GPU for STEP Ultra.

[Besidilo]

4GB VRAM as such isn't a waste of money. A GTX 670 4GB is' date=' as it will be obsolete by the time you actually NEED 4GB VRAM' date=' unless you go Triple SLI up.[/quote'']

I know how fast things get obsolete, i realize 4gb may be a little bit over the top, boosting the performance using SLI only works for so long, until you are forced to upgrade.

But i'd rather have a little too much than, say, 2 gigabytes, it's not hard to use 1.5gb in Skyrim, that would only leave me with 500 megs to go until i get capped, who knows what sort of mods/effects that gets released into step since then..

 

I'm not sure how you determine VRAM usage in Skyrim. I am fairly sure that it has been explained by sb4n and me on these very forums before that measuring this figure is at best inaccurate.

 

I can tell you when you get to your VRAM limit - it is when the game starts stuttering like crazy when moving or crashes completely.

[envelope91]

4GB VRAM as such isn't a waste of money. A GTX 670 4GB is' date=' as it will be obsolete by the time you actually NEED 4GB VRAM' date=' unless you go Triple SLI up.[/quote'']

I know how fast things get obsolete, i realize 4gb may be a little bit over the top, boosting the performance using SLI only works for so long, until you are forced to upgrade.

But i'd rather have a little too much than, say, 2 gigabytes, it's not hard to use 1.5gb in Skyrim, that would only leave me with 500 megs to go until i get capped, who knows what sort of mods/effects that gets released into step since then..

 

I'm not sure how you determine VRAM usage in Skyrim. I am fairly sure that it has been explained by sb4n and me on these very forums before that measuring this figure is at best inaccurate.

 

I can tell you when you get to your VRAM limit - it is when the game starts stuttering like crazy when moving or crashes completely.

I'm sure MSI Afterburner can give a fake result, but each time it gets full, thats exactly what happens, the game goes from smooth to completely unplayable, and way more unstable, especially during cell changes but also randomly.

[EDIT] Im now talking about my old setup, when i had two ATI 5850 cards in crossfire with 1.5gb vram.

And before you ask, yes, i know its very difficult to measure vram on ATI cards, which is why i had my friend download and install step with his 2gb card and then tell me how much it was using at that time...

[Besidilo]

@Besidilo

 

If you are going to call other people's opinions "BS", I think the onus is on you to provide proof, and you have proven nothing. 

 

I am very much in favour of free speech and rigorous debate on these forums, but just as you are sick of our "BS", I am also getting very tired of you behaving as an authority and dismissing others' views as ********, and implying or outright stating that they are clueless for failing to abide by your teachings.  Please continue your arguments, but reconsider your attitude.  

I'm not very authoritative in my arguments since I'm not too bothered about what you or anyone else think. It does annoy me when authoritative figures like you make statements that will be taken for granted, since you are an official STEP member and I'm just a user. It's one thing to recommend something related  And I can't honestly recommend buying a GTX 670 4GB to anyone, however good you might think the graphics card is.

 

I am, however, sick of people who throw some terms around without backing them up or showing that they have any knowledge or idea behind their arguments. Case in point, you state that:

 

a) 4GB VRAM is not a waste of money if you intend on maxing out Skyrim.

 

Well, this is fundamentally wrong and it's an opinion that has no bearing in reality. Without defining what "maxing out" Skyrim really means, it's also irrelevant. You won't be able to max Skyrim out with just a large VRAM buffer. Your GTX 670 wouldn't be fast enough to handle the rendering despite its enormous buffer for textures.

 

b) Showing average FPS rates would obviously not illustrate the benefits of extra VRAM to framerate stability

 

That statement isn't any less truthful than the previous one. Whilst average framerates don't give us much information on their own, I have provided you with minimum and maximum framerates, as well as a graph that shows the fluctuations over the ran benchmark. It's not a singled out case since a VRAM limit leads to some very obvious consequences.

 

c) in that example the cards have different clock speeds, as well as differing VRAM, making the comparison uninformative in any case

 

And once again, you're entirely misreading the graphs. They clearly show that the extra core clock MHz don't account for much when rendering falls onto multiple other factors in that scenario. And putting VRAM above everything else is not very smart.

 

Unless you can provide any data behind the apparent benefits of a single GTX 670 4GB over the 2GB at the common resolution, I hardly see how you can consider me giving you a proof as something that has to be done in order to settle this argument. I'm glad to provide more information or benchmark comparisons between the cards using higher and lower memory modules, but it would be hard for me to disprove my theory, since there is no data proving yours correct.

 

 

I'll just say this, to wrap it up. NVIDIA has terrible value for money cards out on the market at the moment, and even though a few of my recent purchases were NVIDIA cards, I would not recommend one to a sane and sensible buyer these days. Two 7970s 3GB can be had for much less than the GTX Titan and are faster at 5760x1200 resolution despite having half the VRAM. It is also cheaper than a GTX 670 4GB, whilst being faster in most titles and including a bundle of games worth $50 or $100, so I see absolutely no reason to even consider the GTX 670 in this case.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, I respect your opinions, and I just think you're misinformed. But I don't like misinforming other users, so there you have it. If you don't like it, I'm OK with leaving the forum.

[Besidilo]

4GB VRAM as such isn't a waste of money. A GTX 670 4GB is' date=' as it will be obsolete by the time you actually NEED 4GB VRAM' date=' unless you go Triple SLI up.[/quote'']

I know how fast things get obsolete, i realize 4gb may be a little bit over the top, boosting the performance using SLI only works for so long, until you are forced to upgrade.

But i'd rather have a little too much than, say, 2 gigabytes, it's not hard to use 1.5gb in Skyrim, that would only leave me with 500 megs to go until i get capped, who knows what sort of mods/effects that gets released into step since then..

 

I'm not sure how you determine VRAM usage in Skyrim. I am fairly sure that it has been explained by sb4n and me on these very forums before that measuring this figure is at best inaccurate.

 

I can tell you when you get to your VRAM limit - it is when the game starts stuttering like crazy when moving or crashes completely.

I'm sure MSI Afterburner can give a fake result, but each time it gets full, thats exactly what happens, the game goes from smooth to completely unplayable, and way more unstable, especially during cell changes but also randomly.

[EDIT] Im now talking about my old setup, when i had two ATI 5850 cards in crossfire with 1.5gb vram.

And before you ask, yes, i know its very difficult to measure vram on ATI cards, which is why i had my friend download and install step with his 2gb card and then tell me how much it was using at that time...

 

Radeon 5850s have 1GB VRAM. I should know, I've had two myself. ;)

[envelope91]

4GB VRAM as such isn't a waste of money. A GTX 670 4GB is' date=' as it will be obsolete by the time you actually NEED 4GB VRAM' date=' unless you go Triple SLI up.[/quote'']

I know how fast things get obsolete, i realize 4gb may be a little bit over the top, boosting the performance using SLI only works for so long, until you are forced to upgrade.

But i'd rather have a little too much than, say, 2 gigabytes, it's not hard to use 1.5gb in Skyrim, that would only leave me with 500 megs to go until i get capped, who knows what sort of mods/effects that gets released into step since then..

 

I'm not sure how you determine VRAM usage in Skyrim. I am fairly sure that it has been explained by sb4n and me on these very forums before that measuring this figure is at best inaccurate.

 

I can tell you when you get to your VRAM limit - it is when the game starts stuttering like crazy when moving or crashes completely.

I'm sure MSI Afterburner can give a fake result, but each time it gets full, thats exactly what happens, the game goes from smooth to completely unplayable, and way more unstable, especially during cell changes but also randomly.

[EDIT] Im now talking about my old setup, when i had two ATI 5850 cards in crossfire with 1.5gb vram.

And before you ask, yes, i know its very difficult to measure vram on ATI cards, which is why i had my friend download and install step with his 2gb card and then tell me how much it was using at that time...

 

Radeon 5850s have 1GB VRAM. I should know, I've had two myself. ;)

Oh sorry, mix up on my part.

[envelope91]

It sounds very sensible to buy a 7970 card to be honest. 

A question: I was able to run two 5850 cards in SLI using a simple BeQuiet 650W PSU... What about 7970 cards? Do i have to get a stronger PSU?

Oh, and can you enable ambient occlusion in Skyrim with an ATI card?

[MontyMM]

@Besidilo

 

That's all fine, and I leave it to the independent minds of the community to decide for themselves on the technical matters. There's just two points:

 

- Long and detailed rebuttals like the one you just made are very welcome, but comments denouncing other members views as ludicrous, uninformed, BS, etc, are not.

 

- Your conviction that the opposing views of others are misinformed and misleading, and that this is something you must crusade against - this is the problem. You should oppose anything with which you disagree, with evidence and argument - but not exasperation and derogatory terms; disagreeing with you does not always coincide with incorrectness.

 

Just keep it good-humoured and positive, and I hope you stick around.

[Besidilo]

It sounds very sensible to buy a 7970 card to be honest. 

A question: I was able to run two 5850 cards in SLI using a simple BeQuiet 650W PSU... What about 7970 cards? Do i have to get a stronger PSU?

Oh, and can you enable ambient occlusion in Skyrim with an ATI card?

I don't think you'd need a new PSU at all. The card should be using less power than two 5850s, unless you played with voltages a lot.

 

BeQuiet's PSUs are usually quality make, so unless it is like a hundred years old, I wouldn't have any concerns.

 

AFAIK, you'd need to use ENB's implementation of SSAO in Skyrim. We have a few Radeon users here so you're free to ask them that question, or I can just power up my secondary rig and see if I can get it running.

[envelope91]

Nah, the PSU is about 5-6 years id say, but its true its very high quality..

 

The first separate PSU i bought was a "passive cooled zalman" for a cheap buck, i had it for 2 weeks until it gave up and shorted out the power each time i used it..

 

If there's is one thing I've learned its that you should always spend a little extra cash on your Chassi and PSU, because once you got real good ones, you practically never have to replace them!

 

Thanks for your help :)

[Besidilo]

@Besidilo

 

That's all fine, and I leave it to the independent minds of the community to decide for themselves on the technical matters. There's just two points:

 

- Long and detailed rebuttals like the one you just made are very welcome, but comments denouncing other members views as ludicrous, uninformed, BS, etc, are not.

 

- Your conviction that the opposing views of others are misinformed and misleading, and that this is something you must crusade against - this is the problem. You should oppose anything with which you disagree, with evidence and argument - but not exasperation and derogatory terms; disagreeing with you does not always coincide with incorrectness.

 

Just keep it good-humoured and positive, and I hope you stick around.

You have to forgive my attitude. I've long been a member of many hardware related forums, and the actual "poop" some of the users produce is incredible. Then you get controversial topics, like this case here with VRAM, where you know that the majority of users are wrong on the subject, but the only thing you can do to counter that, is bash your head against the wall.

 

Whilst I don't think my condescending approach is any good or done in a healthy manner, I really do have the best intentions in mind and am not a Nazi when it comes to hardware. You'll hardly ever see me being a "fanboy" of any hardware team or a hardcore proposer of a theory that seems to make sense only to people , but I have a good set of hard rules that I've gathered over the years of playing with and learning about hardware that allows me to make an informed decision. My no means should I be taken as an authoritative figure in those matters, but I propose another point of view that I think is worth considering by people who are still on the fence with these things.

 

I'd love a sensible debate on the matter, but I'm very time limited when it comes to these things and I'd be just glad if at least few of the users who consider buying a new graphics card now, would look into the topic a little more from the scientific or economic point of view. In my opinion, a good approach would be to decide whether one would be upgrading within a year and if they're willing to consider multi-GPU options, it's quite easy to estimate what you will get for your money in 1 or 2 years if you do the calculations, and almost every time it will prove more beneficial to get a mainstream card now and upgrade when it becomes necessary, than invest in something that may seem future-proof on the surface and becomes a rather poor purchasing decision in the long run.

 

With the GTX 670 4GB in question, I really think the card will become obsolete faster than the 4GB VRAM will be necessary, rendering this upgrade a bit on the poor side, considering the cheaper and faster solutions with have on the market.

 

I'll take a step back and reconsider posting before thinking next time something like this comes up.

 

And just to add on top of that, it's not that I think 4GB VRAM would be absolutely useless, it's just that I don't think focusing on that exact thing is very well thought out, since you would run into other issues long before that becomes a problem. We could obviously throw a mix of 4K and 8K resolution textures at Skyrim and it pretends it somehow improves the graphics beyond infinitum, but we both know that it's not a solution to other important issues with the game, and it's easier to slightly cut down on VRAM usage and improving things that actually change how this, and let's not forget other games, look like.

[TechAngel85]

PSU is the one thing you NEVER skimp out on for a cheaper, lesser known brand. Because that translates into cheaper, less quality parts. Antec, CoolMaster, Corsair, OCZ, Rosewill, Thermaltake....all good brands.

[envelope91]

PSU is the one thing you NEVER skimp out on for a cheaper' date=' lesser known brand. Because that translates into cheaper, less quality parts. Antec, CoolMaster, Corsair, OCZ, Rosewill, Thermaltake....all good brands.[/quote']

I totally agree with you, good sir!

*cough* and BeQuiet!

[MontyMM]

@Besidilo

Thank you.  Sounds good to me.  

[Momitja]

I have a gtx580 with 1.5 gb and have big problems because of stutter, when i go with too many 2048 texture mods, so i have to downgrade many mods to 1024 and i hate that.

I think to max out everything with 2k Mods you would need a 2 GB Vram Card minimum, but even then i would be afraid of some stutter from time to time (even on 1920x1080). If you want to be sure i would suggest 3 GB or even 4 GB (its kinda futureproof too).

 

My benchmarks btw from this week: https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=1858

At some points i experienced medium stuttering and had to downgrade mods and shadows

[Besidilo]

PSU is the one thing you NEVER skimp out on for a cheaper' date=' lesser known brand. Because that translates into cheaper, less quality parts. Antec, CoolMaster, Corsair, OCZ, Rosewill, Thermaltake....all good brands.[/quote']

The actual OEMs to look out for are Seasonic, Enermax and Topower. :D

 

EDIT: And Super Flower! How could I forget Super Flower?! :p