[SOLVED] Is 6GB VRAM sufficient for open world online games like Warzone?

[jase888]

I have a 10700kf, 32GB DDR4 RAM and a RX580 8GB currently, but the bottleneck is my GPU and whilst I still get good FPS I can get a 5600XT for £30-40 if I sell my 580 now (due to the low stock in GPU's in the UK)

My concern is the 5600XT only has 6GB VRAM (compared to 8GB on the 580) and I play open world games like Warzone, PUBG, GTA, etc - I remember when I got the 580 reading that the more VRAM the better for rendering these open world games and helps with the viewing distance? Is this still the case? If not then whats the benefits of more VRAM?

I've also heard if you have spare RAM on the PC dont need as much VRAM but isnt it a bit different as VRAM is DDR6 & onboard is only DDR4?

 

[marshallmorriss]

Here is a useful video on this topic

View: https://youtu.be/Utv144XeHag

 

[rgd1101]

I've also heard if you have spare RAM on the PC dont need as much VRAM but isnt it a bit different as VRAM is DDR6 & onboard is only DDR4?

wrong

what resolution?

 

[jase888]

wrong

what resolution?

Ok this is what I thought but various people have told me that. So really should be looking at 8GB?

Resolution will be 1080p for now but maybe 2k in a few years

 

[geofelt]

The cards are of comparable performance.
Exchanging is not likely to make a difference.
The amount of vram in a card is usually appropriate to the card.
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.

DDR6 ram is used in graphics cards. DDR4 is used on the pc. There is no connection between the two.

Possibly having plenty of DDR4 ram in the pc could allow pre loaded vram contents to be available faster than from a drive.
It is the game that would handle that.

If you are into modding a game, then it is very likely that you are not doing it optimally and the availability of vram may become a big issue.

 

[renz496]

Just lower settings that needs lots of VRAM?

 

[OtapIc]

short answer is, YES it's enough

one thing if you are concerned about VRAM usage is just to turn down Texture settings
basically think about VRAM like a place to store rendering data that goes to your monitor
more VRAM doesn't necessarily mean better perfomance

RAM doesn't effect your GPU unless you're using an iGPU (Which you aren't)

 

[neurokitty]

Most of the time, not always, but most of the time the only things I've seen really using VRAM to a significant effect are textures and shadow resolution. 6GB of VRAM vs 8GB of VRAM is the difference between high texture settings and ultra texture settings (or for more recent games today medium/high), and sometimes at the cost of the resolution of shadows depending on how the engine in question caches certain data.

The 1660Ti for example can play games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p 60fps with ultra settings, but due to only having 6GB of VRAM the textures exceed the 6000MB limit in certain areas of the game, so it's a matter of bumping down the texture quality to high which will usually consume around 5,500MB leaving some headroom.

Not every game is the same, but 6GB of VRAM is for the most part enough, but as we move on from here into 2021 and beyond I'd imagine 8GB is going to be the minimum for what would be considered a good gaming experience from a visual perspective, essentially becoming the new 6GB just as 4GB was replaced before it.

But really unless you're playing at 1440p or 4K the difference in quality between high and ultra textures is negligible and probably unnoticeable unless you actually focused on it to pick out the differences.