4gb vs 2gb SLI on 2560x1440

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Turboman750

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Feb 2, 2013
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I'm trying to future proof my system for the upcoming next gen games that will be running on unreal 4 and frostbite 3 graphics engines, and I'm unsure of how much memory will be sufficient.

I've seen current benchmarks and I know there is very little/no difference in performance between a 4gb card and a 2gb card on high(ish) resolutions, but what about next gen?

I was thinking about getting a gtx 690 for my system. It's advertised as 4gb of memory but I know its equivalent to having two 2gb cards limiting it's memory bandwidth to 2gb.

I'm curious what you all think and and if you know something I dont.

I would either go with 2 gtx 670's (4gb card) in SLI or 1 GTX 690 with the gtx 690 likely being cheaper.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
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There is no such thing as "future proofing"
Next year, amd and nvidia will launch follow on graphics cards that are vastly better than today's.
But game developers will not limit their market by requiring high end cards to run them.

Today, a single monitor even a 2560 x 1600 monitor will run games nicely on a good single card like a 7970 or GTX680.
Next month, we should see the GTX770/GTX780.
Probably with increased vram.
Card vendors are adding Vram for marketing purposes even though extra is not much needed.

I would use a good single card, and plan on swapping it out in a year or later if needed.
 
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dylan1016

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Apr 17, 2013
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Increased vram will offer no performance gain. You only need more vram if you're running surround. If you're planning on running surround in the future then I suggest buying a 4gb card.
 
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hizodge

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Nov 22, 2012
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Crysis 3 is the only game (let's just ignore all the SSAA titles out there), that use more than 2GB in 2560x1440 resolution. I did some testing, and it looks like you can run it in Very High preset and Very High textures with a 2GB VRAM graphics card at that resolution. However, going to 4x MSAA, 4x SMAA or 4x TXAA is going to go over the magical 2GB limit with 8x MSAA hitting somewhere right around 3GB.

In the end it's just one game and you would need to have either 2 Titans or 3 other high-end GPU's to run it smoothly at those settings anyway. However, as things are right now, you'd best wait 2-4 weeks until the prices on Nvidia cards come down when they release some new stuff.
 
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