Video RAM - how much do you really need?

[Neeyik]

These days, gamers have never been more spoilt for choice when it comes to different models of graphics cards. However, the range in the amount of video memory they carry is quite limited and 3D games use ever increasing levels of storage. So how much RAM does a graphics card really need and what does it get used for anyway? Read this article to get the full facts!

http://www.yougamers.com/articles/13...u_really_need/

[NukemNazi]

Great article guys, but one thing. Stalker and Bioshock use deferred lighting (different from HDR) and no card I am aware of can run deferred lighting and AA together, all that well anyway. Has to do with the algorithm for the lighting from my understanding. I know this is just about another subject altogether but isn't that extra memory on both of these games using a waste for the most part?

Gears of Wars also uses this same method and most Unreal-engine based games are not going to have much effect when using AA.

[Neeyik]

Deferred shading and HDR are two entirely separate things, and one can use them together, which STALKER does. But you're right about the use of DS in STALKER - I'd forgotten about this and I'll add this to article accordingly, as this is why the "AA hit" is zero. The in-game AA is probably a blur shader.

[NukemNazi]

Originally Posted by Neeyik

Deferred shading and HDR are two entirely separate things, and one can use them together, which STALKER does. But you're right about the use of DS in STALKER - I'd forgotten about this and I'll add this to article accordingly, as this is why the "AA hit" is zero. The in-game AA is probably a blur shader.

Unreal engine, which includes Bioshock, Gears of War as of today, and upcoming Unreal 3 all use deferred shading/lighting also I am pretty sure of it.

Honestly it not that is a bad method of lighting/shading, cheaper for one thing, but it just has a bug in it for now til somebody figures out why the algorithm doesn't scale AA properly.

[Neeyik]

It's not that AA doesn't scale properly - multisample anti-aliasing just can't be done on MRTs in DX9, which are used in deferred shading. UE3 does permit one to write a front end renderer that uses DS, but it doesn't use it by default: for example, BioShock doesn't use it.

For your information, I play in 2560x1600 and here is the VRAM quantity used :

- Oblivion, everything maxed, AF 16X, AA 0X, Qarl Texture pack 3, BTQ and Qarl normal maps 4096x4096, exterior (around Cyrodil) : 800 - 950 MB

- Stalker, everything maxed, AF 16X, AA in game, exterior : 700 MB

- Lock On, everything maxed, AF 0X, AA 0X : 750 MB

- Call of Juarez, everything maxed, AF 16X, AA 0X, exterior : 550 MB

Every other game uses less than 512 MB, even Crysis with very high settings (windows XP). In order to play the games smoothly, I have a 2900 Pro 1 GB and 4 GB RAM.

Could you add Crysis memory usage on very high? Sure, no card ATM can run the game confortably on VH, but its still interesting from a academic point of view. You can go to tweakguides to see how to enable VH on winXP. Cheers.

What graphics card was used in the testing?

Won't the variety of GPUs/number of pipelines/shaders affect the amount of RAM used?

[Neeyik]

The GPU's internal configuration in the games tested doesn't affect how much local memory is used; the obvious exception to this is if one tries to use a GPU that doesn't support things like FP blending for HDR. However, for this article we used a DX10 NVIDIA graphics card, which has all of the capabilities necessary to utilise the games at their maximum settings (other than in DX10 mode).

[The_Traveler]

Awesome article, thanks guys. Definitely, learned a few things.