How much VRAM should I be looking for on a new GPU?

[DeltrusDisc]

So you see the title, and now I say, I've currently been working with a 22" 1680x1050 monitor from Gateway and 17" square monitor from Dell. Been using up till now a 1GB GDDR3 9800 GT from NVidia, but I've heard having more VRAM might be a good idea. So toss me some ideas, I've been thinking about the MSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II, but I'm open to suggestions. (I'm one of those i5-2500K people if you haven't seen my posts before.)

[Madcaptn]

If you want to go nuts you can get the 3GB ones like gtx580. Most are using 1.2 or 1.5 though. I'm personally getting a 1.2 gtx570 in the pc I'm getting in about a month.

[Korgoth]

1gb is more then enough if you keep using a 1680x1050 monitor. I remember seeing a 6950 article where they compared the 2gb and 1gb versions and there was practically no performance increase until the resolution got above 1920x1200.

Personally I think you should replace the monitor first, having gone from a 20inch 1680x1050 to a 27 inch 1920x1080, its huge huge improvement.

[vesseblah]

Having more than 1GB of RAM in graphics card is totally pointless and just marketing hype* unless you play at resolutions bigger than 1920x1080, or try to play two games at the same time.

Here's a comparison of Radeon 6950 with 1GB vs 2GB RAM, as you can see, the difference is zero except on 2560x1600 res. (R6950 is pretty much equal to GTX560ti)

* Like big OEMs sticking 8GB or even 12GB of RAM into worthless piece of shit computers to make those look better for uneducated people.

[Wries]

1GB VRAM will be enough for that resolution, in WoW, if you don't go what our friend Synthaxx would call "FullUltra". MSAA Antialiasing on 8x and shadows on max will choke the VRAM, I know from personal experience (not that I care, I'm fine with having shadows on "high" and MSAA on 4x)

Future proofing wise.. don't know, but things will probably require more VRAM as time goes on. Then again we might need new cards for other reasons than VRAM anyway.

If EVGA would've released 2GB GTX 460's in time for my purchase I'd probably gone for it TBH.

[Havermeyer]

The 560 Ti doesn't have the horsepower to use 2GB of VRAM:

Palit's GeForce GTX 560 is the only GTX 560 we reviewed today that comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory vs. 1 GB on the reference design. Unfortunately the memory capacity increase can not result in any significant performance difference in our testing. It seems that 1 GB of memory is enough for all our games at resolutions up to 2560x1600. Even if there was a difference at more demanding settings, it would make no sense for a card like the GTX 560. Even if you could somehow crank up settings to see a difference between 2 GB and 1 GB you would also end up with unplayable framerates due to the limited processing power of the GTX 560 graphics processor. This does not mean that the GTX 560 is a slow card, it simply means that the optimum memory configuration for it is 1 GB. Actually I could imagine a hypothetical 768 MB variant end up being competitive considering the reduced price it would come at.

[DeltrusDisc]

1gb is more then enough if you keep using a 1680x1050 monitor. I remember seeing a 6950 article where they compared the 2gb and 1gb versions and there was practically no performance increase until the resolution got above 1920x1200.

Personally I think you should replace the monitor first, having gone from a 20inch 1680x1050 to a 27 inch 1920x1080, its huge huge improvement.

27" is honestly an annoying size to sit that close to. I'm not in the position to be going for much larger monitors. I'd go to 23"-24" tops.

So I guess 1GB of memory is still good enough even when I've got my game on the 22" and then random crap on the 17"?

[Djinni]

27" is honestly an annoying size to sit that close to. I'm not in the position to be going for much larger monitors. I'd go to 23"-24" tops.

So I guess 1GB of memory is still good enough even when I've got my game on the 22" and then random crap on the 17"?

I've found anything over 24" is really more TV material, you want to put it the other side of the room, and play on the sofa. (I find that and doing that means I have to go look for my glasses 8-) )

[Cows For Life]

512MB is good for 1680 resolutions so long as you keep AA settings down. 1GB is recommended if you use a lot of AA or 1920 resolution.

[Djinni]

People keep citing using a single game, how about running say multiple instances of WoW or playing, WoW and GuildWars or something like that?

---------- Post added 2011-06-11 at 10:17 PM ----------

The 560 Ti doesn't have the horsepower to use 2GB of VRAM:...

(I also saw that... )