Work arounds for Vram?

[earv19]

Hi, I built my first rig last September and have been upgrading parts routinely. I'm mostly satisfied with performance but with two 560ti's I've run in to one major problem not enough Vram for demanding games. I'm familiar with computers but I still have some things I could learn.
Heres my rig:
ASUS M4N75TD~AMD Phenom II (x4) 560 3.3Ghz~2x560ti SLi~10GB 1333mhz Ram~750watt PSU~Samsung B2430HD

So my question is, are there work arounds for dealing with the lack of Nvidia vram (Other than just turn down AA) or am doomed to deal with two graphics limited by 1gb of ram to share?

 

[rolli59]

One GTX560ti handles everything well at 1080p so 2 should. 10GB ram is strange configuration what sticks do you have there?
There is no work around on the Vram to answer the question.
If anything you are a little under powered on the CPU rather than GPU!

 

[willard]

Sorry, you can't increase the amount of VRAM available to a card, except by replacing the card with one that has more VRAM. Your only options are to reduce the amount of VRAM needed.

 

[earv19]

One GTX560ti handles everything well at 1080p so 2 should. 10GB ram is strange configuration what sticks do you have there?
There is no work around on the Vram to answer the question.

3x 2gb Alienware/Dell and 1 4gb Pny. It happened by act of trouble shooting, thinking maybe my ram was the problem. And yeah they pack a punch in most games but you get vram hungry games like BF3 or I think Witcher... and things start to crash as soon as I see 1000+ in the corner of my screen.

 

[earv19]

Sorry, you can't increase the amount of VRAM available to a card, except by replacing the card with one that has more VRAM. Your only options are to reduce the amount of VRAM needed.

Yeah, that's what I'd thought I'd hear.

 

[rolli59]

3x 2gb Alienware/Dell and 1 4gb Pny. It happened by act of trouble shooting, thinking maybe my ram was the problem.

Mismatch of ram can cause strange symptoms and actually hurt performance. For your system I would recommend having 2 x 4GB sticks. Maybe you can get another matching PNY stick.

 

[wolfram23]

Not just the mismatch of RAM, but also the fact that dual channel requires RAM to work in pairs, so you'd need 2 or 4 sticks of similar sizes (for example 2x2gb and 2x4gb).

So yeah your system memory is an issue right now, running only single channel.

Otherwise it's pretty rare to get over the 1gb limit. BF3 with Ultra and 4xMSAA can do it, even no MSAA in the B2K maps can do it. Skyrim with mods can do it, same for STALKER. Most games though won't break that 1gb barrier... so what games are having issues?

 

[earv19]

Best answer selected by earv19.