Why is Nvidia skimping on the vram?

[Hikakiller]

Directly comparing the recent releases from AMD and NVIDIA, everyone has noticed a big difference. VRAM.
Disregarding the 3.5/.5 gb VRAM issue on the 970's, I take a look at the 970 and 980 and even the 980 Ti and noticed something.
Nvidia skimps on the VRAM. Hugely, and it's effecting my games.
I know I could've waited for a card with more VRAM, but Nvidia released these cards recently. Don't they see some value in futureproofing? (Current day-proofing?)

GTA V and The Witcher 3 both saturate all four gigabytes of ram on my 970 (40 fps average, 1280 x 1024), and I don't understand why Nvidia decided to go with such a low amount. The only argument I ever get (anywhere) is that "No game will ever use all four gigs of VRAM"
Any specific reason Nvidia barely provides playable amounts of ram on ~$350 gpus and goes crazy overkill on ~$1000 gpus?

 

[rcald2000]

Two words: Planned obsolescence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence)

 

[callofDEEP]

they dont have any competition.. thats why they are sitting on their asses all the time.. they still dont have great competition.. in two years amd might ..just might will be better and give nvidia competition and make them run..

 

[FunSurfer]

To OP - you have a point regarding the overkill VRAM on $1000 cards, but there was almost always a double version of the high end card you could buy, such as 3GB GTX 580, 4GB GTX 680, 6GB GTX 780. Only recently the trend changed with cards like GTX 780 Ti and GTX 980. So the real question here is why the companies that are making the improved and OCed cards stopped making them.
One more question, how much VRAM usage do you really see with The Witcher 3? is the 3.5GB cap fixed ? Do you really see 4096MB used?

 

[ccampy]

The ram being used and needed and 2 different thing's 4+GB only really benefits res over 1440p

 

[renz496]

In test done by TPU the witcher 3 is quite modest on VRAM usage. Even at 4k the VRAM usage barely reach 2GB in their test. I can understand about GTA V but I don't think GTA V going to use that much at your suggested resolution (1280x1024).

Anyway in regards to VRAM. First these company did not want you to have 'future proof'. If possible they want to buy their card for each generation. Second the trend with nvidia is they don't want slower cards to have more VRAM than the faster card. I think they start this policy at the end of Kepler series. Why there is no 780Ti with 6GB VRAM like 780? That despite board partner like EVGA make publically mention they will release one. The reason is simple. Nvidia don't want 780Ti to cannibalize Titan Black sales. So for people that want 6GB VRAM were force to buy Titan Black.

Then look again at 900 series. It does not take long for 960 4GB to appear on the market. But why there is no 8GB 980/970? Because if nvidia put 8GB on 980/970 then it will have more VRAM than 980Ti. Simple as that. To me nvidia want to force people that want more VRAM into buying their more expensive card.

Well of course this is conspiracy theory at best :lol:

 

[USAFRet]

Any specific reason Nvidia barely provides playable amounts of ram on ~$350 gpus and goes crazy overkill on ~$1000 gpus?

$$$ and marketing.

 

[TheTenaciousOtaku]

Well of course this is conspiracy theory at best :lol:

That conspiracy is probably not fair from the mark. I have more to add to your theory

Have you noticed the recent surge in VRAM requirements? Like from 2012 onward? The VRAM requirement doubled, tripled, quadruple and probably more. Back in the day, 512mb GPU's were the standard for a very long time. Todays graphics cards aren't future proof because of how insanely and unnaturally fast the VRAM requirement is increasing. 4GB, 8GB, 12GB? Who are you kidding? Why didn't this sort of trend happen during the reign of the 512mb days but all of a sudden in the past few years?

It wouldn't surprise me if GPU manufacturers are working behind the scenes with game developers during this VRAM epidemic. Game developers are making the VRAM requirements of their games stupendously high on purpose and in return, GPU manufacturers are 'alleviating the issue' for gamers by making cards with idiotic amounts of VRAM. Therefore, GPU manufacturers make money from people believing their cards can't handle games (when in reality they should be able to) and game developers continue making money because gamers have no choice but to buy their products.

My prediction is that when enough people catch on to this filthy tactic, VRAM will stop being the issue and another GPU spec will be the target issue. It'll be a continuous cycle to keep gamers spending money when they shouldn't have to

 

[renz496]

The VRAM requirement also increase a lot by the time new console arrive actually. Xbone now have 5GB and PS4 have about 8GB (shared between the system and for graphic use). The previous gen only having 256mb-512mb if i remember correctly. So now dev have this large resource they start going crazy or they skimp on optimization. Because unlike before where they have very limited resource for everything now they no longer have that problem. But to me the console have another problem coming. The CPU and GPU are quite weak. In PS4 case the CPU is quite underpowered that limiting the potential of that custom 7800 inside the console.

 

[Victorion]

nVidia may or may not intentionally held back high VRAM cards and simultaneously promoting 4K. Nobody but nVidia really knows.

However, rumours are saying that the new pascal based cards, will offer support up to 32 GB VRAM and that currently the Titan X supports up to 32 GB vram as well.

My guess is that we´re gonna see higher amounts of vram as the new standard, but it will also be a priced accordingly.

Take a look at todays smartphones;
Apple iPhone 6s 16 GB vs a 64 GB or 128 GB version is priced very differently - even though they are practical identical smartphones (obviously difference in storage) with close to same cost to manuafacture.

It´ll be the same for videocards, unless we´re in the feature may add additional vrams to an existing video card.