Do I even need 8GB (RX 480) or is 4GB enough?

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Alex_266

Commendable
Aug 17, 2016
10
0
1,510
Will it make any difference if I want all settings, MSAA and VSync on Max and still get 50+ FPS on games like GTAV, Assassin's Creed, Witcher, Far Cry, etc. between the 4GB version versus the 8GB?

I notice from benchmarks that most games do not even touch the 4000 MB mark.
What reason is there to get 8GB even?
 
Solution
geofelt
VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test...
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Iceman21

Respectable
May 3, 2016
275
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In future when textures are higher quality you will need more vram. I dont think rx 480 will evere be able to use all 8gb of vram and provide playable fps, but in the future I quess it will use 5 of that 8gb.

I think GTA V all maxed out uses around 4.5gb of vram. Witcher is not that vram hungry.

All depends of what games you want to play, how long you will keep your gpu and your budget. If you have the money and plan to use this gpu for more than 2 years my opinion is: go with the 8gb variant.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
54,277
4,132
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VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
A more current set of tests shows the same results:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/page5.html

And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.
 
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