Question VRAM amount ?

[tbgjlb]

Just a couple of quick questions with regards to me buying a prebuilt or custom built gaming PC.

First. Is a pre build or custom build but from where.... cyberpower , chillblast , pcspecialist. Does anyone have opinions on whether any of the above are any good or not, or any alternatives in the UK ?

Second. Is 8gb vram enough ?. I know with pc's generally speaking the more the better, more ram, threads , cores, etc etc . But money comes into it and so a balance has to be found. Over the last few months articles pop up on my phone about vram and that 8gb is not enough, even suggesting that in the next two to three years new games may not be able to play on 8gb vram . Is this a reality or an industry scam as I'm trying to get some sort of future proofing so that games will still be playable in a few years time.

thanks for any help

 

[SkyNetRising]

Second. Is 8gb vram enough?

Depends on monitor resolution and games played.
For 1080p/medium settings it's generally enough.
For 1440p/4k high/ultra settings it is not enough.

Over the last few months articles pop up on my phone about vram and that 8gb is not enough even suggesting that in the next two to three years new games may not be able to play on 8gb vram .
Is this a reality?

Games often get developed for consoles and then ported to pc.
16GB unified memory is standard for consoles.
If pc has less vram, then it is usual to have performance issues on such games.

 

[Ralston18]

What games do you play or plan to play?

Most applications/games provide some listing of hardware requirements in the form of "minimal", "recommended", or "best".

You do not want "minimal" and you do want as much "best" as you can afford.

What is your gaming PC budget?

As I understand it all, there will be some requirement for X amount of RAM. Ensure that the build meets or exceeds that RAM requirement and that the installed RAM is a kit of matched RAM for dual channel use and configured per the motherboard's documentation.

Allow the OS (Windows - correct? ) to manage virtual memory.

Once the build and game are up, stable, and performing well, then consider vram etc..

I would not make vram the focal point of a considered build.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[tbgjlb]

thanks for the above replies . It basically confirms my thoughts about vram. In terms of budget less is best but having looked around the above sites it would seem like give or take a little around £1500 unfortunately.

still looking for any views on the above sites.

 

[geofelt]

Be careful with pre-builts unless you have some control over the components.
Pre builts often include minimal generic power supplies and are not built to be upgraded.

It may be better to create a build list yourself and pay a local shop to do the assembly for you.

VRAM resides in the graphics card and 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.

Video Card Performance: 2GB vs 4GB Memory

Similar video cards are often available in versions with more than one memory size. The GeForce GTX 680 is an example, and comes in both 2GB and 4GB variants. With computer components more is often better, but does doubling the memory on a video card like this actually help with game performance...

www.pugetsystems.com

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.

 

[LordVile]

Just a couple of quick questions with regards to me buying a pre built or custom build gaming pc.

First. Is a pre build or custom build but from where.... cyberpower , chillblast , pcspecialist. Does anyone have opinions about if the above are any good or not or any alternatives in the uk.

Second. Is 8gb vram enough ?. I know with pc's generally speaking the more the better, more ram, threads , cores, etc etc . But money comes into it and so a balance has to be found. Over the last few months articles pop up on my phone about vram and that 8gb is not enough even suggesting that in the next two to three years new games may not be able to play on 8gb vram . Is this a reality or an industry scam as I trying to get some sort of future proofing so the pc will still be playable in a few years time.

thanks for any help

Unless you’re playing at 4K then it’s fine. 8GB cards generally aren’t powerful enough to make the VRAM headroom an issue unless you purposefully change the settings to make it so.

 

[tbgjlb]

thanks for all the help and advice so far. The monitor I'm using is a 1440 , which is why all the questions .
Another question . what's better to go with a 4070 super 12gb or 5060 ti 16gb

 

[Teknoman2]

In a more general sense, if you are not planning to build it yourself, instead of a prebuilt, if its not from a reputable store that has expertise in the matter, it would be best to go to a store that sells PC parts with a list and have them build you a custom system.

As for your second question, the 4070S is a more powerful card than the 5060ti but has less VRAM. 12GB will not be a big limitation in 1440p except for max graphics in some games, but it will become obsolete much sooner as graphics get more demanding.

 

[SkyNetRising]

what's better to go with a 4070 super 12gb or 5060 ti 16gb

Neither.
5060 ti equivalent for less $ is RX 9060 XT 16GB.
4070 Super equivalent (same $, ~+15% more performance) is RX 9070 16GB.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

If you're spending money today, it has to do more than you need today, not just tomorrow. 8GB is antiquated at this point and nobody should be considering that little unless they will never touch modern games i.e. retro gamers as an exception

 

[gamerk316]

8GB VRAM is at this point a bottleneck when running @1440p; I wouldn't bother even considering an 8GB card at this stage.

 

[dece870717]

I would either get a 4070 Ti Super or a 5070 Ti. If you really want your computer to last a good long while, especially the GPU, get something with 16GB of VRAM. When I bought and built a brand new PC a couple years ago, if I knew that they were going to release the 4070 Ti Super, I would have waited and got that instead of the 4070 Ti with 12GB. One of the most irritating problems I have to deal with is running out of VRAM really fast.

A bunch of games out there now. The way they use up VRAM, the lowering of resolution can sometimes hardly make a dent.

Take ratchet and clank rift apart for example. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/...rt-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/5.html At 1080p and maximum graphical settings, it's already using more than 10 gigs of VRAM. The difference between 1080p and 1440p is about 400 megabytes of VRAM and then the difference between 1440p and 4k is about 1 gigabyte of VRAM.

Do you want to take advantage of frame generation? Well, that increases VRAM usage too. For me, this issue bothers me so much that if it wasn't so inconvenient to sell my 4070 Ti just so I could buy a 4070 Ti Super, I would. Actually, at that point, if I sold my 4070 Ti for a good price, I would just try to find the cheapest 5080.

There's nothing more annoying than dealing with a bunch of stuttering because you're out of VRAM.