GTX 980 Ti and DDR3 Ram

[PCGuy25]

Is 6gb ddr3 ram on the motherboard enough to run this card. I have an i7 920 overclocked to 4.0 ghz and I really dont want to upgrade my ram, mobo, and processor for another few months (until skylake releases). So for 4K is this enough ram?

 

[Dunlop0078]

It should be as long as the game your playing doesn't use more than your 6gb of ram. Playing at 4k will use more VRAM in your gpu but it shouldn't use more system ram.

 

[burritobob]

Your RAM won't be the bottleneck, I highly doubt most games could use the full 6GB of RAM. Now there's undeniably going to be issues if you're running multiple instances of various background applications, this could easily max out your RAM. The real issue is going to be the i7 920, it may or may not be holding back the system as a whole if you put in a 980Ti, it sort of depends on what games you'll be playing.

TLDR; shouldn't be a problem if you're just running the game

 

[sz0ty0l4]

no it's definitely not enough. The minimum requirement is 8 gb, but nvidia recommends 16gb of ram for that card.

 

[Dunlop0078]

no it's definitely not enough. The minimum requirement is 8 gb, but nvidia recommends 16gb of ram for that card.

What? Its a graphics card it doesn't have a system ram requirement.

 

[sz0ty0l4]

Dunlop0078 every graphics card has a system ram requirement based on it's dedicated vram amount. directx automatically allocates a vram pool in your ram, which is double the size of your vram. this pool will "feed" the gpu's vram when you start running graphically heavy applications. if you open Dxdiag, go to "display" tab, you will see a note " approx. total memory" that value is your dedicated vram + vram pool for graphical applications( in the ram).
the CPU initalizes memory transfers to the gpu and when it's done it indicates it with interrupts. when running graphically heavy apps there is a continous memory transfer between virtual memory adresses of ram and vram. if these transfers fail for a reason, which can be a cpu bottleneck( the cpu is not fast enough to initialize the memory transfers) or the lack of ram, the performance will suffer.

the gpu WILL work if you have less than the needed ram, but it won't be able to utilise it's vram capacity.

you can check the requirements on the official geforce page aswell:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/geforce-gtx-980-ti/buy-gpu

 

[clonazepam]

no it's definitely not enough. The minimum requirement is 8 gb, but nvidia recommends 16gb of ram for that card.

What? Its a graphics card it doesn't have a system ram requirement.

Sure it does. The graphics cards have a lot of features available through the software. Shadowplay, streaming, etc. Nvidia assumes that by purchasing the card you want to use all of its available features, and therefore, it has recommended specs in order to use it to its fullest. It'd be bad business to recommend nothing and for the consumer to find out shadowplay won't work.

 

[burritobob]

you can check the requirements on the official geforce page aswell:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/geforce-gtx-980-ti/buy-...

I feel like the fact that most test benches run these things just fine with 8GB of RAM proves that you don't really need the the recommended or even the minimum requirements. They're not maxing out their RAM and still having no issues, the only thing that you need more of at higher resolutions (1080P -> 4K) is more VRAM. I'm not sure if you're the authority on how

directx automatically allocates a vram pool in your ram, which is double the size of your vram. this pool will "feed" the gpu's vram when you start running graphically heavy applications.

but I couldn't find anything on how this would hinder the GPU even at 4K.

 

[Forgotten031511]

no it's definitely not enough. The minimum requirement is 8 gb, but nvidia recommends 16gb of ram for that card.

I agree, the GTX 980Ti has 6GB of DDR5 VRAM itself. That is for the GPU to use, but with all the software assistance in these cards on top of the game and standard system usage, 6GB is NOT enough. I would go no less than 8GB in any gaming rig these days.

 

[Dunlop0078]

I see so we will get about 4gb of the 6gb of vram he has if im understanding this correctly. Which should be enough for most games at 4k for the time being until he upgrades his cpu and ram.

 

[burritobob]

I agree, the GTX 980Ti has 6GB of DDR5 VRAM itself. That is for the GPU to use, but with all the software assistance in these cards on top of the game and standard system usage, 6GB is NOT enough. I would go no less than 8GB in any gaming rig these days.

Not really sure where you're getting this from, check out an actual source Just don't run a ton of background applications and you'll be more than fine.

 

[Forgotten031511]

I see so we will get about 4gb of the 6gb of vram he has if im understanding this correctly. Which should be enough for most games at 4k for the time being until he upgrades his cpu and ram.

No, the VRAM and System RAM do not correspond. If you have 6GB VRAM, you will have 6GB of VRAM and have access to it all. Having 6GB of DDR3 System RAM is just not enough to run a gaming system. 8GB is the minimum standard in all gaming rigs for various reasons.

In 4K gaming, you will need a 6GB+ VRAM card and/or SLI/Crossfire 4GB cards. You will also need a PC to match, and 6GB System REM will not cut it in 4K gaming.

 

[clonazepam]

you can check the requirements on the official geforce page aswell:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/geforce-gtx-980-ti/buy-...

I feel like the fact that most test benches run these things just fine with 8GB of RAM proves that you don't really need the the recommended or even the minimum requirements. They're not maxing out their RAM and still having no issues, the only thing that you need more of at higher resolutions (1080P -> 4K) is more VRAM. I'm not sure if you're the authority on how

directx automatically allocates a vram pool in your ram, which is double the size of your vram. this pool will "feed" the gpu's vram when you start running graphically heavy applications.

but I couldn't find anything on how this would hinder the GPU even at 4K.

I'll just speak to the benchmarking part. Benchmarking is benchmarking, not a gaming session. It doesn't account for the engine caching more and more assets in RAM as you play. H1Z1 is an example. It'll start out in the 2-3GB range... might be what you see in a bench run. Extended play as noted by the devs, will see increased RAM usage up to 5GB or thereabouts over time. I'd also use GTA 5 as an example, but its umm GTA 5. I see total system RAM usage in the 8GB range that you'd never encounter while doing a bench run.

 

[burritobob]

I'll just speak to the benchmarking part. Benchmarking is benchmarking, not a gaming session. It doesn't account for the engine caching more and more assets in RAM as you play. H1Z1 is an example. It'll start out in the 2-3GB range... might be what you see in a bench run. Extended play as noted by the devs, will see increased RAM usage up to 5GB or thereabouts over time. I'd also use GTA 5 as an example, but its umm GTA 5. I see total system RAM usage in the 8GB range that you'd never encounter while doing a bench run.

I just don't see any tangible numbers for how playing the game @4K would be impacted by 6GB vs. 8GB vs. 16GB if you can provide some form of numbers that show that the card is crippled by having only 6GB then I'd gladly change what was said earlier. Not to mention he's going to upgrade in a couple months (as stated in the original post), why not get the huge gains in FPS now rather than have to wait the 3 months.

 

[Dunlop0078]

I see so we will get about 4gb of the 6gb of vram he has if im understanding this correctly. Which should be enough for most games at 4k for the time being until he upgrades his cpu and ram.

No, the VRAM and System RAM do not correspond. If you have 6GB VRAM, you will have 6GB of VRAM and have access to it all. Having 6GB of DDR3 System RAM is just not enough to run a gaming system. 8GB is the minimum standard in all gaming rigs for various reasons.

In 4K gaming, you will need a 6GB+ VRAM card and/or SLI/Crossfire 4GB cards. You will also need a PC to match, and 6GB System REM will not cut it in 4K gaming.

Most of the games i play dont even use near my 8gb of ram. For example Bf4 will top out at 4.5gb on ultra 1080p. So for most games i would say 8gb of ram is not required 6gb should be enough. And as far as i know gaming at 4k will only use more VRAM not system ram. So i dont see why he wouldn't be able to play most games at 4k even with only 6gb of system ram.

 

[clonazepam]

I'll just speak to the benchmarking part. Benchmarking is benchmarking, not a gaming session. It doesn't account for the engine caching more and more assets in RAM as you play. H1Z1 is an example. It'll start out in the 2-3GB range... might be what you see in a bench run. Extended play as noted by the devs, will see increased RAM usage up to 5GB or thereabouts over time. I'd also use GTA 5 as an example, but its umm GTA 5. I see total system RAM usage in the 8GB range that you'd never encounter while doing a bench run.

I just don't see any tangible numbers for how playing the game @4K would be impacted by 6GB vs. 8GB vs. 16GB if you can provide some form of numbers that show that the card is crippled by having only 6GB then I'd gladly change what was said earlier. Not to mention he's going to upgrade in a couple months (as stated in the original post), why not get the huge gains in FPS now rather than have to wait the 3 months.

I agree, he should get the upgrade if he wants it. I wasn't disagreeing nor saying anything about crippling... that's a pretty far stretch. If the OP was looking for a simple yay or nay, well he got a lot more than he asked for in this thread. 😉

 

[sz0ty0l4]

Well it all will depend on the particular game OP is playing and how it allocates,transfers,uses memory.

As i said it WILL work for sure, but he may have issues. however there is no apparent reason not to buy the card. RAM is cheap.
If it turns out he has issues playing some of his favorite games, then he will know he should just buy another 6gb and problem solved, thats all.

As an example witcher 3 uses a very well done dynamic memory allocation. it does not preload tons of data into the vram, instead it transfers the data dynamically between ram and vram. other games preload data so there is less transfer and this means less ram usage.

But still, as adviced by Microsoft and Nvidia the recommended RAm amount is usually the double of the dedicated vram amount. you will find this if you open up dxdiag in your system, you will find this on nvidia's site, etc.