Get the 4gb 970 or wait for the 8gb version?

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Jackie Coogan

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May 14, 2013
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I want too upgrade my rig and I was wondering witch do you guys recomend: go for 4gb version of wait 8gb version. Till today everone thought 4gb was enough but than Shadow of Mordor comes out and it asks for 6GB of vram too play on utra... and the game dosen´t even look that good... so witch will get me more bang for my buck the 4gb or the 8gb?
 
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IInuyasha74
The amount of RAM is always something that needs to be balanced with the card performance. Typically I would of said for this high of a card 4-gb is enough, but since this card overclocked can be a fair bit faster than a GTX 780Ti, I would say get the 8GB version.
Games are moving to more RAM significantly faster than anyone has anticipated, so really unless you are buying a mid-range card or lower, the more RAM you get on the card the better.
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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The amount of RAM is always something that needs to be balanced with the card performance. Typically I would of said for this high of a card 4-gb is enough, but since this card overclocked can be a fair bit faster than a GTX 780Ti, I would say get the 8GB version.
Games are moving to more RAM significantly faster than anyone has anticipated, so really unless you are buying a mid-range card or lower, the more RAM you get on the card the better.
 
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Jackie Coogan

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May 14, 2013
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I don´t trust gamedebate it´s been wrong in the past... but since it´s your source let´s see

http://www.game-debate.com/news/?news=14514&game=Middle-earth:%20Shadow%20of%20Mordor&title=Middle-Earth:%20Shadow%20Of%20Mordor%20Ultra%20Texture%20Quality%20Requires%206GB%20VRAM

and

http://www.game-debate.com/news/?news=14506&game=The%20Evil%20Within&title=The%20Evil%20Within%20System%20Requirements

note the 4gb besides vram
 
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gridironcj

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Dec 23, 2012
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8GB 970s are laughable. Your GPU horsepower will bottleneck before you use all 8GB of VRAM, even in a 4-way SLI setup. Even for 4K gaming, 4GB is more than enough currently and is a sweat spot in my opinion. If a game actually required more than 4GB of VRAM on 1920x1080, then the 970 would be a horrible solution for gaming on such settings. You might as well wait for cards with GM200 chips.
 
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FunSurfer

FunSurfer

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Oct 26, 2009
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I think it will be wise to wait for the 8GB VRAM version, because the VRAM requirements of PC games are rising rapidly as a result of "next gen consoles effect", Watch Dogs needed 3GB, The Evil Within devs say you HAVE to have 4GB of VRAM to run without issues, and now Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor requires AT LEAST 6GB(!) of VRAM to run at ultra settings (2GB is now for medium). I predict that VRAM requirements will come to a halt at 8GB because that is the amount on the consoles, and I think the game developers that are not optimizing for PCs are just "mirroring" the data on the RAM and VRAM that is why game that don't look better than Crysis 3 which can be maxed with 2GB VRAM require x2 or x3 more.
 
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eli150

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Jul 7, 2013
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opened a thread on the subject myself : http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2315403/upgrading-gpu-extra-vram.html#14285357

you seem like you understand the vram problem more than most so let me ask you : if i own a 770 with 2gb vram and playing on a single 1080p monitor should i upgrade to a gtx 970 with 4gb or wait for the 8gb vram?

thanks in advance
 
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FunSurfer

FunSurfer

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I've just seen a benchmark of the newly released game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor that shows VRAM usage of 6GB, but the 4GB 980 and 970 can play this game smoothly at max settings probably due to driver VRAM enhancements. I think though that 4GB 970/ 980 is borderline even if enough for right now, but VRAM requirements are seem on the rise, as almost every couple of months a VRAM requirement is broken, and also The Witcher 3 is around the corner and is devs already stated that "it is going to break PC requirement records" so I recommend to wait for the 8GB models.
 
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eli150

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thanks. i think i'm going to wait for now but can a single 970 at 1080p use more than 4gb vram?
 
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FunSurfer

FunSurfer

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For now it doesn't, but the consoles can dedicate up to 7GB for VRAM usage from their total memory pool, and that can be on a 900p resolution, and as games are developed now primarily for consoles it would be on the safe side to get the 8GB models.
 
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kyotokid

kyotokid

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...unless you are using it for 3D GPU based rendering with unbiased engines like Octane or Iray. The only Nvidia GPU currently available with 8GB is the 2,500$ Quadro K5200, not many of us can afford that.

Getting that amount of VRAM on a GPU in the 350 - 400$ price range is a bit easier on the old wallet.

True that Sapphire offers the Vapour-X version of AMD's R9 290X with 8 GB for about 470$ but it will not work with Iray or the current version of Octane (it is claimed ver. 3.0 will support OpenCL, but is not expected to enter Alpha testing until this summer).
 
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