Is 2gb of VRAM on a 770 enough anymore?

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Nosidda

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Feb 24, 2014
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So I have been hearing a lot of mixed opinions lately about whether 4gb of VRAM is truly necessary, the main argument being future games will become more demanding. Others have said 2gb is plenty, and it kind of boggles my mind and makes me wonder if I made a good upgrade decision. I just upgraded from an HD 6870 1gb to a GTX 770 2gb in order to prepare for the next 2-3 years of gaming on PC, and plan to run games on a single 900p monitor for now, and probably move to 1080p within the next year.

Everyone I have talked to said the 2gb card should be plenty, which is great because the one I bought was on sale at the time, and the 4gb card would have set me back another $120 before shipping.

After installing it, however, I'm having people tell me I should have opted the extra money to future proof the rig with the 4gb model, so now I'm wondering if I bought the right card.

What do you think? Is 2gb enough for the next 2-3 years on 900p-1080p on single monitor?

I don't really plan to SLI, the way I see it, I won't want the 770 3 years from now, I'll want the next big awesome card, and I'm hearing from personal friends of mine that 4gb of VRAM is only really useful if you plan to SLI or go multi-monitor, or go beyond 1080p, which I personally don't see a need for as of yet.

i5 2500K, 3.3ghz
8gb DDR3
EVGA GTX 770 SC, 2gb with ACX Cooler
Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit
Maximus Genie-Z IV Motherboard, Z68
Seagate 500gb 7200rpm (OS host)
WD 2tb 7200rpm (Game installs)
No SSD, sadly
 
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pyr0_m4n
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1N07

1N07

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Feb 26, 2014
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Depends if want to max out games or just be able to play them. 2GB is probably easily enough to play games for years, but if you want to max out games, I would say 2GB might not be enough in a year or so.
 
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Nosidda

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Feb 24, 2014
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LOL That's exactly what I was thinking as well. This rig, which I have named Dragonrend (don't judge me) is already two years old, and I'm thinking three years from now, I'll just want a whole new PC, because of how dated it will be when all the awesome new stuff comes rolling out. And this rig already seems to run everything rock solid. Tomb Raider, at ultimate settings with AA maxed, was a butter smooth 60fps, so I'm pretty satisfied so far. My main worry is how well it will run Witcher 3, but of course it remains to be seen how everyones rig will run that monster. lol
 
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Nosidda

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I plan to max what I can, at the very least get close to ultra on most games, and try to keep resolutions down to 900p instead of 1080p to help save VRAM, maybe even dub the AA down a bit. I figure 2gb can be enough, it will just take some configuring to do max settings on some games.
 
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1N07

1N07

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You will not have to worry about it for now. When new games come out we'll see if they will need more than 2GB VRAM to max, but for now, you should be able to max everything with 2GB. Excluding everything else that it takes to run games.
 
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Nosidda

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Cool to hear. Thank you for the response. :)
 
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jerubedo

jerubedo

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Here's something most people do not realize: Most games are not coded very well and they are programmed to use as much memory as possible (perfect example is Titanfall right now which for no real good reason uses 3GB of VRAM @ 1080p @insane settings). Once the memory is filled up, though, the speed of the memory comes into play as old objects in the memory are flushed out to make room for new objects. So going back to Titanfall, yes it goes up to 3GB of VRAM usage, but as long as the memory is fast (in my case a 780 Ti has 7GHz effective speed) there won't be a slow down as old objects will be forced out and new objects will be loaded. Slower memory is where problems will occur.
 
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1N07

1N07

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Oh. Good point. Well if a GPU is good enough to run it at insane, don't you think it has fast enough VRAM anyway?
 
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pyr0_m4n

pyr0_m4n

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Feb 4, 2013
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Basically yes. Technically no. You can have the fastest RAM in the world, but every time it has to write something or move something out, that takes processor time. On the other hand, you could have 10GB of VRAM but that won't help if it takes forever for the computer to move objects in and out of memory. Just because it CAN run it, doesn't mean it's running it well. If you really want to settle this, find a happy medium. Choose what you need. As said, Titanfall uses 3GB. Get a 3GB card that also has an effective memory speed. My 780 is overkill for most games memory wise. Especially since you don't plan on going above 1080p
 
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papablista

papablista

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Jun 10, 2012
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Well hell don't do a thing YET wait, save sum bucks and plan the ultimate system, that is what i"m doing look at my specs old but got new with upgrades now I want the next best thing as for me it isn't here yet ,I do fine with the ole blu-lite special.. until I have to upgrade DDR4 is just around the corners so is 5.0 ghz Cpu's (cuse me there here) SEE!
 
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Nosidda

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Feb 24, 2014
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Thanks very much to all of you for your responses, very appreciated. I have done some benchmarking as well as testing games like Crysis 3 on my new 770, and everything seems to run extremely well. Crysis 3, at max settings in 900p, was running very smooth, and was 60fps about 70% of the time, framerates only dropped during heavy combat situations, and even then, it was still around 45-50. So I am felling very satisfied with this card, and am thinking 2gb should be ok for about 2-3 years so long as I stay at 900p-1080p, it will just take some configuring here and there to find a good balance in settings to get them as high as possible. At least that's what I think. Shelling out an extra $120-$180 for an extra 2gb is a lot for me at the moment. lol Thanks all.
 
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Brian Blair

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Mar 20, 2014
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How in the xxll is a 770 not enough to be able to max out games? A GTX 770 is one of the best GPUs out. It should be fine for 3-4 years. Here I am using a crapppy cheap GTX 650 Ti 1GB and I am maxing modern games. I just can't turn AA up very high on most games, But the games max out and play fine. It would be nice if I had a 770, Or even a 760, Then I would not worry for awhile like I am now. And here you are worrying for absolutely no reason.
 
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