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Video Memory Usage at 4k (UHD) Resolutions

Post Date: 2014-01-14
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    Posted: 14 Jan 2014 at 4:59pm
Video Memory Usage at 4k (UHD) Resolutions




With 4K on the rise, many people are wondering which video card they need in order to power such high resolution. May argue that you need at least 6 GB of VRAM while others say that 3 GB is more than enough. We decided to test a NVIDIA GTX 780Ti and a GTX Titan to see whether or not games actually used more than 3GB of video memory.

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Video Memory Usage at 4k (UHD) Resolutions

Edited by Nav - 14 Jan 2014 at 7:43pm
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Posts: 20391 		  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 14 Jan 2014 at 5:30pm
Thanks, Nav.    Any way to tell if the vram usage is actually helping frames or just being cached, since it's available? The Titan used more vram but still lagged behind 780ti with less vram usage.

Consoles with 8gb vram are freaking people out thinking they need mega vram with pc rigs.

Good info.   
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Posts: 13000 		  Quote Tidgxor Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 14 Jan 2014 at 5:56pm
This reassures me that my 1920x1200 is never going to use the VRAM I have. Hahaha

Great article. Awesome
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   Life is good.
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Posts: 1581 		  Quote Nav Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 14 Jan 2014 at 9:44pm
Originally posted by bprat22

Thanks, Nav.    Any way to tell if the vram usage is actually helping frames or just being cached, since it's available? The Titan used more vram but still lagged behind 780ti with less vram usage.

Consoles with 8gb vram are freaking people out thinking they need mega vram with pc rigs.

Good info.   


Well the 780Ti is better optimized for gaming and features 192 more CUDA cores.

I'll have to look into it more to see if it was just being cached or being used to help frames.
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Posts: 2551 		  Quote fstcvc Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 14 Jan 2014 at 9:46pm
Originally posted by bprat22

Thanks, Nav.    Any way to tell if the vram usage is actually helping frames or just being cached, since it's available? The Titan used more vram but still lagged behind 780ti with less vram usage.

Consoles with 8gb vram are freaking people out thinking they need mega vram with pc rigs.

Good info.   

I was looking at that myself and wondered if that meant that the Titan was actually pushing more data to the display since it had more stored in it's memory possibly causing the couple of less fps?
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Posts: 1581 		  Quote Nav Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 14 Jan 2014 at 10:22pm
From what I recall, the 8GB in consoles is shared with the GPU+CPU.
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Posts: 20391 		  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jan 2014 at 3:18am
Thanks Nav. I appreciate all your help and testing.

fstcvc... Yeah, I've never fully understood vram usage vs actual performance. Thanks.   We'll get this figured out. It is fun.
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Posts: 1581 		  Quote Nav Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jan 2014 at 1:15pm
Originally posted by bprat22

Thanks Nav. I appreciate all your help and testing.

fstcvc... Yeah, I've never fully understood vram usage vs actual performance. Thanks.   We'll get this figured out. It is fun.


Thank you for the interest!

What's interesting is that the Titan is only a few FPS behind the GTX 780Ti.

It's tough to see if it's actually the VRAM that's causing the performance drop in the 780Ti or if a 6GB version of the 780Ti would increase the gap further.
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Posts: 20391 		  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jan 2014 at 1:28pm
Yeah, I've never seen any way to determine where vram usage actually goes...increase performance or just fill cache. Both probably, with performance being the weighted factor.   Vram usage is going up, just makes sense. Plus caching does help, just not as directly.

Thanks again.
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