4gb or 8gb on gtx980m what kind of performance issues can u have if you run out of ram on your card

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Wisconsingamer

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I'm looking at different laptops however very few have the 8gb 980m on them. Shadow of mordoor is the only one I'm aware of that uses more than 4gb at this time however future games may need more memory. I guess the main question is what kind of actual performance issue could this have on gaming. In theory it would just start using system memory. Just wondering because I'm not really sure about what the implications are on things like this.
 
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The reason it might use 5GB on the 8GB model is because it isn't unloading textures that aren't in use and things like that. Using a 4GB model would force it to unload the things it isn't using, but this does not harm performance. There is only a bottleneck when there is no longer room for the textures and stuff that it is using and that doesn't happen with a GTX 980m 4GB.
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gamerk316

gamerk316

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What happens is the game would need to reload textures to VRAM via the PCI-E bus, which does take a bit of time. It would not use any additional system RAM ; The textures are there anyway; they just get loaded into VRAM from RAM via the PCI-E bus.

And honestly, your performance is more likely to be limited due to heat and GPU performance before 4GB becomes an issue. More is better, but I don't think we're talking $100 better.
 
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Wisconsingamer

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I hear you guys it's just with games like mirror using more than 4gb how long before we're seeing that as the norm.

I am not worried about heat and from the bench marks I've seen on 1080p gaming it's ultra for everything and heat usually stays below or right around 80c

Would having to reload via PCI bus cause any studdering or other issues what would the downfall be or what kind of visual impact would it have if any
 
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blazorthon

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It doesn't matter how much VRAM a gae can use because the settings that you'd need to enable in order to use so much VRAM would already be too much for the GPU to handle regardless of the VRAM being 4GB or 8GB.

When something has to load over the PCIe bus, yes, that causes huge performance drops (as far as single digit FPS). However, you would never encounter that on a 4GB GTX 980M in gaming regardless of the game. The GPU doesn't have enough performance for the settings that would need more than 4GB anyway.

Also, one thing to realize is that a game will pretty much fill up the VRAM even when it doesn't need to. Basically, jsut because a game may use say 4GB doesn't mean it actually needs that much. In most cases, 2GB is still enough despite what game companies want to say. 4GB is not an issue at all for the GTX 980M unless you have two of them in SLI and even then, only a few situations would struggle and again, if you're looking for that kind of performance, a desktop makes more sense.
 
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Wisconsingamer

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I don't need sli I find that a single high powered card is plenty for my needs. The reason I even question the gb on the card is because I can get a pretty nice laptop with a gsync ips panel and a 980m but only 4gb.

I appreciate you trying to clarify the use of vram on the card I still have a little bit of a challenge understanding if say shadows of mordor on pc is using 5 gb on a 980m card if I have that same card and only 4 gb what happens to that last gb that it would normally be using on the card with 8 gb.

I realize most games will not need that space but after seeing mordor use more than 4 I can only see games going up and up.

I understand your explanation but I guess I'm not understanding how if a current game is using that much already that it wouldn't be impacted with less gb to run on.

As far as performance of the 980m it can run any game I have seen on ultra still hitting 45 for easy most titles I'd say much more even. So if your running on ultra wouldn't the beam then become your only limiter.

I apologize if I'm beating a dead horse but you seem to understand this well so I'm picking your brain. Thanks for the answers and the help
 
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blazorthon

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The reason it might use 5GB on the 8GB model is because it isn't unloading textures that aren't in use and things like that. Using a 4GB model would force it to unload the things it isn't using, but this does not harm performance. There is only a bottleneck when there is no longer room for the textures and stuff that it is using and that doesn't happen with a GTX 980m 4GB.
 
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