How much VRAM will I actually need?

[The_Prince2017]

I am gaming at 768p and medium-high settings. I will be getting new AAA titles so how much VRAM will I need for future?

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Rather than worrying over VRAM, just think about what card you need instead. VRAM is not as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

 

[jerdle]

A 2gb card should be fine for quite some time

 

[The_Prince2017]

I went for the 750 TI as I thought it should be enough for 768p. I am also accustomed to 20-30 FPS. My current CPU bottlenecks it though.

 

[10tacle]

VRAM use goes up with higher resolution, higher quality, and higher AA settings. At 1366x768 resolution and medium settings, you should not see anything crack 2GB. Also, just remember that whatever you see in a GPU software monitoring utility such as Afterburner and GPU-Z only shows how much VRAM has been allocated, not necessarily what is actually being used.

More often that not, the allocation use number showing is higher than what is actually being used by the GPU. Here's a good link with VRAM use measurements (actual use, not allocation). Note that most games are fine at 1080p with 2GB, and the two different bars in the benchmarks at each resolution represent AA off and AA on. The only games in this test you may want to watch are GTAV, Shadow Of Mortar, and Far Cry 4.

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/90/much-vram-need-1080p-1440p-4k-aa-enabled/index.html

 

[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.

 

[The_Prince2017]

Thanks for all the answers. I am now sure that I made the right purchase.
Please note: The GTX 950 is for $260 in my country and this was the best price/performance so I went for this.

 

[grimfox]

The Fury has 4Gb of ram and I believe is capable of gaming at 4k resolution running out of vram. I think any reasonable graphics card is capable of handling basic HD. 1Gb vram I suspect would be sufficient in almost all cases. If you upgrade your monitor to 1080p or 1440p, you might consider a 2g card. Which most medium level cards will have by default.