Hitting 1923mb of VRAM usage in Bioshock infinite. Should I upgrade to 4GB?

Zero Cool · Sep 9, 2013

I recently bought a 2GB MSI GTX 760 under the assumption that I would never need more than 2GB of VRAM. I game on a single 1080p monitor and have the card OC'd to 1215/7000. Today I turned on the "on screen display" through afterburner to monitor FPS and temps and just for fun I enable VRAM usage as well. I was pretty surprised when I reached 1923mb while playing BioShock Infinite at max settings. If I was only getting 30FPS I would have just dropped some settings down to free up some memory but I was averaging 75 FPS. I decided to test out a few more games and this is what I found:

Battlefield 3 completely maxed out at 70-80FPS: 1680mb
Dead Space 3 competley maxed out at 250FPS: 450mb
Crysis 3 completely maxed out (on 2xAA not 8x) at 40-45 FPS: 1850mb

Dead Space 3 made me laugh but the other games made me a little nervous. With titles like BF4 and Watch Dogs right around the corner am I going to run out of VRAM? I bought the card 20 days ago so I can still return or exchange it for either the 4GB version or something different all together. What do you guys think? What would you do? Any help is greatly appreciated!

gokitty199 · Sep 9, 2013

Zero Cool :

i think it depends on when they get the benchmarks out, ive heard that it takes a super pc to run bf4 and ive heard people say it takes less to run it than bf3, its your choice, a 4gb would help if you plan to keep the card for a long period of time but if the games run with a fps your happy at then i dont see a reason to upgrade

Zero Cool · Sep 9, 2013

gokitty199 :

Well the fact that I'm getting acceptable frame rates is part of the issue. Everyone on these forums seems to think that by the time games needs more than 2GB of VRAM, a card like my GTX 760 will be outdated (or not be able to run them acceptable frame rates). If I were getting less than 30FPS when approaching 2GB of VRAM usage I would know that my card can't handle the game at those settings and when I turned down things like AA and texture quality to increase frame rates, my VRAM usage would drop as a result.

I knew when I bought the card that a heavily texture modded Skyrim would surpass 2GB and I was okay with that because I play it without any mods; but hitting 1923mb while playing BioShock Infinite at 75 FPS makes me a little nervous about upcoming titles.

While I'm crying about this I am pretty much answering my own question haha. I think I'll send the card back and get something else, even if it's just the 4GB version instead... Then if I decide to SLI later on I wont run into anymore issues.

gokitty199 · Sep 9, 2013

Zero Cool :

gokitty199 :

Well the fact that I'm getting acceptable frame rates is part of the issue. Everyone on these forums seems to think that by the time games needs more than 2GB of VRAM, a card like my GTX 760 will be outdated (or not be able to run them acceptable frame rates). If I were getting less than 30FPS when approaching 2GB of VRAM usage I would know that my card can't handle the game at those settings and when I turned down things like AA and texture quality to increase frame rates, my VRAM usage would drop as a result.

I knew when I bought the card that a heavily texture modded Skyrim would surpass 2GB and I was okay with that because I play it without any mods; but hitting 1923mb while playing BioShock Infinite at 75 FPS makes me a little nervous about upcoming titles.

While I'm crying about this I am pretty much answering my own question haha. I think I'll send the card back and get something else, even if it's just the 4GB version instead... Then if I decide to SLI later on I wont run into anymore issues.

personally i would recommend a better card than the 760 for next gen, im waiting to see how the amd hawaii cards are and i plan to get one of them if their as good as people say their suppost to be, nice upgrade from a gtx 670 so i can put the 670 in my other pc, the new release of the cards should lower prices of the current gen cards significantly hopfully.

Zero Cool · Sep 9, 2013

gokitty199 :

Zero Cool :

personally i would recommend a better card than the 760 for next gen, im waiting to see how the amd hawaii cards are and i plan to get one of them if their as good as people say their suppost to be, nice upgrade from a gtx 670 so i can put the 670 in my other pc, the new release of the cards should lower prices of the current gen cards significantly hopfully.

Yeah you're probably right. I'm not going to buy an AMD card next month since they will still be 28nm chips but I am curious to see how their release will effect the GTX 700 series prices. If it brings the 4GB 770's down to $400 I'll probably just go that route. Maybe SLI them 6 months later depending on how Maxwell looks.

gokitty199 · Sep 9, 2013

Zero Cool :

gokitty199 :

Zero Cool :

personally i would recommend a better card than the 760 for next gen, im waiting to see how the amd hawaii cards are and i plan to get one of them if their as good as people say their suppost to be, nice upgrade from a gtx 670 so i can put the 670 in my other pc, the new release of the cards should lower prices of the current gen cards significantly hopfully.

Yeah you're probably right. I'm not going to buy an AMD card next month since they will still be 28nm chips but I am curious to see how their release will effect the GTX 700 series prices. If it brings the 4GB 770's down to $400 I'll probably just go that route. Maybe SLI them 6 months later depending on how Maxwell looks.

amazon is the only place i will buy used parts from as they tell the condition, got my 670 for 50 dollars off and have had it for many many months with no issues, i get the ones that say like new
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00CZIQXBA/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1378754311&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00CU9GOAO/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1378754390&sr=1-1

HardwareGTX · Mar 22, 2014

I don't think a 760 2GB is going to be a problem with any games for a long while. Your GPU eats the PS4 and Xbox One for a snack. Those Vram Readings don't necessarily mean that is actually what the game is pulling from your card. Remember you have a total available graphics memory and your dedicated graphics memory. What you are more than likely seeing is not all dedicate graphics memory. Your are seeing a mix, Probably were the game is pulling some of the non dedicated memory to use for other miscellaneous crap.

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Hitting 1923mb of VRAM usage in Bioshock infinite. Should I upgrade to 4GB?

Zero Cool

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