8GB VRAM not enough (and 10 / 12)

[BFG10K]

8GB

• Dying Light 2, Battlefield 2042, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Starfield, Forza Horizon 5, Horizon Forbidden West, Alan Wake 2, The Last of Us, Tekken 8, FC 24, Detroit Become Human, Death Stranding, Alone in The Dark, Overwatch 2
  3060 12GB higher 1% low than 4060 8GB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIfz57wmywg
• Cyberpunk 2077, Diablo 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Microsoft Flight Sim 2020, Witcher 3, Watch Dogs Legion skip to 4K + DLSS for each game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPiaWWd0xGc
• Ratchet & Clank, Plague Tale Requiem, Last Of Us, Jedi Survivor, Far Cry 6, Hogwarts Legacy, Forza Horizon 5, Cyberpunk 2077 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3MckDxMfE&pp=ygUTMTZnYiB2cyA4Z2IgNDA2MCB0aQ==
• Far Cry 6, Godfall, Hogwarts Legacy, Forza Horizon 5, Forspoken, Doom Eternal, Watchdogs Legion https://youtu.be/fJc--C01P90?t=268
• Last Of Us, Resident Evil 4, Callisto Protocol, Plague Tale Requiem, Halo Infinite, Forspoken https://youtu.be/2_Y3E631ro8?t=429
• Last Of Us, Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4, Forspoken, Plague Tale Requiem, Callisto Protocol https://youtu.be/Rh7kFgHe21k?t=288
• Hogwarts Legacy, Last Of Us, Spider Man Remastered, Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon 5 https://youtu.be/R943CbDTq_s?t=1473
• Horizon Forbidden West 4060 has issues @ 1080p + DLSS unless you switch off frame generation and reduce settings to high https://youtu.be/3AyKvI23VGw?t=233
• Horizon Forbidden West 3070 requires reducing textures 2 notches https://youtu.be/xTwEGy6HHKo?t=351
• Deathloop https://youtu.be/lu_XHyO-6zY?t=918
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint https://youtu.be/iUGppQVpXzU?t=529
• Resident Evil 2 https://youtu.be/Aa-gsgRjMII?t=796
• Talos Principle 2 https://youtu.be/K6FATQAuEwI?t=337
• Spider Man Remastered https://youtu.be/vRVR_plVSlc?t=1060
• Witcher 3 https://youtu.be/vRVR_plVSlc?t=1240

Horizon Forbidden West 3060 is faster than the 2080 Super despite the former usually competing with the 2070. Also 3060 has a better 1% low than 4060 and 4060Ti 8GB.

Spoiler

Resident Evil Village 3060TI/3070 tanks at 4K and is slower than the 3060/6700XT when ray tracing:

Spoiler

Company Of Heroes 3060 has a higher minimum than the 3070TI:

Spoiler

10GB / 12GB

• Plague Tale Requiem 3080 10GB tanks if you enable ray tracing, would be fast enough if it had more VRAM because if you stop moving, the framerate stabilizes to >60FPS https://youtu.be/7zjrMww3fAc?t=496
• Hogwarts Legacy 4K + RT, 4060Ti 16GB is faster than 4070 12GB https://youtu.be/X-h_R488Mq8?t=191

Reasons why still shipping 8GB since 2014 isn't NV's fault.

Spoiler

1. It's the player's fault.
2. It's the reviewer's fault.
3. It's the developer's fault.
4. It's AMD's fault.
5. It's the game's fault.
6. It's the driver's fault.
7. It's a system configuration issue.
8. Wrong settings were tested.
9. Wrong area was tested.
10. Wrong games were tested.
11. 4K is irrelevant.
12. Texture quality is irrelevant as long as it matches a console's.
13. Detail levels are irrelevant as long as they match a console's.
14. There's no reason a game should use more than 8GB, because a random forum user said so.
15. It's completely acceptable for the more expensive 3070/3070TI/3080 to turn down settings while the cheaper 3060/6700XT has no issue.
16. It's an anomaly.
17. It's a console port.
18. It's a conspiracy against NV.
19. 8GB cards aren't meant for 4K / 1440p / 1080p / 720p gaming.
20. It's completely acceptable to disable ray tracing on NV while AMD has no issue.
21. Polls, hardware market share, and game title count are evidence 8GB is enough, but are totally ignored when they don't suit the ray tracing agenda.

According to some people here, 8GB is neeeevaaaaah NV's fault and objective evidence "doesn't count" because of reasons(tm). If you have others please let me know and I'll add them to the list. Cheers!

 

[mikeymikec]

^Tell us what are the correct games then.

Personally I think you're being argumentative in this thread for personal reasons rather than logical ones, but anyway, here goes.

I haven't been keeping up with this thread to account for who said what and when, but this has been my take-away from it:

There aren't "correct games" per se. The first video that the OP posted stated that in their (video author's) opinion back in 2020, the 3070 wasn't going to age as well as the R6800 because it only had 8GB of VRAM. That video and a few others in the OP cites several modern games that apparently suffer greatly from lack of VRAM (through say frame rates being generally far lower than expected when compared to a reasonable competing product with more VRAM, or say texture quality being automatically sacrificed during gameplay, or sudden tanking of frame rates, along with ideally an observable ceiling in VRAM being hit), the obvious inference being that this is a trend of things to come.

It doesn't matter that there are some games - newer or older than the ones in the OP - that don't suffer badly from only having access to 8GB VRAM.

What would be a decent and valid counter-argument to the OP would be (if it was true) to point out that almost all of the games that were cited have all been patched since and no longer suffer from VRAM shortage issues and perform much better as a result.

Another valid counter-argument would be (if it was true) to point out that since the OP the entire gaming industry managed to go for say three years without producing any new games that hit an 8GB VRAM ceiling.

 

[psolord]

So....if you set everything to max, the benchmark drops to 24fps on the 3060ti/1080p. It could be a vram issue, although it seems as much as a gpu processing power issue, but if any good chaps with a similarly powered, 6700XT can give it a spin, we can examine it better.

The calculated vram estimation from the devs themselves, with everything at max, is this one.



The main culprit for the performance drop, seems to be the Raytracing quality. If you set it to cars only, it is fine at 60fps, with quite high power draw ~180W.

HOWEVER, I did more testing and if you set everything at ultra, there are many textures missing as well as whole geometry blocks. The game IS a disaster for the 3060ti right now and I am glad this is the first time I am seeing something like this. I had seen some pop ins, in Forspoken but nothing like that. I said I will be honest for any stupid things I see, regarding 8GB cards.

Some patches will need to come out before final verdict though. The dev cannot be so wrong. Also it needs to be said, that I did benchmarks with the same settings and one time it showed 60fps and the other 35fps. All runs were missing textures though.

 

[psolord]

Personally I think you're being argumentative in this thread for personal reasons rather than logical ones, but anyway, here goes.

Well I just like testing stuff and I do test a lot. These are my personal reasons. I do like quality gaming, as much as the next person. I just need some perspective in this whole 8GBs not enough issue. From my perspective, it is very much enough. Luck would have it, that the worst example I have seen, is the game I posted above. You could say....

But the whole thing seems to be more of bug right now. We'll see.

the obvious inference being that this is a trend of things to come.

Yes that's the obvious thing. At what rate will these things come though. We did have 4MB vram back in the Voodoo days and see where we are now. I am only arguing about the amount of disaster the 8GB cards will be and at what percentage of games. Also, very important to me, is the gpu processing power to vram ratio requirements of games. Because we have seen UE5 games that have nothing to do with vram and everything to do with gpu power. So this will be an ongoing study. My bet is on gpu power being more important, for the vast majority of games.

 

[psolord]

ps I did the above testing remotely, with parsec, which could be affecting things. Will continue testing ofc.

 

[mikeymikec]

Yes that's the obvious thing. At what rate will these things come though.

There are lots of examples in the OP which date back to 2021, it's reasonable to say that time is already here and it's certainly relevant to anyone (such as myself) who is thinking about buying a new graphics card soon.

In what way do you need "more perspective"? It seems to me that the OP made a solid case.

 

[maddie]

Maybe someone, needs to create a 8GB vram is enough thread. Just saying.

 

[Golgatha]

Reading through these last few responses, I want to chime in on the GPU to VRAM ratio comments. All cards will eventually struggle with GPU limitations at some point in time. However, the software technologies to give them a little more life or longer legs so to speak, also utilize more VRAM. It's a double whammy of built-in obsolescence.

e.g. if the 3070 Ti had 16GB or a 3080 had 20GB of VRAM, both would be a much longer lived product for the consumer.

 

[psolord]

Ok an update regarding Forza Motorsport.

The game has some serious problems that I believe go beyond 8GB limitations, if there really are any, with proper settings. I tested natively on the 3060ti, without parsec interfering and things did get better. It seems parsec takes up 800MB of vram which IS however very much needed for the ultra preset. The dev's estimations are out of place. Things getting better does not mean the problems went away though. There are still missing assets even when I turned off RT completely and vram drops to around 7GBs at times.

Then I tested the GTX 1070 at 1080p high dynamic preset. Vram was at 6GBs and there were STILL missing textures. I will test the 4070ti during the weekend to see how it goes.

The game needs quite a lot of patching for sure, so I will return later. It could be better with higher vram cards though, I cannot know this for now. More resources will surely help in games that the dev needs to get his ....things....together, like TLOU.

 

[Ranulf]

Maybe someone, needs to create a 8GB vram is enough thread. Just saying.

 

[Mopetar]

Weird that a game designed to be able to run on an Xbox Series S which effectively has only 8 GB of VRAM (the other 2 GB has such paltry bandwidth that it would cause performance issues if it were used for VRAM) will also run on PC with only 8 GB of VRAM.

Not only does your recent post miss the point again for reasons that have already been outlined by myself or others, but you've picked a game that the developer would have had to have gone out of their way to sabotage so that it wouldn't run well on 8 GB GPUs on PC.

Astute observations. Most keen. Much wow.

 

[BFG10K]

Guys, guys, looks like NV heard us loud & clear. Introducing 6 GB 3050:

NVIDIA to Launch GeForce RTX 3050 6GB Variant Late 2024 with Lower Specs

NVIDIA is preparing to launch an upgraded version of the GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. Unlike the original's 8GB of VRAM, this model will sport 6GB and will continue to be based on the Ampere GPU architecture.

www.guru3d.com

I'm thinking of starting a "dual-core CPU and 4GB system DRAM are all you need" thread, then posting 93 screenshots of popular games like Dota to "prove" it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Guys, guys, looks like NV heard us loud & clear. Introducing 6 GB 3050:

Realistically, considering that this card is going to be a <75W TBP card, like the GTX 1650 before it, and this card is going to have 6GB of VRAM, and the GTX 1650 only had 4GB of VRAM and no RT, I would actually say that this IS progress, even if you don't shop GPUs at the low end such as these.

 

[Thunder 57]

Realistically, considering that this card is going to be a <75W TBP card, like the GTX 1650 before it, and this card is going to have 6GB of VRAM, and the GTX 1650 only had 4GB of VRAM and no RT, I would actually say that this IS progress, even if you don't shop GPUs at the low end such as these.

Bahahaha, RT on a 3050? You must be joking.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Realistically, considering that this card is going to be a <75W TBP card, like the GTX 1650 before it, and this card is going to have 6GB of VRAM, and the GTX 1650 only had 4GB of VRAM and no RT, I would actually say that this IS progress, even if you don't shop GPUs at the low end such as these.

LOL low end gpu that's going to cost $230 to $250.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Bahahaha, RT on a 3050? You must be joking.

Maybe someone will make RT Tetris for it.

 

[psolord]

Weird that a game designed to be able to run on an Xbox Series S which effectively has only 8 GB of VRAM (the other 2 GB has such paltry bandwidth that it would cause performance issues if it were used for VRAM) will also run on PC with only 8 GB of VRAM.

Not only does your recent post miss the point again for reasons that have already been outlined by myself or others, but you've picked a game that the developer would have had to have gone out of their way to sabotage so that it wouldn't run well on 8 GB GPUs on PC.

Astute observations. Most keen. Much wow.

It seems they didn't sabotage it at all. I found out what was wrong. Two things really. Unclear options and storage speed. That's why I say settings are important and the dev could be held accountable for not making things clear. Both of these are forbidden commandments in the op, member?

If you can spare the mockery and try to be serious for a moment, I can explain. Thinking that the game would be very easy for the 3060ti at 1080p, I cranked everything to over 9000 and the game tanked. It seems however, that there is a rendering quality option, that when you set it to ultra, it actually renders to 4k. So what I essentially did, is setup the 3060ti to render a 4k resolution with RT. Yeah good luck with that. The dev is at fault, for not giving clear instructions, of what the settings do.

To make matters worse, I run the game from a hard drive, thinking, what could go wrong. It's a racing game. The track and everything should be loaded beforehand, right? Well. wrong. The game streams like a mofo and I didn't catch it initially, because the damned perfcounter.dll in msi afterburner of that system, decided to stop working and I didn't see the data being read off the storage, while the race was going on.

The missing assets where a result of slow storage and not vram. I have made this video comparison with two runs, one on the nvme and the other on the HDD, same settings, same system, to highlight the problem and raise awareness, something the dev failed to do.

If people are bored to watch, no problem. No need really. What this shows, is the nvme run, casually spiking to 300MB/sec reads and even one at 680MB/sec, yes WHILE you are racing. The game has directstorage related files in the main dir. I cannot fathom why they are streaming data from the storage all the time, instead of loading them on system ram, since it's a closed circuit, one track, but they know better. So if you have 300~700MB/sec spikes, you can understand, a hard drive cannot keep up, ergo the missing assets.

The game was also tested on an ancient 2500k+6600 just for fun and after what I saw in DF's video regarding cpu usage, I am once again impressed.


Here's the run if anyone cares.

More relaxed settings ofc, but yeah, 8GBs are enough. I will test the 3060ti and 1070 with proper settings soon. Note that there are missings assets from this run too, although it is run from an ssd. I think it's again a streaming problem, but the cpu is also at fault here. Hey it's 13yo, it's doing its best.


ps regarding the series S, I have said it before. Microsoft looked us in the eyes and told us this 4tflop system is ok for gaming for the next 7 years, and you guys are worried about 8GB gpus? meh

 

[Majcric]

I fall in the camp that believes 16gb VRAM min is needed now and moving forward. But with that said I’d like to see some of these games retested with the latest patches.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@psolord

Using the 60fps frame cap makes your results of limited value.

 

[psolord]

@psolord

Using the 60fps frame cap makes your results of limited value.

How come? I have 60hz screens and I don't like tearing. Smoothness is what matters to me. Isn't this thread, what all this is about?

 

[psolord]

Continuing my Forza Motorsport 2023 testing, I did two more capped runs, on the 8600k+3060ti and sandy bridge 2700k+GTX 1070. Both at 1080p, since they are hooked on a 1080p panel, but with hugely different settings.

The 3060ti @ Ultra+RT reflections, that's the best it could do. More RT will bring it to its knees and there *could* be a vram issue here, but the 3060ti was never a RT champion. I am happy for what it managed anyway. The 1070 at medium of course. 3060ti run on nvme, 1070 run on HDD.

Here are the runs, if anyone cares (non monetized)

Some remarks:

-The stupid perfcounter.dll in msi afterburner, has stopped providing data for the 8600k system, therefore I cannot know what kind of streaming is going on.(if anyone knows a solution let me know)
-The 1070 run, at medium, did not show any missing assets, although it was run from a hard drive. The perfcounter.dll works in that system and the asset streaming is shown. Read speads are around 50MB/sec with spikes to 100MB/sec.
-The 2700K sandy bridge, is unsupported. You get a big fat warning at launch, like on the 2500k, but you can ignore it and launch. For some strange reason, I think it did kinda a little worse compared to the 2500k+6600, although it was at medium, compared to high on the other system. It did not miss assets, which is nice, but it had more framedrops. The 1070 is on a full X16 albeit pcie 2.0 connection here, while the 6600 on the other system is at X8 pcie 2.0. The only thing I can think of, is AMD's driver being quite a lot better at DX12.


Conclusion:

Regarding VRAM, I saw no real problem in terms of all my 8GB cards usability. They all provided a playable experience, from medium to high to ultra. That's why I say not all 8GB cards are the same. At medium for the 1070, it hovered around 4GBs, so more cards will be able to run it.

PS I don't know how to do side by side videos, so here is a youtube doubler link, of the 3060ti at ultra vs the 1070 at medium

Mix of 2 videos from youtube : 3060ti vs 1070 Forza Motorsport 2023

Mix of 2 videos from youtube : 3060ti vs 1070 Forza Motorsport 2023

www.youtubemultiplier.com

PS2 Next up, RoboCop: Rogue City. One more UE5 game. There's a demo.

RoboCop: Rogue City on Steam

Become the legendary part man, part machine, all cop hero and deliver justice in Old Detroit.

store.steampowered.com

I will not say much, until I complete my testing. Just....try it yourselves.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Regarding VRAM, I saw no real problem in terms of all my 8GB cards usability. They all provided a playable experience, from medium to high to ultra.

TBH, from your 3060 Ti gameplay video, the game doesn't look too graphically impressive. Seems to look like something that an Xbox One X would have been able to handle years ago. Doesn't really help your 8GB argument but thanks for trying.

 

[psolord]

TBH, from your 3060 Ti gameplay video, the game doesn't look too graphically impressive. Seems to look like something that an Xbox One X would have been able to handle years ago. Doesn't really help your 8GB argument but thanks for trying.

You can take your complaints to Turn10 my friend Igor. The funny thing, is that the Ultra setting on the PC, is much much much higher compared to the XBOX series X.

From this video

compared to the PC Ultra, Series X has:

motion blur low



cube maps lower than low


much lower textures on track, you know the thing that is right in front of your face all the time...



Side track details at medium


Anisotropic filtering at 2X


Internal RT resolution is lower than 1080p


Reflections on PC a lot lot higher


Where I am getting at, is that I don't see the extra vram on the Series X helping at all, amirite?

You could call me biased, but I don't know, even the rx6600 at high, could offer better visual quality, but yeah, at 1080p, which is, you know, what this card is aimed at....

 

[mikeymikec]

On a completely separate note, one of psolord's videos reminded me of something: I wish all video game devs would standardise on graphics setting UIs actually showing you where on the scale of graphics settings your setting is currently on, for example texture detail level. So many games will just say 'high' without any indicator where that is on the scale of available settings so you have to click through the available options to find out.

Either have a slider scale or:

Texture detail level: 3: MEDIUM / 6: EXXXXTREME
(where red is the current setting and grey-ish is the maximum-available setting (out of 6 options).

 

[nurturedhate]

This is a deck of cards. I can play several games with it and have zero vram usage.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

View attachment 86907

This is a deck of cards. I can play several games with it and have zero vram usage.

But your card usage will be very high.