JackNaylorPE :
Some selective quoting being done on the usefulness of 4GB. I use 2GB is for single screen builds, 4 GB for multi monitor setups
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/palit_geforce_gtx_680_4gb_jetstream_review,26.html
Now the setup could benefit from triple monitor setups at 5760x1080 (which is a 6 Mpixels resolution), but even there I doubt if 4 GB is really something you'd need to spend money on. It might make a difference at 16xAA and the most stringent games, or if you game in 3D Stereo and triple monitor gaming -- I mean sure -- at any point graphics memory can and will run out. There's one exception to the rule, and that's Skyrim all beefed, tweaked and modded upwards. But the universal question remains, is it worth it investing in that extra memory?
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/43109-evga-geforce-gtx-680-classified-4gb/?page=8
Of more interest is the 2,204MB framebuffer usage when running the EVGA card, suggesting that the game, set to Ultra quality, is stifled by the standard GTX 680's 2GB.
You stopped on the Hexus.net article right before it explained this:
"This graph shows that while the average and per-second framerate of the EVGA card is better than the 6GB-equipped Sapphire TOXIC, both produce a near-identical number of sub-33ms frames. Of more interest is the 2,204MB framebuffer usage when running the EVGA card, suggesting that the game, set to Ultra quality, is stifled by the standard GTX 680's 2GB.
We ran the game on both GTX 680s directly after one another and didn't feel the extra smoothness implied by the results of the 4GB-totin' card."
So the results were only noticeable interms of FPS, not the the reviewers eyes.
The argument that the consoles have 8GB of RAM and more RAM will be necessary in the future because of that is specious. The devices themselves have 8GB total system RAM - most systems today have 4, 8, or 16 GB of RAM to go along with their 2, 3, 4, or 6GB of video RAM on their GPU. That's systems ranging from 6-22GB of system RAM, much higher than consoles.
Both Consoles are running a 256-bit system memory bus and the PS4 has the most shaders at 1152, the xbox at 768. Whilst shaders are not everything per se, the specifications for the GPU on the SoC for the consoles is quite similar to the GTX 760. AMD's competing product in that arena is the 7950 which enjoys a higher shader count, 384-bit memory bus, and 3GB of RAM. Both perform very similarly in real world tests. All this is to say that there's no real reason to believe at this point that the 8GB of system RAM on a 256-bit memory bus from the consoles is going to drive up the RAM above 2GB on a 256-bit BUS at 1080p.
Of course these are my theories - don't take it from me. Instead take it from this article:
http://www.pcper.com/news/Editorial/Epic-Games-disappointed-PS4-and-Xbox-One
Back in 2011, the Samaritan Demo was created by Epic Games to persuade console manufacturers. This demo was how Epic considered the next generation of consoles to perform. They said, back in 2011, that this demo would theoretically require 2.5 teraFLOPs of performance for 30FPS at true 1080p; ultimately their demo ran on the PC with a single GTX 680, approximately 3.09 teraFLOPs.
This required performance, (again) approximately 2.5 teraFLOPs, is higher than what is theoretically possible for the consoles, which is less than 2 teraFLOPs. The PC may have more overhead than consoles, but the PS4 and Xbox One would be too slow even with zero overhead.
Now, of course, this does not account for reducing quality where it will be the least noticeable and other cheats. Developers are able to reduce particle counts and texture resolutions in barely-noticeable places; they are also able to render below 1080p or even below 720p, as was the norm for our current console generation, to save performance for more important things. Perhaps developers might even use different algorithms which achieve the same, or better, quality for less computation at the expense of more sensitivity to RAM, bandwidth, or what-have-you.
But, in the end, Epic Games did not get the ~2.5 teraFLOPs they originally hoped for when they created the Samaritan Demo. This likely explains, at least in part, why the Elemental Demo looked a little sad at Sony's press conference: it was a little FLOP.