Johnny_Utah,
 
Point Break was one of the coolest movies ever made  Always wondered about how a sequel would had played out a few years after it came out.

Just for a FYI  :
 
I played Crysis 2 today on my SLI 480's
 The keyboard display of AfterBurner showed an avg. of  1470  upto  1505 Vram usage on both cards.

gregjc

Remember that just because a game is using so much VRAM, doesn't mean that it NEEDS to load that much VRAM to provide a smooth, consistent gameplay experience. For instance, I have used 1.25gb GTX 570s in SLI and have never noticed any kind of sudden lag spikes in the games referenced above. This is at 1080p resolution with higher AA settings. Of course, I don't notice micro stutter either, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

A single GTX 570 with 1.25GB of VRAM cost well over $300 in most cases, so I highly doubt that you'll see more than 1 or 2 game developers create games that will hiccup on less than 2/3GB of VRAM in the near future, even at the highest settings. Unless you're using multiple monitors with higher AA settings, of course.

So I think the VRAM thing may be an issue within ~2 years, but not in the short term unless you have very specific needs.

May I suggest you go back to post #14.. You will read why this is the case (Highlighted portion)...
 
And in an attempt to prove once and for all that this very same subject has been there done that (Like I said above from 256MB to 512MB) http://www.pureoverclock....w.php?id=33&page=1

so much for nvidia's flagship card

Meh, I don't run AA on my games, so im not really concerned.

dukenuke88

1ceTr0n

Meh, I don't run AA on my games, so im not really concerned.

but it looks so much nicer with AA 

 
Pfffft, a matter of perspective opinion, nothing more. Honestly, at resolutions at 1600x1200 and above, it really becomes mute IMO. I'im far to busy playing/enjoying the game then worrying how "jaggy" the edges look

1ceTr0n

dukenuke88

1ceTr0n

Meh, I don't run AA on my games, so im not really concerned.

but it looks so much nicer with AA 

Pfffft, a matter of perspective opinion, nothing more. Honestly, at resolutions at 1600x1200 and above, it really becomes mute IMO. I'im far to busy playing/enjoying the game then worrying how "jaggy" the edges look

 
I'll agree that "gaming" in general can be subjective.  
 
But there are certain games out there that look absolutely atrocious without any AA...Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas being one that stands out in my head.  

Reddawne

Johnny_Utah,

Point Break was one of the coolest movies ever made  Always wondered about how a sequel would had played out a few years after it came out.

 
I agree!  I suppose now we will never know;)

boylerya

Reddawne

boylerya

I dont have the source but it was a legit article, not somethin off the forums.  But I read that the VRAM for the GTX680s is planned to be 2GB.  However 2GB is already becoming inadequate for powerhouse video cards and I am going to have to wait a bit longer after the GTX680 release for 4GB when 3GB would have been perfect.  But wth, always good to have too much VRAM than too little IMO.

I'm with you on waiting after the release. If memory serves me correct, the 3gb version of the GTX580 came out 4-5 months after the vanilla? Maybe even wait till the Classified version comes out 8 months after that; I know I will

I am running a single GTX275 1792MB card on a Dell U3011 1600p that needs a display port to get the full 1.07billion colors.  If it wasnt for the fact that I am an environmental science major at Rutgers and have no life but chattin on evga forums, studying, and taking a peak at how recent games bring my vid card to its knees at 1600p 8x supersampling.  Otherwise I would have snapped and bought a GTX570HD 2.5GB, mostly for the displayport.  I think it is safe to say the Kepler vid cards will have PCI-E 3.0, but I NEED a display port.  That is a deal breaker for me, if they dont have one.  Otherwise I could probably keep on waiting until the 2nd generation of Kepler vid cards are released as long as Rutgers keeps on sucking away my life and free time.

On the positive side, I have never run outa VRAM without making my games look like a slideshow first.

 
My might find this of interest to your DP connectivity issue:
newegg. com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162082
 
I just found out about it yesterday!
 

Harmony is a troll

Just to let all you forum members know, that Harmony (his OCUK forum name) is an idiot, his threads get shut down and anyone with any intelligence at OCUK consistantly prove him wrong time and time again. 


Please do not listen to this fool.

O.K. thanks for the information 
Harmony = thinkfly WTH??
If that's so I would hardly consider him a fool.
Go play elsewhere please.

slyde

I hate to display my ignorance but oh well. If you add a second 580(1.5G), does that double your available vram to 3 gigs?. My 580 gets very close to max on Crysis 2 and BF3 with all ultra settings on a 1920x1200 display. If I added a second card would it still use ~1.5 gigs or would it use roughly the same as one 3 gig card?

in a word... no...

There is a review of both MSI Lightning GTX 580 cards (the 1.5G and the 3.0 G Extreme addition) that suggests that opposite of what the OP is claiming:
 
See http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/43643-msi-gtx-580-lightning-xtreme-edition-xe-3gb-review-16.html
 
There are differences, but only after frame rates get so low as to be unplayable. The GPU is suggested to be the bottleneck, so the additional 1.5 G is a questional investment at 500 series GPU technology.
Here's the excerpt below:

Giving 3GB a Workout

In this section we will do some simple tests: use two notorious GPU memory hogs -Shogun 2: Total War and Metro 2033- to see how far we have to push things in order to reach the memory limit of a standard MSI Lightning (at its factory overclocked levels). We’ll then compare and contrast those results to those we encountered while using the 3GB Lightning XE.

For Metro 2033 we used our standard gameplay playback.

We decided to bypass Shogun 2’s built in benchmarking utility and instead use a playback from a custom battle. This effectively removes any CPU bottlenecks from the equation since AI is disabled in playback mode. Additionally, the config file was modified to allow the 1.5GB card to read as having 3GB of texture memory available which is necessary as any other option would limit the available video card settings.


First up we have Shogun 2, an impressive looking game when DX11 is enabled but it is also extremely tough on hardware. As a purely anecdotal point, we read a whopping 2.1GB of texture memory being used at 2560 x 1600 with 8x MSAA enabled.

It seems like even with such a demanding game, the core actually becomes the bottleneck here rather than the available memory bandwidth. The 3GB card can easily win when the settings are cranked but it doesn’t make a difference since playable framerates were impossible to achieve with MSAA enabled at 2560 x 1600 regardless of the card being used. At 1920 x 1200 up to 4x MSAA things are a bit easier but since available video memory wasn’t an issue, both cards drew even.


Metro 2033 shows much of the same thing as Shogun: the 3GB framebuffer does make a difference but once again the GPU itself becomes the limiting factor when asked to push around massive rendering workloads. On the positive side of things, the 3GB card was actually able to play Metro 2033 with everything maxed out….albeit at a paltry 17 frames per second. Minimum framerates on the other hand were absolutely dominated by the Xtreme Edition.

garnetandblack

In 2012, you may see games that really need the extra vram (not just some borderline debatable games), but right now, I don't see the point if you aren't playing in surround/gaming at 2560X1600.

Of course, Kepler will be out in 2012, so no real need to worry about it this gen for me.

 

Zibri

At the end, AA is more needed at lower resolutions (which use less vram) and less needed at higher ones (which will use more vram) and the total vram usage is always enough to be managed with 1.5gb.

Then which case does Total War Shogun 2 at 1920x1200 8AA belong to? (first game in the OP)

thinkfly

DHLEVGA

There is a review of both MSI Lightning GTX 580 cards (the 1.5G and the 3.0 G Extreme addition) that suggests that opposite of what the OP is claiming:

You've missed my point. Minor vram shortage does NOT necessarily have decreased average fps / adhoc min fps.

Also, you see why I tested 1.5GB vs 3GB in SLI? That's because when you put GPUs into SLI, the GPU power goes up, while the vram does not stack up. That's when you want large vram.

Well, I guess I'm just confused about all this concerning memory "stacking", or not...
 
What does SLI actually DO then?  I thought it divided the workload between the two GPUs that were ganged together.  And how does it divide the workload?  Well, I thought it would divide the pixels needing to be pumped to the screen by the number of GPUs now handling the workload.  And where is that pixel info actually stored? Well I THOUGHT in the VRAM for each of the GPUs in SLI configuration.  Is this not the way it works?  And if not, then why bother having separate VRAM for each GPU in those cards (ie: GTX 590) that have two processors on one board if there is no gain to doing so?  Surely the manufacturers wouldn't just waste that additional RAM by putting it on the board, now would they?
 
Sorry if I am overlooking something obvious.  Back in the day when Voodoo first used SLI, they called it Scan Line Interlacing, whereby each processor took alternate scan lines from the monitor thereby speeding up the display by dividing the workload in half.  Maybe this isn't how it works any longer......