News New Filing Hints at a Memory Upgrade for RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 Ti

Nice to see they realized their GPUs needed more VRAM, finally.

My cynical self ponders if they really did it because it was "gamers" asking for it, lol. Still a good thing, so good on nVidia for adding more VRAM on those cards, finally.

Regards.
 
Nice to see they realized their GPUs needed more VRAM, finally.

My cynical self ponders if they really did it because it was "gamers" asking for it, lol. Still a good thing, so good on nVidia for adding more VRAM on those cards, finally.

Regards.
I can see the 12GB on a 3080 being useful although I am yet to run into any problems with my 3080 10GB gaming at 1440p and 4K.

However 16GB on a 3070Ti just seems like a marketing gimmick so they can probably price it at the same as 3080 10GB when they discontinue it.
 
I can see the 12GB on a 3080 being useful although I am yet to run into any problems with my 3080 10GB gaming at 1440p and 4K.

However 16GB on a 3070Ti just seems like a marketing gimmick so they can probably price it at the same as 3080 10GB when they discontinue it.
I do VR and most games use at least 9GB VRAM (most are still tuned around 8GB), but I can confidently say new VR games will use way more. That's why I have been utterly disappointed with nVidia this gen and why I see this as a very good thing.

Regards.
 
I do VR and most games use at least 9GB VRAM (most are still tuned around 8GB), but I can confidently say new VR games will use way more. That's why I have been utterly disappointed with nVidia this gen and why I see this as a very good thing.

Regards.
What a game uses and what a game needs can be very different. Most games will use more when it available. I do however think 12GB on the 3080 is a better amount, I just think 16Gb on a 3070Ti is more about marketing and pricing
 
What a game uses and what a game needs can be very different. Most games will use more when it available. I do however think 12GB on the 3080 is a better amount, I just think 16Gb on a 3070Ti is more about marketing and pricing
That's a bit of unnecessary semantics in this context, although I do get your point. I cannot tell (and expect) a developer to cap their memoy usage at 8, 10, 12 or 16GB+, or expect a game to cap at any arbitrary value, so I can only talk from what I see the games I have and play on actually use and infer from that, as I have 16GB (6900XT) of VRAM available to measure, they are capped and coded around 8GB, but still going all the way to 9GB at times. The one that's used the most is Half Life: Alyx at 9.5GB, and then VRChat is always hovering around 7.5GB, depending on the world and the texture quality of it.

So, I'm not so sure, in particular, the 16GB of the 3070ti to be a gimmick. Sure, it probably is to any person playing under 4K or not using VR, but these are not "mainstream" cards anymore. And the people willing to spend the shekles know exactly the purpose they'll give to them. I have a friend, who is a game developer, and he needs a 3090 to not only play games, but also develop, for example. If the 3080 would've been a 16GB card, he could have skipped getting a 3090, for instance. And so on. Certainly not your "general use case" and I'll agree (preemtively) there, but given the price range I did expect more on day 1 from these cards. Again, I'm glad nVidia realized this, but I am now wondering if it is truly because of "gamers" xP

Regards.
 
Several games now use over 10GBs of VRAM with settings cranked up to max. (used, not allocated)

VRAM amounts on GPUs needs to be matched to that GPU's rasterization power. Some cards (the RTX 3060 12GB and the RTX 2060 12GB) are mismatched with too much VRAM. They will run out of rasterization power before they can make good use of all that memory (over the next couple/few years). The RTX 3080 10GB has the opposite issue. It will run out of VRAM before it tops out in rasterization power. The 12GB cards seem like just marketing ploy. Manufacturers want to make it look like this is a NEW CARD (jazz hands) so they double the memory.
 
Ah but max settings :eek:

View: https://youtu.be/PjDgKXe8gxs


Although I do agree a top end gpu should be able to do it if you want
Hahaha! If you can do max settings, do it. If you can't (or think it's a waste) then buy the appropriate, weaker GPU and don't do it. When I buy a top end GPU I do it more for longevity than max settings. Max settings is just a fortunate side effect. ;)
I was able to take advantage of the GPU (selling) prices and upgraded twice in the last year (Vega 64 -> Titan Xp -> RX 6900 XT) for a final net cost of below MSRP on the RX 6900 XT.
 
Last edited:

spongiemaster

Admirable
Dec 12, 2019
2,273
1,277
7,560
However 16GB on a 3070Ti just seems like a marketing gimmick so they can probably price it at the same as 3080 10GB when they discontinue it.
Memory capacities are predetermined by per chip capacity to maintain memory bandwidth. The current 3070Ti uses 8x1GB memory. In order to produce a card with the same performance but more memory, the next bump is 8x2GB chips. There are no 1.x GB memory chips to have a capacity between 8 and 16 GB.