- Aug 5, 2013
- 1,967
- 0
- 12,460
hi, I built a new PC about a month ago and have a GTX680 with 2GB. The performance of this card is awesome, great o/c capability and low power consumption.
The last few days I've been considering SLI, but have been increasingly concerned about my 2GB Vram limit and how it may not be good for future games, even at 1080p. This is particularly appararent after the release of the BF4 recommended specs mentioning a 3GB requirement.
http://au.ign.com/wikis/battlefield-4/PC_System_Requirements
Ironically, both the AMD and Nvidia cards they also recommend, only have 2GB!! I bet also that AMD paid $$$ for them to state 3GB, as the HD7950 and HD7970 have 3GB whereas most Nvidia cards have only 2GB.
I considered switching to AMD graphics, but don't like the historical issues that have been associated with AMD, particularly crossfire, and the generally higher power consumption, although I do like the greater freedom to overclock. I prefer to stick with Nvidia, particularly for SLI in the future.
I've been looking at 4GB Nvidia cards; 760, 670, 680, 770, but everything I've read says 4GB is wasted on the Nvidia cards because of the 256bit bus (192-224GB/s). It only supports 2GB. 4GB is incorporated by sharing the bus between RAM modules, thus affecting performance. 384 bit (264GB/s) is required for 3GB as with the AMD cards.
However, what about the PS4? It has up to 8GB Vram, although probably 6-7GB after o/s etc, yet only has a 176GB/s memory bandwidth. It also has half the performance of a GTX680. How can the PS4 utilise 7GB of Vram with such a low memory bandwidth and perofrmance, when the GTX 680 and 770 are said not to be able to?
The last few days I've been considering SLI, but have been increasingly concerned about my 2GB Vram limit and how it may not be good for future games, even at 1080p. This is particularly appararent after the release of the BF4 recommended specs mentioning a 3GB requirement.
http://au.ign.com/wikis/battlefield-4/PC_System_Requirements
Ironically, both the AMD and Nvidia cards they also recommend, only have 2GB!! I bet also that AMD paid $$$ for them to state 3GB, as the HD7950 and HD7970 have 3GB whereas most Nvidia cards have only 2GB.
I considered switching to AMD graphics, but don't like the historical issues that have been associated with AMD, particularly crossfire, and the generally higher power consumption, although I do like the greater freedom to overclock. I prefer to stick with Nvidia, particularly for SLI in the future.
I've been looking at 4GB Nvidia cards; 760, 670, 680, 770, but everything I've read says 4GB is wasted on the Nvidia cards because of the 256bit bus (192-224GB/s). It only supports 2GB. 4GB is incorporated by sharing the bus between RAM modules, thus affecting performance. 384 bit (264GB/s) is required for 3GB as with the AMD cards.
However, what about the PS4? It has up to 8GB Vram, although probably 6-7GB after o/s etc, yet only has a 176GB/s memory bandwidth. It also has half the performance of a GTX680. How can the PS4 utilise 7GB of Vram with such a low memory bandwidth and perofrmance, when the GTX 680 and 770 are said not to be able to?
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