Let's talk about VRAM

[charged_tank 1]

First thank you for caring to add it.

Secondly I would prefer two values: one with lowest possible in game settings and another with all best settings.

 

VRAM usage also depends on drivers and GPU...

I'm sure that sometimes just 2 values can be inaccurate, but I'm not sure how to approach this... I'm sure that just 2 values can imprecise sometimes.

[Aemony 142]

You mean the VRAM usage number in the system requirement section? It's just mirroring the official system requirements, which is based on the QA testing of the developers.

It's less about the number itself, and more about whatever amount of VRAM the "minimum" and "recommended" GPU has.

 

Beyond that, most games use _much_ less VRAM than people might assume. Tools such as GPU-Z, RTSS, etc all reports _requested_ VRAM -- not actually used VRAM. And games might request way more VRAM on GPUs with more VRAM than they actually use. For example, a ton of games I've played have barely used more than 3-4 GB of VRAM even in 4K -- I think Watch Dogs 2 and Monster Hunter World were examples of this. That basically means that even going forward, the amount of VRAM that is actually necessary to play a game is vastly less than what many might assume.

 

See the below thread for a good overview of it all:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/vram-in-2020-2024-why-10gb-is-enough.280976/

[Aemony 142]

Also, if this was an actual suggestion to add additional VRAM rows to track actual usage, then sadly, that's basically impossible due to the previously touched upon topics -- most tools nowadays lies to your face about actual VRAM being used by a game, and other games (or tools) might not even have a proper way to look up actual real VRAM usage of a game (for example, Vulkan doesn't have a built-in way of tracking VRAM usage if I remember it correctly, forcing developers to use DirectX's DXGI memory budgets instead to track 'em).

[charged_tank 1]

8 minutes ago, Aemony said:

Beyond that, most games use much less VRAM than people might assume. Tools such as GPU-Z, RTSS, etc all reports _requested_ VRAM -- not actually used VRAM.

...

See the below thread for a good overview of it all:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/vram-in-2020-2024-why-10gb-is-enough.280976/

Interesting, but I expect to know  if some integrated GPU or inexpensive GPU can reasonably (30-60 FPS) run some game. Maybe even better (120-240 FPS).

In this way "just 10 GB of VRAM is enough" isn't an answer to what I want.

 

I feel need to integrate PCGW with some game benchmark site... But I don't know one yet (YouTube is too chaotic).

 

I also have examples of games where VRAM usage raised during development or remaster.

[Aemony 142]

Performance is much more determined by sheer compute performance of the GPU and not the amount of VRAM it has, so basically no answer that involved VRAM would be relevant for such a question — especially for lower end cards.

The amount of VRAM is only relevant in a few edge cases where /technically/ the GPU has enough compute power to deliver a higher performance, but it’s being bottlenecks by the lack of VRAM and the constant need to move data in and out of the VRAM. But even proving such a thing is ridiculously hard since it would basically require an identical card but with more VRAM to compare to, with the rest of the system being entirely unchanged.

In regards to game benchmark sites, I don’t thinks there’s any worth evaluating. Game performance is heavily affected by basically all major components of a system, from the GPU and CPU and even sometimes down to the PCIe lanes used for the GPU. A “perfect” game benchmark site would basically have to test an insane amount of permutations to cover all bases, which is impossibly expensive. Even more so when factoring in various video quality settings of the game. Most game benchmark sites just seem to (if even that) test minimum and recommended system requirements and then guess whether a certain config might get a better experience or not compared to those.

[charged_tank 1]

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A “perfect” game benchmark site would basically have to test an insane amount of permutations to cover all bases, which is impossibly expensive.

I have 4 DDR slots 2 PCIe slots 1 CPU slot

Not insane amount, but plenty of combinations.

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GPU and not the amount of VRAM it has, so basically no answer that involved VRAM would be relevant for such a question — especially for lower end cards.

That's not quite true, some games just need some VRAM to even start... We need to know it.

Hardware recommendations can be obsolete.