Worth waiting for 6GB version of R9-290x?

Considering Watch Dogs will require 64 bit OS, I think we'll see more and more title require it - especially since the new consoles will use at least 6 GB.

I guess running Far Cry on an Athlon 64 with the 64-bit patch was a little ahead of it's time lol.

 

Nope. Vram is not mapped 1:1 with OS memory or constrained by it

 

Vram is not mirrored into ram, but is addressed 1st. And 32bit OS with limit of 4GB will then allow lower amount of System RAM to be used by OS/applications.

32-bit Client Effective Memory Limits

While 4GB is the licensed limit for 32-bit client SKUs, the effective limit is actually lower and dependent on the system's chipset and connected devices. The reason is that the physical address map includes not only RAM, but device memory as well, and x86 and x64 systems map all device memory below the 4GB address boundary to remain compatible with 32-bit operating systems that don't know how to handle addresses larger than 4GB. If a system has 4GB RAM and devices, like video, audio and network adapters, that implement windows into their device memory that sum to 500MB, 500MB of the 4GB of RAM will reside above the 4GB address boundary, as seen below:


source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

And Yes, my experience with 32bit OS on notebook with 1GB Vram was pretty unpleasant, since it allowed only for 2.8GB RAM for OS due to other devices.

 

Interesting stuff

My 2c- 4GB is not enough for 4k gaming. I posted in another thread re the
'hitching' seen on bf4 beta when running (scaling 200%) roughly 4k res on my 4gig cards.
Hilbert pointed out on Titan 4k BF4 Beta was using 5.7GB VRAM. So in my opinion 4GB def not enough and 6GB is too close to the line with higher res texture games on the horizon. If i wanted to game at 4k- id be waiting for either 8gb 290x to come out or 8gb Maxwell based GPU's before heading into 4k land I'm hoping that with Nvidia Gsync on a 4k monitor (and dropping AA levels to not max 4gb VRAM) may still be able to get 4k to run decently on Quad SLI GTX 680s but i'm doubtful! Will see how things pan out

Ecurb

 

well what about this? EU associates have confirmed it's existence
ANANTECH
"Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X 8GB Hits Retail: UK Only, £600"

 

i seen the 8 gig model a while ago on the internet. I believe it exists.
Wasn't there a 6 gig 7970? and yes it exists.
I don't see these things in real life only on the internet.

I know a game that says it requires 6 gigs of v-ram... that new Mordor game.
Anyways. Its interesting stuff.

Don't believe people when they say 4 is enough....
Thats what they told me when 512 meg was enough on my old 4870.
Instead of the 1 gig model i got the 512 meg model.
The 4870 would have lasted a few more years at 1 gig of ram.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/toxic-hd-7970-eyefinity-6gb,3264.html

 

OcuK appear to have some 8GB versions.

Sapphire Radeon R9 290X 8192MB
Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Vapor-X OC 8192MB

 

Mark is a smart software Eng, but some of his discussions on memory are so wrong I wanna facepalm.
Even in Winternals 6 he doesn't specifically state a PF isn't needed, only that "some may choose not to use a PF". Stuck in 2002....:3eyes:


Hemi is right.
The CPU, and therefore Windows, cannot address vram because the CPU and GPU have completely separate memory spaces (excluding HSA/hUMA obviously).

This is not quite correct.
The BIOS reserves memory, not Windows. Windows gets whatever is leftover after POST.

If the chipset only supports 4GB like the P965 in Mark's blog!!!, memory available to OS will be less than 4GB regardless, because all bios reserved addresses are naturally below 4GB. 32 or 64bit OS makes no difference, ram will still be missing unless remapped above 4GB in bios.

This ^^ is what really matters, not the OS...see below.;

32bit Windows can, without a doubt, address more than 4GB of RAM - thanks to PAE/AWE. Up to ~64GB iirc.
The vague info on TN and Mark's blogs regarding "pae-unaware Windows releases" is typical M$ obfuscation.
If ever a 32bit Windows was released that didn't support PAE - I haven't seen it. What - would they publish an XP update disabling PAE boot switch? Yeah right...

If you need proof, install XP with 8GB, disable PF then check commit limit - it will be 8GB.

The missing memory in Mark's Task Manager is a 100% P965 chipset limitation.
Had it been an A64 board instead of a 4GB, and more than 4GB was installed, 4GB would be freely available to the OS,

That isn't exactly right.
The bios reserves addresses below 4GB unless remapping is enabled.
That's why remapping option is in bios, if option is missing and all RAM shows up it's because the bios has been programmed to remap by default..

 

Ok now I realize this thread is a year old......:stewpid:

 

That is funny

Yes it is a 1 year old thread... I just noticed it.

Restarter brought it back from the dead hence his name is called restarter.
Just a joke... its perfectly legitimate to post wherever you want. The threads are not deleted for a reason.

There is a limitation with Windows XP 32-bit and RAM.

I have 16 gigs of Ram and running Windows XP it will only have access to 4 gigs of that ram minus whatever is stored for hardware resources.

I can gain further access to the rest of the ram (beyond 4 gigs) but it can only be used as a Ram Disk. This is done with software. SuperSpeed Ram Disk.

I did a large amount of testing. Lots of Reading. I've done the PAE switch. BUT games are incredibly unstable with it enabled. The hardware resources that are used in the 4 gig address are required for the video cards to work properly.

PAE switch allows access for software to use the entire 4 gigs of ram and squeezes out hardware resources on my motherboard.

Enabling the PAE switch with the boot is not an option for me.

I have 2 7970's in windows XP and they do not use 6 gigabytes of hardware resources even though they total up to 6 Gigabytes of V-Ram. People are misinformed with this idea it is not a 1:1 ratio of hardware resources with vram. There is no crossfire support in Windows XP but with an additional card the Ram goes down. (I use crossfire in Windows 7)

Instead i have around 2.92 gigs of available ram for software. My Swapfile can be as large as it wants to be and when I run out of ram and needs swapping it uses the swap-file which I store on the Ram Disk.

I am unaware of a chip-set that will use PAE beyond 4 gigabytes in Windows XP. Not that I have searched for one with those capabilities. All i did was read what Microsoft said about PAE:


There are PAE limitations in Windows XP.


Check out this link
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn613975(v=vs.85).aspx

PAE is an Intel-provided memory address extension that enables support of greater than 4 GB of physical memory for most 32-bit (IA-32) Intel Pentium Pro and later platforms. This article provides information to help device driver developers implement Windows drivers that support PAE.

Operating system Maximum memory support with PAE
Windows 2000 Advanced Server 8 GB of physical RAM
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server 32 GB of physical RAM
Windows XP (all versions) 4 GB of physical RAM*

 

Hi mate.
I've just spent quite some time trying to explain this to someone else to no avail, so I'll keep it brief. And I'll try and word it carefully to avoid a flamewar.
RAM means RAM. Addressable memory/Address space is everything including the pagefile.

What MS says about PAE and Windows RAM limits is a lot of smoke and mirrors.

PAE is not related to the 3GB available RAM showing in Task Manager.
The reason you have 3GB RAM available is because your motherboard can't reserve memory address beyond 4GB for hardware (remapping), or it simply doesn't support more than 4GB RAM.


PAE allows 32bit Windows access to address space beyond 4GB.
However, if the chipset doesn't support over 4GB RAM then Windows PAE will only increase the address space by using the pagefile. It won't magically make more RAM available.

For PAE to work properly you need CPU support and a chipset that can handle over 4GB of RAM. If the hardware doesn't support it, then the OS sure won't.

Many AMD boards after K8 supported remapping, but Intel desktop chipsets didn't until much later. The info you'll find on MSDN is based on Intel hardware.

I can't remember exactly how RAMDisk works but I think it's similar to Superfetch. I'd have to look it up and see.

I really don't like discussing this topic, it was stupid of me to even mention it. If you want any more info check out here or send me a pm.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=293641&page=34