Report: Sapphire Building 8GB Radeon R9 290X 'Toxic' Card

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knowom

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8GB of memory is a just absurd. Perhaps for some kind of CAD rendering work you "might" and that's a pretty big "might" I should add be able to make use of it though that's probably even a stretch.I wish GPU memory could be put to good use as a fast storage ramdisk subsystem for a PC at least outside of Linux because I don't see any reason why it couldn't outside of the lack of software developed for that purpose.
 

alchemy69

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It's all about bragging rights. Little rich kids playing WoW @ 1080P "I need this card because I'm a hardcore gamer and I can pwn you newbs with only 4GB...and Twilight Sparkle IS awesome."
 

heero yuy

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as whassname jgriff said this card is going to be good for gaming at HEUG resolutions and so while most people will not need that much ram people with lots of screens or screens with stupid resolutions will need that much ram
 

SirGCal

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Even with one 1600 monitor, the right mods can bring current 6G cards to their knees in terms of memory on the card used. However those examples are extremely few right now. So there is a need for it, but a niche. Plus then modded other resolutions, 2-3 monitor setups, etc. More memory is not a bad thing in any regard accept cost.
 

SirGCal

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Skyrim modded to heck and back, sure it was pretty, but it also brought my friend's Titan's memory usage pushing 6G on that card. He runs a tons of mods though. Still played great obviously but tracking memory usage, it got fat fast. Those are massive textures, etc being loaded also pushing visuals and not performance.

That's just one example that comes to mind.

OMG, I just remembered... He's running 1600, not 1080 so that is roughly twice the pixel count. Sorry about that confusion on my part. (I'll fix the post.. ) I always forget that. (I want a 1440 as I prefer wider over taller, but $... And I do most of the testing accept that one). One gotcha is probably some of these mods aren't as optimized as they could be, wasting a ton of room that might not be necessary. Still they do get pretty but also require resources to execute especially when combined with others and others and... You can still load up the same extreme res texture packs though and give your system a grind. I've easily peaked out my 690 in testing (2G per).

Still, if 3x or the newer 4K come to the mainstream (which are ALREADY available), then this becomes a far easier and more serious 'need' for those niche users real fast.
 

DrBackwater

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8K GAMING HERE WE COME, right up some code nvidea we need 8k enabled support, oh my bad lol. amd.

 

firefoxx04

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When will the consumer just accept when technology gets faster and bigger? When Quad Cores came out, everyone cried wolf. When DDR3 8GB + came out, everyone was like "we dont need that".Now we have 6-8 core machines running over 4ghz with 16-32GB of ram. This card is obviously for users who do crossfire. I have two 6850s in xfire but only 1GB of vram and it sucks. I max Skyrim with one card at 1080p but my vram is still full so the second card does nothing besides lower the gpu usage on my first card. I have more horsepower than I can practically use and would be better off with a new single card with 2gb or more vram.
 

icemunk

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You guys sound the same as those old people who used to say "512kb is more ram than you'll ever need, why would someone need that much ram!" Think forward!
 
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Just glad to see a backplate on this baby. About time all these modern long, heavy cards had one.
 

Tuishimi

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I would say it is a good idea "for the future"... but in "the future" will this card be relevant? I imagine a new gpu will come out in a year or so that smokes this one and is designed to handle all the new games at higher resolutions, etc.That being said, my 270x duals eat up their 2GB of RAM very quickly at 1080p with Skyrim modded up.
 

teknomedic

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why all the hate on 8gb of vram??.. there ARE uses for that much vram today.. just because you game at low res and no hires mods doesn't mean everyone does. I welcome 8gb and cant wait until 16gb
 

bemused_fred

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Even with one 1600 monitor, the right mods can bring current 6G cards to their knees in terms of memory on the card used. However those examples are extremely few right now. So there is a need for it, but a niche. Plus then modded other resolutions, 2-3 monitor setups, etc. More memory is not a bad thing in any regard accept cost.
6GB with "The right mods"? Don't you mean "a mish-mash of conflicting and abominably under-optimised mods made by amateurs who weren't talking to each other"? Because if those things were properly managed and synchronised, they would probably take up about half that space
 
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