1GB video card vs. 2GB?

[ytrohs10]

I play on 1920x1080 on a single monitor, will always play on a single monitor. I want to know if a 2gb video card gives more fps in games than a 1gb video card? Or does the 2gb only come into play when you go at a resolution higher than 1920x1080?

 

[robertomad]

I play on 1920x1080 on a single monitor, will always play on a single monitor. I want to know if a 2gb video card gives more fps in games than a 1gb video card? Or does the 2gb only come into play when you go at a resolution higher than 1920x1080?

From what I've read the 2gb memory is useful if you have screen size greater that 1920x1200 and if you want to use High Antialias settings.

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

And a couple of games like more than 1G VRAM. Imo there will be coming more games which want more than 1G to play at full settings.

 

[Supernova1138]

For a single 1080p monitor, you do not need more than 1GB of memory on your video card. There are only a couple of games that could potentially use more than 1GB at 1080p (Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Grand Theft Auto IV), but those games aside from possibly Grand Theft Auto IV will be bottlenecked by the speed of any given GPU before the amount of RAM becomes an issue. These games would only run over 1GB when run on maximum settings, with very high Anti-Aliasing. In the case of Crysis and Metro, there is no single GPU that can do that. GTA IV is just so poorly coded that it requires something like 1.4GB of video RAM in order to run maxed out.

For now 1GB is enough, only go for 2GB if you plan on gaming across multiple monitors, or you intend to keep your card for a very long time, in which case 2GB might be a little more "futureproof", though by the time games routinely start using more than 1GB at 1080p, most current cards would probably be obsolete.

 

[robertomad]

For a single 1080p monitor, you do not need more than 1GB of memory on your video card. There are only a couple of games that could potentially use more than 1GB at 1080p (Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Grand Theft Auto IV), but those games aside from possibly Grand Theft Auto IV will be bottlenecked by the speed of any given GPU before the amount of RAM becomes an issue. These games would only run over 1GB when run on maximum settings, with very high Anti-Aliasing. In the case of Crysis and Metro, there is no single GPU that can do that. GTA IV is just so poorly coded that it requires something like 1.4GB of video RAM in order to run maxed out.

For now 1GB is enough, only go for 2GB if you plan on gaming across multiple monitors, or you intend to keep your card for a very long time, in which case 2GB might be a little more "futureproof", though by the time games routinely start using more than 1GB at 1080p, most current cards would probably be obsolete.

Hi Supernova1138,

Saw you on my thread and I think my question is related to this one, in my case that I'm using 40"TV and 24" monitor all the time (literally) would you recommend 2GB of VRAM?

Thanks.

 

[Supernova1138]

Screen size is not as important as resolution. TVs generally don't come any higher than 1920x1080, and from your thread I know your monitor is 1920x1200. For those resolutions, 2GB is not going to be beneficial outside of a couple of games and only if you are running a high end dual GPU setup. If you have both screens hooked up at the same time, it still would not be beneficial unless you were playing a game on both screens. If one screen is simply sitting on the desktop or doing some 2D task, you won't see any benefit in having the extra RAM.

 

[robertomad]

But if you are running Bluray movies or even 3D movies on the TV and games on the monitor will that make any difference? Thanks.

 

[Supernova1138]

BluRay movies and other video files hardly use any video RAM at all compared to what games use, the amount is insignificant, very, very few games would take any performance hit from the video RAM taken up by a video file. If you do want to run BluRay or BluRay 3D movies while gaming, you may take a small performance hit in the game, due to GPU resources being divided between the game and the movie, if you have GPU accelerated BluRay playback enabled.

 

[srafig4]

for some games,more VRAM is better when use FF/FSAA~

 

[robertomad]

Just for the poster

This thread is also useful thought it's a bit outdated 2009. I think Supernova1138 has explained most of this. Just FYI.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-ram-4870,2428.html

 

[Chirag Borawake]

Hi Supernova1138,

Saw you on my thread and I think my question is related to this one, in my case that I'm using 40"TV and 24" monitor all the time (literally) would you recommend 2GB of VRAM?

Thanks.

From what I know, Though the Tv is bigger in size, its maximum resolution would be 1920 X 1080, Quad HD's and Ultra HD's are still in the innovation phase..!!
So you wont need any 2GB GPU, 1GB will do the trick.

 

[Chirag Borawake]

And ytrohs10, about your question, if you are certain that you are going to play on that resolution, on a single monitor, and not more than that, then you surely dont have to go for a 2GB. 1GB will be sufficient.
As per my information, the advantage of 2GB over 1GB is that, when you need to do some high resolution, high quality renderings, the 1GB and 2GB are the temporary storage for the frames that are being rendered, and 2Gb proves more useful only when you do some professional 3d stuff. It does nothing good for gaming.
Otherwise, for gaming, 1GB is good.

 

[americanbrian]

It also depends on the performance of the GPU. if you couple 2GB onto a lame GPU, it is completely pointless. Only a card actually able to render high framerates at the highest resolution will have any impact in the choice.

For any mainstream GPU it really doesn't matter that much at all.

 

[robertomad]

It also depends on the performance of the GPU. if you couple 2GB onto a lame GPU, it is completely pointless. Only a card actually able to render high framerates at the highest resolution will have any impact in the choice.

For any mainstream GPU it really doesn't matter that much at all.

Which ATI series do you think can use 2GB VRAM?

 

[Chirag Borawake]

Which ATI series do you think can use 2GB VRAM?

Actually, at 1920x1080, 1GB is more than sufficient for most games. If you CF a pair of 4890 1GB cards, you will get close to double the performance in many cases, but you will still only have 1GB of VRAM available (since each card's memory is identical in content to every other card's memory in a CF/SLI setup). Honestly, unless there is a pretty small price difference, I'd go with the 1GB.

 

[americanbrian]

well take a little look on this chart,

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/Metro-2033-Enthusiast,2664.html

You can see that the reference 6950's (lowest possible AMD cards to render at >30fps) in this title show that the 1GB card has BETTER performance than the reference 2GB model.

Also, the top of the heap is the GTX580 in SLI, with only 1.5GB of ram (each) versus the OVERCLOCKED 6990 with 4GB onboard.

This should illustrate to a fairly informed person that the capacity of the RAM onboard has very little influence over the performance in this case. I chose a very demanding title with very demanding settings to try and show as big a difference as possible.

In the 6990's favour, if you run a tri-monitor setup then you will need the additional RAM for the frame buffer at EXTREMELY high resolution. Nothing else will do. However, for anything that is running less than 2560 res it is just completely unnecessary.

 

[Chirag Borawake]

well take a little look on this chart,

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/Metro-2033-Enthusiast,2664.html

You can see that the reference 6950's (lowest possible AMD cards to render at >30fps) in this title show that the 1GB card has BETTER performance than the reference 2GB model.

Also, the top of the heap is the GTX580 in SLI, with only 1.5GB of ram (each) versus the OVERCLOCKED 6990 with 4GB onboard.

This should illustrate to a fairly informed person that the capacity of the RAM onboard has very little influence over the performance in this case. I chose a very demanding title with very demanding settings to try and show as big a difference as possible.

In the 6990's favour, if you run a tri-monitor setup then you will need the additional RAM for the frame buffer at EXTREMELY high resolution. Nothing else will do. However, for anything that is running less than 2560 res it is just completely unnecessary.

Thats a good example, so if, logically, VRAM would have been able to increase the performance that much, there would have been a lot of price difference between the both of them. But, for example, 2Gb is costly than 1Gb, just for about 5-10% of 1Gb's price. That makes sense, right?
Better go for 1GB now, and if money is not the concern, then change the Graphics card every year..!!
Your new year RESOLUTION should begin with a new card..!! haha..!!

 

[ytrohs10]

Best answer selected by ytrohs10.