feedback on 670 4gb cards

[bummerman]

I have a multi- monitor setup and want to know if it's worth it to get a 4gb car for SLI over a 2 gb.-It tacks on 60 bucks for the extra memoryResolution is 3850-1920

[The Goose]

4gb 670?

[sapo_joe]

It may be interesting because when using SLI, the system reports the amount of memory available "per chip". So if you get two 2gb cards in SLI, games will still "understand" you have only 2gb of video memory, as if ignoring 2gb. It will use the 4gb of total mem, but games might get "confused" (like GTA4 and others using the same engine, for example). So, if the memories are of a good brand, I'd recommend the 4gb models.

[Agent-A01]

sure, depends on what games u play but it wouldnt hurt to have the extra memory when u need it. just make sure u clock the memory as high as itll go to make sure it will effectively use it all.

[bummerman]

yea, I want a review addressing this or hands on experience if anyone has it,Thanks, anyone else?Also if I get a 4 gb model , do I have to get a 2nd card with 4gb or can it be 2?

[Darren Hodgson]

Most reviews show that 2 GB is enough even for 5760x1080 resolutions but, of course, they don't test with triple buffers and/or extreme levels of supersampling anti-aliasing, etc. If you can afford 4 GB then it can't hurt to have more memory then you need. You'll be able to play Max Payne 3 at resolutions above 1080p with 8xMSAA for example (though MSAA appears broken currently in that game to my eyes).

[sapo_joe]

Originally Posted by Darren Hodgson

Most reviews show that 2 GB is enough even for 5760x1080 resolutions but, of course, they don't test with triple buffers and/or extreme levels of supersampling anti-aliasing, etc. If you can afford 4 GB then it can't hurt to have more memory then you need. You'll be able to play Max Payne 3 at resolutions above 1080p with 8xMSAA for example (though MSAA appears broken currently in that game to my eyes).

As someone buying a card right now, it should be as future-proof as possible. So, if the memories are at the same speed, the more, the better!

[Frohman0905]

Originally Posted by sapo_joe

As someone buying a card right now, it should be as future-proof as possible. So, if the memories are at the same speed, the more, the better!

This highly depends on your upgrade history. If you are the kind of guy who upgrades almost every generation, no you don't need 4GB vram now. If you like keeping your card for a couple of gen's, I would consider it. Even then, no one can look into the future. Who knows, maybe by the time games actually need that amount of vram, the 670 lacks the power to run them at full settings. So imo, it's still a gamble if you buy a 4GB card now.

[sapo_joe]

Originally Posted by Frohman0905

This highly depends on your upgrade history. If you are the kind of guy who upgrades almost every generation, no you don't need 4GB vram now. If you like keeping your card for a couple of gen's, I would consider it. Even then, no one can look into the future. Who knows, maybe by the time games actually need that amount of vram, the 670 lacks the power to run them at full settings. So imo, it's still a gamble if you buy a 4GB card now.

Still, in a year or so, it'll be easier to sell a videocard with more memory on it, and then upgrade to another. And I believe it DOES have power to fill that amount of memory, specially in high resolution and anti aliasing.

[Frohman0905]

Originally Posted by sapo_joe

Still, in a year or so, it'll be easier to sell a videocard with more memory on it, and then upgrade to another. And I believe it DOES have power to fill that amount of memory, specially in high resolution and anti aliasing.

I'm not entirely sure about that. Look at BF3 for example, that game came out before Kepler hit the market. I have a 680 and a decent cpu and ram (see sig) and using ultra settings, 4xmsaa and 1080p resolution, the mp experience isn't exactly what I thought it would be. It is incredibly smooth with 2xmsaa but as soon as I use 4xmsaa on heavy 64 player maps, it dips down to 40-50fps sometimes. This still depends on who's playing it, there are people who don't really notice that but I do.

The memory usage is always around 1500-1600mb using those settings and that's not even the real memory usage. Software like Afterburner and Precision actually show the vram allocated to that game but it's not the amount the game actually uses. BF3 is another example of that, when you are using a videocard with a higher amount of vram like the HD7970, people have reported a usage of above 2GB using the exact same settings as the 680 while the 680 uses less and performs equally or better. The game checks how much vram you have and the more you have, the more it will allocate but that doesn't mean it will use all it allocates.

Here's an example from the Hardocp gtx 680 sli review:



At 5760x1200 with FXAA, the game allocates less vram to the 680 than to the 7970 and it performs better. You can ask yourself: why is it that the game takes more vram from the 7970 while it should run fine allocating 2012mb when you look at the 680 graphs?

This is why I believe that 670 and 680 users who don't game at extreme resolutions using insane amounts of msaa, will not hit a memory bottleneck anytime soon. That time will come, no doubt about that, but imo by that time we will have better video cards who can handle those games much better.

Again these are my thoughts about that, I could be wrong but what if I'm right?

[Pill Monster]

Originally Posted by bummerman

yea, I want a review addressing this or hands on experience if anyone has it,Thanks, anyone else?Also if I get a 4 gb model , do I have to get a 2nd card with 4gb or can it be 2?

Can be 2GB but means you'll have 2GB total. With SLI/CF the max vram available is limited by the card with the least amount.

For $60 bucks I'd get the 4GB even if it wasn't used. Better to have and not need than need and not have imo.

[GhostXL]

Originally Posted by sapo_joe

It may be interesting because when using SLI, the system reports the amount of memory available "per chip". So if you get two 2gb cards in SLI, games will still "understand" you have only 2gb of video memory, as if ignoring 2gb. It will use the 4gb of total mem, but games might get "confused" (like GTA4 and others using the same engine, for example). So, if the memories are of a good brand, I'd recommend the 4gb models.

Games don't get "confused" that's how it's supposed to work. The memory in SLI and Crossfire is Mirrored.

Two 2 GB cards do not equal 4GB in SLI or Crossfire.

Two 2GB cards is 2GB MIRRORED memory. It just helps in loading and unloading speeds not a maximum increase in memory.

So nothing is "confused" it's actually how it works.

So yes 4GB models for those resolutions is a better idea, but not because of games not working properly, but because Multi-GPU configurations mirror memory not double it.

[ArCElM]

I don't like him, but frohman knows his stuff.

I agree with him.

[bummerman]

thanks guys, sounds like either way will work well

[VultureX]

Originally Posted by Frohman0905

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/03/2..._card_review/5

What the hell is going on here? Those AMD cards only have 3GB of memory each. The memory is mirrored so they cannot use more than 3072MB...

[Pill Monster]

Originally Posted by VultureX

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/03/2..._card_review/5

What the hell is going on here? Those AMD cards only have 3GB of memory each. The memory is mirrored so they cannot use more than 3072MB...

Seems whoever did the review didn't know MSI AB reports the total vram use for both cards.

We used MSI Afterburner to display real-time VRAM usage of each GPU and wrote down the maximum capacity the game was using on each solution.

Wrong...the amount shown should have been halved, instead they added them together.

[Frohman0905]

True, vram is mirrored using sli or crossfire. Like said almost a million times now, when you use sli/crossfire or a dual gpu card with each 2GB vram, you'll still only have 2GB. People still buy cards like a 690 4GB (that's how it's advertised and is wrong!) assuming they're buying a 4GB card. This has been known since the day crossfire and sli saw first light.

Even though tools like Afterburner can report the vram usage for both cards, makes me wonder why it sees the 7970 crossfire setup as having the ability to allocate almost 5GB of vram, while the 680 sli setup is showing correct numbers?

[lenne]

Originally Posted by Frohman0905

Again these are my thoughts about that, I could be wrong but what if I'm right?

In Fact u are completely wrong, bf3 allocates @ Ultra settings as much vram as it can possibly use, there were even screenshots comparing the image quality, theres only a very slight difference though.

The Nvids obviously cap earlier because they dont have that much vram, but in the end it doesnt really matter quality wise.

[Frohman0905]

Originally Posted by lenne

In Fact u are completely wrong, bf3 allocates @ Ultra settings as much vram as it can possibly use, there were even screenshots comparing the image quality, theres only a very slight difference though.

The Nvids obviously cap earlier because they dont have that much vram, but in the end it doesnt really matter quality wise.

That's exactly what I said:

The game checks how much vram you have and the more you have, the more it will allocate but that doesn't mean it will use all it allocates.

[VultureX]

Originally Posted by lenne

In Fact u are completely wrong, bf3 allocates @ Ultra settings as much vram as it can possibly use, there were even screenshots comparing the image quality, theres only a very slight difference though.

The Nvids obviously cap earlier because they dont have that much vram, but in the end it doesnt really matter quality wise.

There is no 'cap'. It the actual limit of the card.
The 680GTX has 2048MB of video memory.
The 580GTX has 1536MB of video memory.
The HD7970 that they used has 3072MB of video memory.
The values recorded for the HD7970 are wrong.

The real point is if it matters at those resolutions to have 3GB of vRAM over 2 or 1.5.
I have 1024MB of vRAM and at 1920x1200, I'm running into stutter issues, because there is not enough vRAM available.
The question I'd like to see answered is: Does this happen with 2GB vRAM at even higher resolutions too?

[GhostXL]

Originally Posted by VultureX

There is no 'cap'. It the actual limit of the card.
The 680GTX has 2048MB of video memory.
The 580GTX has 1536MB of video memory.
The HD7970 that they used has 3072MB of video memory.
The values recorded for the HD7970 are wrong.

The real point is if it matters at those resolutions to have 3GB of vRAM over 2 or 1.5.
I have 1024MB of vRAM and at 1920x1200, I'm running into stutter issues, because there is not enough vRAM available.
The question I'd like to see answered is: Does this happen with 2GB vRAM at even higher resolutions too?

2GB cards do not stutter with eyecandy turned on at 1080p, granted you have a fast enough GPU to go with that 2GB memory, aka GTX 670/680 or HD 7950 etc etc, so you should be fine.

In all honesty if you don't want to xfire or sli again, I'd just get a single HD 7970 with 3 GB Vram, makes more sense.

[snowdweller]

That 7970 is the 6GB card?

Also just check the 4GB 680 review on this website it shows the 2GB card beating just through clocks.

I've always taken it that the game/program makes the card populate it's RAM based on what it can handle where by putting more in GPU RAM when its struggling so its easy for it to fetch but could be completely wrong. E.G 2 identical frames of BF3 the 680 would render 1.5GB and the 7970 would render 2GB so the 7970 needs 2GB to do the same thing the 680 would be doing at 1.5GB

[Radical_53]

My question would be the type of content you're going to use on those screens.

2GB should be fairly easy for every typical console port out there, even with high AA.
If you are into "native" (or higher quality) PC games the 4GB might come in handy.

I must admit that I was shocked to see how easy it was to exceed 2GB of VRAM with some current games.
Skyrim for example stutters here and there as it tops out my VRAM due to some texture mods I installed. pCARS can easily fill 2GB on a single screen once you turn on all the eye candy and highest-quality reflections.

[sapo_joe]

Originally Posted by Radical_53

My question would be the type of content you're going to use on those screens.

2GB should be fairly easy for every typical console port out there, even with high AA.
If you are into "native" (or higher quality) PC games the 4GB might come in handy.

I must admit that I was shocked to see how easy it was to exceed 2GB of VRAM with some current games.
Skyrim for example stutters here and there as it tops out my VRAM due to some texture mods I installed. pCARS can easily fill 2GB on a single screen once you turn on all the eye candy and highest-quality reflections.

I agree. Why people find it so difficult to believe a 4gb card can be better than a 2gb one? Max Payne and more games with the RAGE engine are limiting the graphic quality options by the amount of memory. So, as long as the memories have the same speed, THE MORE THE BETTER!

[deluxe]

Originally Posted by Frohman0905

This chart is a bit off though, because Afterburner reports the mirrored memory for Nvidia and somehow it reports the 2 cards together for AMD.
What I read from Unwinder is that it's something inside the AMD drivers doing this.
I had 6950 CFX before, so this is no nonsense i'm talking here.

So basically the AMD cards are using 1.8 - 2.4 GB each