News Why Does 4K Gaming Require so Much VRAM?

[Admin]

Many games are starting to push well beyond 8GB of VRAM use, particularly at 4K. We discuss what's going on behind the scenes that makes 4K much more demanding on your graphics card.

Why Does 4K Gaming Require so Much VRAM? : Read more

 

[-Fran-]

Good article, Jarred. It would be nice to dig a bit deeper on the different ways graphical engines allocate VRAM and support it by contacting some Devs to give more context. AMD and nVidia will just give generic marketing answers and I don't really trust them, unless it's their engineers given those answers.

In any case, it is definitely important to tell everyone this "VRAM" debacle is nuanced. And that nuance is super important to get a better idea where it matters.

That being said, and as a rule of thumb, you will always want more VRAM, just like you want more RAM. At the same price point and similar-ish performance level, do yourself a favour and always pick the GPU with more VRAM at the same performance and price tiers. Like it or not, it will just help the card last longer, meaning it'll save you money (I guess?) down the line.

Regards.

 

[DavidLejdar]

I suppose the size of the screen has some relevance about the image quality though, doesn't it? Like, at 4k, medium texture quality won't show as much an image quality loss on a 27'' display as it would on a 45+'' display. Of course, with a larger screen, one is supposed to sit further away from it, which then may not make an image quality loss as visible.

But strictly speaking, if one (such as myself) looks specifically i.e. at city builder games and transport tycoon games and similar, and for sake of such games would go at least 32'' 4K, would a bit more VRAM make a visible impact (assuming the game has high-end support of course) ? Or would it in case of a city builder not likely matter as much due to there being a lot of small objects when zoomed out? Or would it even zoomed out still have quite a demand on the VRAM?

Not that I would be in a rush to upgrade. Currently RX 6700 XT with 12 GB VRAM (and AM5 CPU) works nice for running pretty much everything on max at 1440p. Just wondering about the context of VRAM on some other types of games, such as a city builder where one has a bustling metropolis, and wants to keep it at 60+ FPS when scrolling around and when zooming in and out.

 

[btmedic04]

there definitely is a place for 8gb equipped video cards: the sub $300 market. 8gb vram buffers have been around for about 10 years now. its not unreasonable to think that it needs to be lower on the pricing tier, afterall, nobody in their right mind would pay $300+ for an 8gb kit of ddr4 or ddr5 today

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

...would a bit more VRAM make a visible impact (assuming the game has high-end support of course) ? Or would it in case of a city builder not likely matter as much due to there being a lot of small objects when zoomed out? Or would it even zoomed out still have quite a demand on the VRAM?

This all depends on the game, the textures available, and the size of objects. It's why things like the rug in those Redfall images show the most pronounced change with texture quality: It's a big, flat object that may occupy over 1000 pixels in width. With city builders, a lot of the textures probably aren't even larger than 512x512, or maybe even 256x256. Like, if a building is only going to occupy say a small 1–2 percent portion of the display, then even at 4K resolution the actual object size would be maybe 384x216 (i.e. one tenth of the display resolution).

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Good article, Jarred. It would be nice to dig a bit deeper on the different ways graphical engines allocate VRAM and support it by contacting some Devs to give more context. AMD and nVidia will just give generic marketing answers and I don't really trust them, unless it's their engineers given those answers.

In any case, it is definitely important to tell everyone this "VRAM" debacle is nuanced. And that nuance is super important to get a better idea where it matters.

That being said, and as a rule of thumb, you will always want more VRAM, just like you want more RAM. At the same price point and similar-ish performance level, do yourself a favour and always pick the GPU with more VRAM at the same performance and price tiers. Like it or not, it will just help the card last longer, meaning it'll save you money (I guess?) down the line.

I did talk with some technical people, and that's why there's a side bar effectively saying, "Almost all of this is ultimately up to the game developers, so some engines and games will do things one way (e.g. Unreal Engine does a lot of texture swapping AFAICT), while others like to precache everything into memory and avoid stutters (Doom Eternal, to a lesser extent Red Dead Redemption 2)."

One of the other aspects is that games could do tiling in DirectX 12. Then they would only need to load parts of a texture into memory. But tiling also requires effectively knowing which parts are needed, and predicting that can be difficult / impossible, which means it can cause stuttering as other bits need to be loaded until eventually the whole texture is in VRAM.

Another option, which I'm pretty sure various games have used, is that they determine the highest resolution textures to load into VRAM based on your resolution. Let's say a game has up to 2K textures available (which is pretty common these days, I think — 4K textures are rarely used, for the reasons I mentioned in the article). If you're running at 1080p or lower, there's very little benefit to be had from using 2K textures, so the game might just cap the texture size at 1K. And in fact, it might do that at 1440p as well. But at 4K, then it would opt to load the 2K textures (where available — I didn't mention this but obviously a game doesn't need to use the same size textures everywhere).

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

PC are falling behind consoles, and it's all because Nvidia and AMD refuse to give low-end and midrange cards enough VRAM.

-Last gen PS4-pro and Xbox-One-X had 8GB VRAM.
PC kept up. Low-end GTX1060 and RX580 had 6-8GB VRAM to match.

-Today, PS5 and Xbox-Series-X have 16GB VRAM.
PC are not keeping up but have fallen behind. With 8GB VRAM that is insufficient to store all the texture assets.

People talk about "badly optimized ports". But there's little you can "optimize" to deal with a lack of VRAM. Developers are not going to redo all their textures for PC.

 

[russell_john]

PC are falling behind consoles, and it's all because Nvidia and AMD refuse to give low-end and midrange cards enough VRAM.

-Last gen PS4-pro and Xbox-One-X had 8GB VRAM.
PC kept up. Low-end GTX1060 and RX580 had 6-8GB VRAM to match.

-Today, PS5 and Xbox-Series-X have 16GB VRAM.
PC are not keeping up but have fallen behind. With 8GB VRAM that is insufficient to store all the texture assets.

People talk about "badly optimized ports". But there's little you can "optimize" to deal with a lack of VRAM. Developers are not going to redo all their textures for PC.

The PS5 and Series X DO NOT have 16 GB of VRAM, they have 16 GB of TOTAL RAM, that's for both the GPU and CPU to use. If they use 10 GB for VRAM then the CPU only has 6 GB left to work with which is why most quality settings are limited to 30 FPS because the CPU is starved for memory plus in Sony's case they ramp up the GPU frequency but have to lower the CPU frequency to keep package TDP under specs starving the CPU even more and creating a CPU bottleneck limiting the FPS

Also very few games on the PS5 and Series X are true native 4K they are upscaled from a lower resolution

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

The PS5 and Series X DO NOT have 16 GB of VRAM, they have 16 GB of TOTAL RAM, that's for both the GPU and CPU to use.

No, they have 16GB VRAM.

The PS5 has 16GB of blazing fast GDDR6 VRAM, combined with a custom texture decompressor. It's a beast of a console.

Slow PC system memory is completely useless for the GPU processor. That's why adding faster DDR5 makes didly squat difference for gaming. GDDR6 VRAM is exponentially faster than DDR5 system memory.

Textures and shaders needs to be in VRAM to be usable by the GPU.

Directstorage is literally designed to bypass the PC system memory bottleneck.

You can build a PC with 128GB DDR5 system memory, and your game will still stutter and run like garbage with a GPU with only 8GB VRAM.

The system memory on PC in no way compensates for the lack of VRAM compared to consoles.

To compete with a console with 16GB VRAM, PC need GPU with 16GB VRAM. That was the case last gen with 8GB, and it is the case today.

PC GPU should have 16GB VRAM, there's no excuse anymore. PC GPU with 8GB VRAM can not handle today's console ports.

 

[atomicWAR]

The PS5 and Series X DO NOT have 16 GB of VRAM, they have 16 GB of TOTAL RAM, that's for both the GPU and CPU to use. If they use 10 GB for VRAM then the CPU only has 6 GB left to work with which is why most quality settings are limited to 30 FPS because the CPU is starved for memory plus in Sony's case they ramp up the GPU frequency but have to lower the CPU frequency to keep package TDP under specs starving the CPU even more and creating a CPU bottleneck limiting the FPS

Also very few games on the PS5 and Series X are true native 4K they are upscaled from a lower resolution

Yeah comparing consoles to PC is frustrating due to the inherent differences in both platforms but generally speaking you've covered it. I honestly wish this gen had just focused on 90-120hz more. When you have a cross gen game your likely to a good performance mode going over 60fps but not so much for current gen only titles. 60hz should absolutely be the floor for frame rates as to often 30hz just ends up looking like trash in 3D games.

I love Zelda Tears of the Kingdom but the only time its' 30hz looks ok is when I am playing it in handheld mode and its smaller size screen 'smooths' things out a little. That is when the frame time delivery is consistent as there are a few spots it gets wonky (technical term). Point being this rush to higher resolutions isn't always the best answer to better looking game-play. Nintendo was right doing something different BUT for docked mode I would love 60hz to have been standard. Yes I do realize the age and lack of power the chip has, it has aged impressively considering. Nintendo needs to move on to new hardware but that's another conversation.

System memory is completely useless for the GPU, textures and shaders needs to be in VRAM to be usable.

The system memory on PC in no way compensates for the lack of VRAM compared to consoles.

To compete with a console with 16GB VRAM, PC need GPU with 16GB VRAM. That was the case last gen, and it is the case today.

You're a bit off base here. russell_john pretty much nailed the rough out line on how the consoles use ram. They still need to run the OS and other base functions. In the case of the PS5 it uses around 2-2.5GB of that 16GB for the OS leaving between 13.5-14GB free for games according to various devs (XBSX 13.5GB usable, XBSS 8GB usable). PC's don't run the OS on the video card so the VRAM isn't limited in the same fashion as a console where memory is shared.

Microsoft helps game devs pull more performance from the Xbox Series S | Engadget

A recent Microsoft kit lets games use more memory on the Xbox Series S, providing a major graphics boost..

www.engadget.com

And sorry system ram does actually help compensate for lack of VRAM though admittedly its not ideal and games need to have been coded correctly to use it. This is where bad ports come in. So at the end of the day no a PC does not need 16GB of VRAM to compete with current gen consoles. 8GB is basically entry level at this point like the series S but even those newer cards should out perform it (RTX 3060 Ti+/4060+) in over all better settings, resolution and frame rates...and current gen 12GB cards should beat easily beat any of the big boy consoles on the market (bad ports excluded).

Saying PC is behind consoles at the moment just isn't true. Their are differences and some of them make ports less than ideal but the general basis of your argument is wrong. Consoles don't have 16GB of VRAM available for games and system ram can help with VRAM limited scenarios in many games (not all).

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

You're a bit off base here. russell_john pretty much nailed the rough out line on how the consoles use ram. They still need to run the OS and other base functions. In the case of the PS5 it uses around 2-2.5GB of that 16GB for the OS leaving between 13.5-14GB free for games according to various devs (XBSX 13.5GB usable, XBSS 8GB usable). PC's don't run the OS on the video card so the VRAM isn't limited in the same fashion as a console where memory is shared.

Playstation does not disclose the size of the OS at runtime, so it's pointless for you to make guesses.

The OS itself likely takes up barely any space.

PS5 uses a custom version of FreeBSD completely developed in C. The footprint of the OS is likely extremely low, much lower than your guesses. We're talking megabytes, not gigabytes.

What takes up some space is the rendering protocols.
The size on disc is very large, indicating it has many custom libraries that it can dynamically load at runtime to minimize the footprint.

 

[atomicWAR]

Playstation does not disclose the size of the OS at runtime, so it's pointless for you to make guesses.

The OS itself likely takes up barely any space.

PS5 uses a custom version of FreeBSD completely developed in C. The footprint of the OS is likely extremely low, much lower than your guesses. We're talking megabytes, not gigabytes.

What takes up some space is the rendering protocols.
The size on disc is very large, indicating it has many custom libraries that it can dynamically load at runtime to minimize the footprint.

This isn't just my guess. These are the rumors from devs in the industry working on games for the PS5 floating around the web. But as stated they are rumors in regards to PS5. As you stated Sony hasn't made an official annoucement in regards to active OS/system file usage in ram... but with the OS and system files taking up 157GB of storage I seriously doubt only megabytes are running in ram, freeBSD based OS or not. Yes you can dynamically load a runtime to minimize the footprint but I'd be amazed if it was all still under 2GB for everything. So I disagree 'its pointless to make a guess'.

And in the case of the XB series consoles their ram use is well documented. So even if your 100% correct above which I highly doubt you are, you only tackled the PS5 side of the equation in consoles' VRAM. So maybe your taking the best case scenario with PS5 (maybe not without official ram usage specs..probably though even with leaks) but regardless there are differnently spec'd current gen consoles out there your just choosing to ignore.

I don't know what your issue is with PC (I literally see daily posts just like this one from you). Just because you want consoles to be better, it doesn't mean they are or aren't...it honestly depends on when in the cycle we are, first year..two tops consoles can outperform better equipped PC's due to their tighter optimization due to fixed hardware specs. So consoles have some huge advantages but they also have some fairly significant handicaps compared to PC you like to ignore in your posts. Like PC catches up and surpasses console horse power quickly (all fronts CPU, GPU, RAM/VRAM and storage). Both have their place and both are great currently.

 

[SunMaster]

No, they have 16GB VRAM.

The PS5 has 16GB of blazing fast GDDR6 VRAM, combined with a custom texture decompressor. It's a beast of a console.

Slow PC system memory is completely useless for the GPU processor. That's why adding faster DDR5 makes didly squat difference for gaming. GDDR6 VRAM is exponentially faster than DDR5 system memory.

Textures and shaders needs to be in VRAM to be usable by the GPU.

Directstorage is literally designed to bypass the PC system memory bottleneck.

You can build a PC with 128GB DDR5 system memory, and your game will still stutter and run like garbage with a GPU with only 8GB VRAM.

The system memory on PC in no way compensates for the lack of VRAM compared to consoles.

To compete with a console with 16GB VRAM, PC need GPU with 16GB VRAM. That was the case last gen with 8GB, and it is the case today.

PC GPU should have 16GB VRAM, there's no excuse anymore. PC GPU with 8GB VRAM can not handle today's console ports.

Regardless of your interpretarion, the vram in ps and xbox is shared between cpu and gpu. So if you allocate 16gb to the gpu there won’t be anything left for the cpu. The ps5 does have 512mb dram though, no idea about xbox.

So no, the consoles do not have 16gb vram for graphics by any real life way of measuring.

 

[Colif]

8gb GPU been around 10 years, it wasn't going to stay enough forever.

PS5 can still allocate more VRAM to games than most Nvidia GPU have. How much is unclear, but its more than 8gb.

Some 1080p games now need 6gb, its creeping up.

Guess I replace my 7900xt before I ever run out

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

8gb GPU been around 10 years, it wasn't going to stay enough forever. PS5 can still allocate more VRAM to games than most Nvidia GPU have.

Yup, and people underestimate the amount of bandwidth the PS5 creates with its custom SSD controller, 2 custom I/O processors and its custom Kraken decompressor.

The PS5 has an incredible ability to pull assets on its SSD into its VRAM pool without lag.

PS4 was comparable to a PC, PS5 is not. PS5's I/O complex is made out of all custom chips, there is nothing comparable on PC.

DirectStorage is trying to mimic this on PC, but it's a software solution when PS5 is a hardware solution. DirectStorage is a bandaid to bandwidth starved PC.

Each time another stuttering PC port comes out which uses a lot of VRAM, PC gamers blame developers. Developers are not magicians, they can't fit all their assets in half the space on PC. PC gaming is a smaller audience than console and mobile gaming, if you want PC gaming to survive, PC gamers need to direct their anger at Nvidia and AMD for shortchanging gamers with 8GB VRAM.

 

[SunMaster]

Yup, and people underestimate the amount of bandwidth the PS5 creates with its custom SSD controller, 2 custom I/O processors and its custom Kraken decompressor.

The PS5 has an incredible ability to pull assets on its SSD into its VRAM pool without lag.

PS4 was comparable to a PC, PS5 is not. PS5's I/O complex is made out of all custom chips, there is nothing comparable on PC.

DirectStorage is trying to mimic this on PC, but it's a software solution when PS5 is a hardware solution. DirectStorage is a bandaid to bandwidth starved PC.

Each time another stuttering PC port comes out which uses a lot of VRAM, PC gamers blame developers. Developers are not magicians, they can't fit all their assets in half the space on PC. PC gaming is a smaller audience than console and mobile gaming, if you want PC gaming to survive, PC gamers need to direct their anger at Nvidia and AMD for shortchanging gamers with 8GB VRAM.

You do understand there are reasons dram is chosen for cpu memory in a PC, and vram for GPU. RIght? If you don't, please take the time to educate yourself.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

You do understand there are reasons dram is chosen for cpu memory in a PC, and vram for GPU. RIght?

I was never "chosen" by anyone. GPU coprocessors didn't exist back back then.

To interact with the Windows graphics pipeline you had to call GDI functions. Glide didn't exist, DirectX didn't exist, OpenGL didn't exist.

When the first coprocessors came out, the rendering pipeline became a subsystem on PC, GDI continued to exist next to API like Glide that allowed you to access a 3D rendering pipeline.

This is still the case today, the GUI interface on Windows uses very different API than the ones games use.

No one chose this, no one wanted it to be this way, it's just that PC evolved like this since graphical coprocessors didn't exist, so it became a subsystem on PC.

This was never the case on consoles. Consoles don't need legacy support, they could fully integrate their rendering pipeline.

As far as my opinion, I believe PC need to evolve to a unified architecture too. Apple has done this with their custom M1 ARM design and it has lead to a massive boost in I/O performance and power reduction.

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[Colif]

Apple make hardware and software, easier to change then... PC isn't so simple.

Simply getting hardware makers to add TPM took 6 years.

PC isn't just a games machine, PS5 isn't real good at running an office. They both have differences for reasons.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

There is increasing reason to have this unified system because all these applications rely heavily on tasks that are highly parallel in nature.

The costly mathematical calculations in gaming are dot products. You need to do dot products to see where something is in 3D space, you need to do them for bounding boxes, for everything from phong lighting to raytracing. And you need to do millions of those every second, which requires millions of parallel coprocessors.

The mathematical models for predicting weather patterns are very similar, so are those for video editing, etc.

The need to have a unified architecture on PC is more important than ever.

PC has tried to keep up with these unified solutions from consoles, Apple, mobile, etc. PC introduced lots of bandaids and software solutions like DirectStorage. But cracks are starting to show, and the traditional PC architecture is increasingly expensive for consumers.

 

[atomicWAR]

There is increasing reason to have this unified system because all these applications rely heavily on tasks that are highly parallel in nature.

The costly mathematical calculations in gaming are dot products. You need to do dot products to see where something is in 3D space, you need to do them for bounding boxes, for everything from phong lighting to raytracing. And you need to do millions of those every second, which requires millions of parallel coprocessors.

The mathematical models for predicting weather patterns are very similar, so are those for video editing, etc.

The need to have a unified architecture on PC is more important than ever.

PC has tried to keep up with these unified solutions from consoles, Apple, mobile, etc. PC introduced lots of bandaids and software solutions like DirectStorage. But cracks are starting to show, and the traditional PC architecture is increasingly expensive for consumers.

This again for the umpteenth time? PCs don't need to be designed like consoles/use a unified SOC. Colif said it best....

PC isn't just a games machine, PS5 isn't real good at running an office. They both have differences for reasons.

Banging on how horrible PC is compared to console is just pointless. They have differences for reasons to rephrase Colif's great response. You're (you or Colif) not wrong though 8GB is getting to lean for PC at 1080P (ie entry level only). We do need to see a VRAM increase clearly. So while you have a solid point here, it doesn't mean the rest of you pc vs console argument is valid. But credit given when credit is due.

 

[atomicWAR]

Guess I replace my 7900xt before I ever run out

Lol. I feel the same with my 4090. Not to hijack the thread but how is that 7900xt treating you? Pondering one for my nephew that or a 4070(ti) class card.

 

[SunMaster]

I was never "chosen" by anyone. GPU coprocessors didn't exist back back then.

The type of memory is chosen, not you, Vram has advantages, and so has dram. So it's not like vram is "best" or "faster" - it depends on the type of use.

 

[atomicWAR]

The type of memory is chosen, not you, Vram has advantages, and so has dram. So it's not like vram is "best" or "faster" - it depends on the type of use.

You're both right. Vram wasn't a thing way back when. BUT PC has clear use cases where 'slower' dram is 'faster' than vram due to the tighter latencies dram tends to have compared to vram. So vram is not supreme in all ways. Like pc and console...dram and vram are different for reasons.

 

[SunMaster]

PC has tried to keep up with these unified solutions from consoles, Apple, mobile, etc. PC introduced lots of bandaids and software solutions like DirectStorage. But cracks are starting to show, and the traditional PC architecture is increasingly expensive for consumers.

You seem to think the consoles are some bandwidth monsters, and for some reason on the leading edge of performance.

They're not. At the time of release they work like a nice midrange PC performance wise. From that point onward it's downhill. You seem to believe that the CPU will benefit from the theoretical bandwidth of the vram. It won't - not for cpu-related tasks.

The PS5 uses common technology, like m.2 a d pci express 4, bluetooth and usb. They use the x86-64 instruction set and a graphics chip from AMD. In current iterations of PS and Xbox the CPUs are very similar to Ryzen 3700, running a little slower. The graphics in the PS5 is something between rx5600 abd rx5700. The fact that PS5 has one or several asics doesn't increase any bandwitdh.

I do think that consoles are fine machines if you only want to game. But they're nowhere near current PC hardware. As time goes by the gap grows. Every time. The various xboxes and playstations have never surpassed current PC hardware.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I do think that consoles are fine machines if you only want to game. But they're nowhere near current PC hardware. As time goes by the gap grows. Every time. The various xboxes and playstations have never surpassed current PC hardware.

This. PCMasterRace... and I have a Series X and a Switch. Both see limited use compared to the PC... the Series X for sports titles... and the Switch for all the retro NES/SNES stuff I played as a kid.

Neither will ever replace my PC though.

Speaking of retro... I need to find some kind of an Amiga clone so I can play all the old games I had on my first computer in 1988... the Amiga 500.

As for 4K PC gaming and VRAM... since the 3090 purchase in 2021 I will never again go with anything less than 24GB. The 4090 I expect to last for the next few years... and current AAA titles I've noticed using 14-16GB... none have come close to maxxing out the VRAM on the 4090.