GTX 970 Should I upgrade to GTX 980?

Are u talking to yourself ? congratz!!!

 

The topic hasn't been beaten to death. It's the topic that just won't die, regardless of how many times it gets beaten. It's like a punching bag....or a male sex organ (never know how many kids are reading this)....lol

Allocation and Usage are completely different. This is why some see issues and some don't. Just because a game allocates 3.8GB of VRAM, doesn't mean it's actually going to use it. It just means it wants the memory available in case it needs it.

If you're monitoring VRAM usage with Afterburner, Precision or any other utility, you see VRAM allocation reported. Not the actual usage. You have to actually load the memory (such as Nai's Benchmark attempts to do) to know how much memory is actually being used.

We all need hobbies man.... I quit serious gaming little over a year ago but I still keep up with gaming hardware. I even upgrade like a gamer....lol

 

I don't think this is correct. Allocation and usage aren't dissimilar. When a game allocates VRAM, only a small portion of it is being used to buffer the frame that is being rendered.

The rest of it is being used to cache other graphics dependent things like textures, shaders, vertex data etcetera. This is the "allocation" that you're referring to, and it's NOT harmless.

Most games these days will use all available VRAM that isn't being used for direct rendering purposes, as storage. This eliminates the overhead that is caused by having to constantly shuffle textures and other graphics data back and forth across system memory and the PCIe bus.

It's a smart way to use all the memory in a system, but some incompetent developers use it as a crutch so they don't have to do proper optimization for PC architecture which uses discrete memory pools..

*glares at Ubisoft.*

In games made by such developers, not having enough VRAM to use as a cache can result in stuttering or pauses..

 

You're forgetting that some of this buffer exists on the other end of the total video memory pool (some of which exists in the system RAM while you're playing). It's not all fighting for the limited physical GPU memory space, as that wouldn't make any sense. You're not wrong in that too small of a VRAM buffer can cause hitches and slowdown when it can't contain the entirety of the scenes that the game is trying to render AND flip frames at the same time, but that's a rare circumstance with today's cards and games.

The way memory allocation actually works is very complex and you aren't going to understand it without significant knowledge of how Windows and the DirectX API are programmed. Shuffling is a constant guarantee. It's a matter of how efficiently it's done that's what matters.

 

I didn't forget. I covered that in post number 30 and even in my above post, where I referred to the overhead that comes from transferring data between VRAM and system RAM via PCIe bus.

So I'm definitely aware that system RAM is used to buffer VRAM. But the latency involved in swapping out data can cause issues if not managed properly.

Yeah I agree 100%, and I spoke of this earlier in post 30 and the above post.

The best example of this, is Crysis 3. The first time I played Crysis 3 I had overclocked GTX 580 SLI with 1.5GB of VRAM each. I thought that such a low amount of VRAM would cause problems with stuttering and lag, but it never did. Even at 1440p very high settings, I was getting a pretty smooth average frame rate of a roughly 33 FPS.

Later I played Crysis 3 again but with GTX 770 4GB SLI, and I found that Crysis 3 can use up to about 2.3GB of VRAM if it's available.. So the fact that Crysis 3 was stutter free with my GTX 580 SLI is an indication that the engine is well optimized for the PC's discrete memory architecture.

But going back to the VRAM thing, there's a lot of games and game engines out there that aren't nearly as well optimized as CryEngine, so in those cases, having more VRAM can help to offset the latency penalty of having to go to system RAM for graphics data.

 

Since they made all DLC free for Titanfall I reinstalled that last week.
At 1440p and max settings i'm reaching nearly 4 GB of VRAM usage, but not a single hickup was seen.
And in fast-paced shooters you will notice every single hickup.

I still haven't found any noticable changes after going over 3.5 GB, this "issue" isn't an issue for me.

 

I would say the same if i had a 970 sorry but thats just bullcrap.

 

Actually, allocation and usage are completely different

Usage does not require prior allocation. Allocation does not imply usage.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/allocate

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/use?s=t

 

Debunk it then.
Saying something is bullcrap isn't proving anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG5HBZRAkr0