080 can struggle against GTA V @ 1080p if enough settings are turned up/on. Question is if your mods will improve performance and graphics or not. But the extra vram would be useful because this game eats over 4 GB on my 1070. Not to mention the slower 512mb partition of the 970's 4GB of Vram.

Thanks for the reply.

The 970 OC performs a tad better than a 1060 stock (3-5 fps more).

If it ate more ram than you had I'm guessing it would cause stuttering? Does regular ram help the Vram with any tasks?

But in turn you can overclock that 1060 gettings 980+ level of performance leaving the OC'd 970 behind. And i feel certain the extra vram would help you with current titles that use alot of vram plus future titles that would exceed 4gb. If a game starts exceeding your maximum vram, depending on the game you could see stutters or drops in framerates and increases in frametime. Not to mention memory swapping between the system and video ram. GTA V can be a video ram hog as well without graphical mods. What ever vram amount the settings menu says it will use, it will use more than it states their. It states my game will use 3.6 gb, but it actually uses 4.4-4.5 gb vram

 

[tsaun13]

Thanks decends