If you buy a gtx 970 or 980 now you will be kicking yourself due to ram issuses.  It's already started with Shadows of mordor.  4 gb will only last you another 6 months 1 year tops.  6 and 8 gb cards are the norm within the next 6 months

Shadow of mordor is crazy for asking for that amount of vram and it doesnt actually need it

Shadows of mordor uses 6 gb of ram all the time at 4k with ultra textures.  So it needs it

yapchagi
I just ran shadow of mordor benchmark on highest settings in 1080p and memory usage is 3.5 GB lol

And he said 4k.... So, that is going to chew past 4gb like it is nothing when set to ultra. Hopefully that is just buffering a ton of info, and not necessary just to maintain 1080p.

Was that with DSR as well?

Tylerslikewhoa
If you buy a gtx 970 or 980 now you will be kicking yourself due to ram issuses.  It's already started with Shadows of mordor.  4 gb will only last you another 6 months 1 year tops.  6 and 8 gb cards are the norm within the next 6 months

man where did you get all this insider info..I MUST KNOW!!! >.>

Tylerslikewhoa
If you buy a gtx 970 or 980 now you will be kicking yourself due to ram issuses.  It's already started with Shadows of mordor.  4 gb will only last you another 6 months 1 year tops.  6 and 8 gb cards are the norm within the next 6 months

Nobody cares about LOTR games and broken ass console ports like watch dogs. People like you will never understand the vram situation. Even a 970 that had 8gb of vram would never be able to utilize it because nvidia crippled it with a 256bit bus. Just look at the difference between the 2 and 4gb 770, its going to be the same story.

RiffyDivine

nick779

Tylerslikewhoa
If you buy a gtx 970 or 980 now you will be kicking yourself due to ram issuses.  It's already started with Shadows of mordor.  4 gb will only last you another 6 months 1 year tops.  6 and 8 gb cards are the norm within the next 6 months

Nobody cares about LOTR games and broken ass console ports like watch dogs. People like you will never understand the vram situation. Even a 970 that had 8gb of vram would never be able to utilize it because nvidia crippled it with a 256bit bus. Just look at the difference between the 2 and 4gb 770, its going to be the same story.

What is the difference between them? Sorry I never really had a good grasp on vram but always assumed more was better. 

More is better, I'd certainly argue 2 is not enough anymore, but saying 4GB isn't is borderline stupidity (this isn't directed at anyone specifically). Shadows of Mordor is a poor example of a console port that just wasn't optimized correctly, just like Watchdogs.

people are bringing the game up because of the talk of it using 6GB of vram with the UHD textures.

Brimy
4GB of Vram is quiet sufficient at 1080p and you could have worked this out with CoD Ghosts, at Ultra i use 4096GB or there about. I am of the view that 4GB Vram cards is not what 2GB Vram cards were 2 years ago.
 
Also, no matter what Vram GPU you buy 4GB, 6GB or 8GB the bloddy game developers are just going to make the game to consume the Vram when what they should be doing is making the hacker's job harder.....always messing up my kdr...

Hey some of us work hard to write those hacks...I mean like other people, not me. Totally not me, stop looking at me like that. It's not like it's my fault it keeps getting easier, but to many kiddies in the mix now. 

But the Titan cards were built to be used for working and not gaming and one on one beats the titan. Granted it's not a huge difference. 

Stephenk291

RiffyDivine

nick779

Tylerslikewhoa
If you buy a gtx 970 or 980 now you will be kicking yourself due to ram issuses.  It's already started with Shadows of mordor.  4 gb will only last you another 6 months 1 year tops.  6 and 8 gb cards are the norm within the next 6 months

Nobody cares about LOTR games and broken ass console ports like watch dogs. People like you will never understand the vram situation. Even a 970 that had 8gb of vram would never be able to utilize it because nvidia crippled it with a 256bit bus. Just look at the difference between the 2 and 4gb 770, its going to be the same story.

What is the difference between them? Sorry I never really had a good grasp on vram but always assumed more was better. 

More is better, I'd certainly argue 2 is not enough anymore, but saying 4GB isn't is borderline stupidity (this isn't directed at anyone specifically). Shadows of Mordor is a poor example of a console port that just wasn't optimized correctly, just like Watchdogs.

Shadows of Mordor is an excellent PC port which is extremely well optimised, not sure what game you are playing.

Just because the devs included the uncompressed textures for those people with 6gb gram doesn't mean it isn't optimised. For those that have 6gb it's a deliberate bonus, for the rest of us it's hardly a massive downgrade.

You can still run the game on Ultra textures with 4gb vram but there is swapping between vram and ram which causes a noticeable stutter on my 980.

It certainly isn't running perfectly on ultra for anyone on 4gb.

SirMaster
I've yet to have a problem with my 680 with 2GB of RAM at 1080p.

At a rock solid 60+ fps it is noticeable.

A big problem I see with discussion about VRAM usage is this:
 
You can't use third party tools to measure VRAM usage.  Nobody but the game itself really knows how much memory it's using.  It would have to have a special memory accounting function built in to add up how much memory it was actually currently using.
 
The number you are seeing in programs like Precision and Afterburner only show how much VRAM the process has asked to allocate from the OS, NOT how much it is using or even how much it actually needs.
 
Most software will adjust it's memory allocation based on how much total memory is available and by how much memory is currently unallocated.
 
So lets say you run the same game on a 2GB card and also on a 6GB card.  Precision and Afterburner will likely show very different VRAM "usages" between these 2 cards.  The 2GB card may say 1.8GB of RAM is being "used", while the 6GB card may very well say that 3GB is being "used".
 
In reality both games can be running perfectly smoothly with no VRAM swapping, because the game may at the current time only be using and only need 1.5GB of VRAM even though it has asked to allocate more than that.  This just saves it from having to ask the OS to allocate more VRAM if it needs it later.
 
The only real way to see how much memory a game actually needs would be to keep lowering your available VRAM and running a game benchmark to see at what point the game starts to VRAM swap.

In defense of OP (devil's adovcate, if you will), it seems like all of the "4GB is enough" crowd is running 1080p or 2k, while the "4GB isn't enough" people are saying 4k is the reason it isn't enough.  My question is this: is 4k delivery simply not optimised properly due to its youth in the industry, or is it simply that demanding on all resources?  Without researching for now, it seems this is a similar argument when compared to the one years ago when going to HD (either 720 or 1080).  
 
Over the years, the video card manufacturers have added more memory to handle higher resolutions, so I don't see why "4GB isn't enough VRAM" is an invalid point, especially when considering higher resolutions are exactly the reason behind that statement.  Optimised or not, if a PC game out there is 'suggesting' 6GB cards, it seems to me the manufacturers should have been ahead of that curve, not following it.
 
That said, I have no intention of switching to 4k before 20nm comes out, anyway, so it won't affect me - but that doesn't mean it won't affect anyone.

SirMaster
A big problem I see with discussion about VRAM usage is this:
 
You can't use third party tools to measure VRAM usage.  Nobody but the game itself really knows how much memory it's using.  It would have to have a special memory accounting function built in to add up how much memory it was actually currently using.
 
The number you are seeing in programs like Precision and Afterburner only show how much VRAM the process has asked to allocate from the OS, NOT how much it is using or even how much it actually needs.
 
Most software will adjust it's memory allocation based on how much total memory is available and by how much memory is currently unallocated.
 
So lets say you run the same game on a 2GB card and also on a 6GB card.  Precision and Afterburner will likely show very different VRAM "usages" between these 2 cards.  The 2GB card may say 1.8GB of RAM is being "used", while the 6GB card may very well say that 3GB is being "used".
 
In reality both games can be running perfectly smoothly with no VRAM swapping, because the game may at the current time only be using and only need 1.5GB of VRAM even though it has asked to allocate more than that.  This just saves it from having to ask the OS to allocate more VRAM if it needs it later.
 
The only real way to see how much memory a game actually needs would be to keep lowering your available VRAM and running a game benchmark to see at what point the game starts to VRAM swap.

 
We have a bingo!  How fun!