Why are there so few 4GB gpus

G

Gordon.C

Member
Hi,

I was a big fan and enthusiastic user of Radeon HD4870x2 and I was proud of having two cores in my GPU (even though I had no idea how much better performance I was getting).

Well anyway that was a 2GB GPU and now all I can see is 3GB single GPUs. Very few 2 core 4GB or even 2 core 6GB GPUs. What happened?

Did they realize that 2 core GPUs are not that great after all and that 3GB of graphics memory is plenty to suffice games in next 5 years?
 
spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
There aren't many 4GB GPUs because no game requires 4GB right now. 2GB is enough. If you buy a 4GB graphics card now by the time you need 4GB of RAM the GPU itself will be outdated and too weak to play the game.

There are multi-GPU cards about, the GTX 690 is a multi-GPU card and can be had with 4GB of V-RAM.
 
G80FTW

G80FTW

Active Member
vistakid10 said:
If you buy a 4GB graphics card now by the time you need 4GB of RAM the GPU itself will be outdated and too weak to play the game.
Click to expand...

I doubt it. If things continue to progress as they have been the past 10 years, we may be able to hold onto the 680 for quite some time. Like I was able to hold onto my 8800 for so long because games were not really becoming anymore demanding past 2007.

I think when DX11 starts really becoming mainstream, we will see the need for 4GB (which hopefully we start seeing this next year) and I believe the 680 and 670 will still be able to perform with the rest of them just fine. Although, at that point I can bet we will start to see a bigger gap between the 670 and 680 since the 680 does have considerably more processing power. Which is why I chose the card I did over a 2GB 670.

Games are already using nearly 2GB at 1080p.
 
claptonman

claptonman

New Member
I only see 1.5GB at 1080p. Yeah, games are getting more AA intense, which is a part of the amount of Vram, but the true test is the resolution. Anything bigger than 1080p is still $800+, so it may be a while until we see it utilizing past 2GB.
 
G80FTW

G80FTW

Active Member
claptonman said:
I only see 1.5GB at 1080p. Yeah, games are getting more AA intense, which is a part of the amount of Vram, but the true test is the resolution. Anything bigger than 1080p is still $800+, so it may be a while until we see it utilizing past 2GB.
Click to expand...

Yea. But there are a few games that will get up slightly past 1.7GB at 1080p.
 
jonnyp11

jonnyp11

New Member
well it's about 10-15% faster than the stock GHz edition and that was tied with the 680, thing should be a monster, can't wait to see some benches of it.
 
spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
jonnyp11 said:
well it's about 10-15% faster than the stock GHz edition and that was tied with the 680, thing should be a monster, can't wait to see some benches of it.
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Will be interesting to see benches but what kind of resolution uses 6GB of V-RAM right now? 4GB seemed very high to me, 6GB is just insane! :D * looks at 1GB HD 5870 *.
 
jonnyp11

jonnyp11

New Member
i think some professional crap might use 6gb's maybe, but i just love how it has about half the vram as the size of most games, but if you want a tri-2560x1440 or whatever setup, then 6gb's might be a good thing.
 
G

Gordon.C

Member
jonnyp11 said:
i think some professional crap might use 6gb's maybe, but i just love how it has about half the vram as the size of most games, but if you want a tri-2560x1440 or whatever setup, then 6gb's might be a good thing.
Click to expand...

Is there even any other activity you do on a PC that requires more than 2GB of GPU memory? Video editing, 3D modeling? (Lets not include weather calculations, lets stick to home PC use)

I guess these two, but still if you have 24GB of RAM and a 6 core Core i7 I think you can use some cheap ass GPU and will do fine on both Video editing and 3D modeling (home use).
I might be wrong perhaps...
 
claptonman

claptonman

New Member
3D modeling benefits from better GPUs. It'd be best to get a professional video card, but they're expensive.

Not sure if Vram plays into 3D modeling.
 
spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
G

Gordon.C

Member
vistakid10 said:
NVIDIA Quadro cards and AMD FirePro cards are the professional/workstation cards. You can buy them, but they're very expensive.

Here's a Quadro http://www.amazon.com/PNY-DisplayPo...&qid=1343806774&sr=8-4&keywords=nvidia+quadro

Here's a FirePro http://www.amazon.com/ATI-CrossFire...e=UTF8&qid=1343806817&sr=1-3&keywords=firepro

Look at the price! :eek:
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I see. So big studios who do 3D modeling use those? Like pixar maybe.

I think long time ago pixar had on their homepage a little comparison that it would take 90 hours to render one frame of pixar movie if it were rendered on typical home PC.
 
spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
I'm not sure what kind of hardware people like Pixar or Warner Bros or any sort of film company uses, but certainly people who like to do a lot of CAD design and 3D modelling will use stuff like Quadros and FirePros yes.
 
Russ88765

Russ88765

Active Member
Different architecture, not really gaming cards. I think the reason workstation cards are so expensive is because they are designed solely for the purpose of major graphic design among businesses - the people using them are involved in a lot of expensive but high gain projects which more than pay for the card. You might be spending like a thousand or more for that, but your job pays it all back with the type of work and clientele you'll be using it for. They interest the guys with extreme specs like dual xeon cpus, 16-32gigs of ram, tb upon tb of disk space, multimonitors, major work machines.

Getting back to the original question though, 4gb at this point isn't needed unless using every bit of it - which is no easy task. You'd have to be using a very large resolution across multiple monitors, while using max settings in the game you're playing to really take full advantage of all that vram. I suggest for now that you buy according to what you'll be needing bottom line for all the programs you'll be running. If you're gonna use 1.5gb max there's no point in having 4gb. Sure it's nice to have breathing room and perhaps a little futureproofing, but it's otherwise a waste of money to let the card sit there not using even half of it's potential(Ever seen a Corvette in a traffic jam? Truly a sad sight). Save your money and buy within your means - you might need that money later on down the line.
 
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