No, I'm suggesting that 12GB on a 3060 is useless and is just marketing.
Well no, cause what about creators? Having the option of cheaper gpu's with more vram to handle productivity apps with isn't such a bad thing and it's about time the lower end of the market wasn't filled up with 4gb vram gpu's too.
There is legitimate technical reason as to why the 3060 has 12gb ram, the 192-bit memory bus should be paired with 3gb, 6gb, 12gb etc... 256-bit memory buses should go with 4gb, 8gb, 16gb etc... that is if you don't want mostly full speed vram and a bit of gimped speed vram.
To bring the 3060 out with 6gb vram would be a huge mistake as it wouldn't give much incentive to buy it given that we've already got games that legitimately need more than this for 1080p, like DooM Eternal maxed out... think about it with the facts that matter and it makes a whole lot more sense instead of ignorantly pinning it on marketing... also AMD typically putting more vram on their gpu's, especially in the midrange than Nvidia is nothing new and since when has Nvidia bothered with knee jerk reactions to it? So I think what we're seeing is really just down to... a necessary progression.
I'm sorry but you do not know what you are talking about. I play at 5120x1440 resolution with a 6800 and just in Cyberpunk in hitting over 8GB in vram, and my res is about a million pixels less than 4k. In Battlefield 5 when I turn on Ray tracing and ultra settings I'm almost to 10GB of vram, if I increase my resolution multiplier just 20% I'm over 12GB of vram. SoTR is above 8GB as well with default ultra settings.
All these above games are either close to, at limit, or can push above 10GB limit on the 3080. Additionally these games aren't even using mods with texture packs, if they were could rise up even more.
No you don't, cause you've not considered spare allocated vs what is actually needed vram usage. Use a 3070 8gb at the same resolution and settings with all of these games and will they stutter and freeze? Nope because it's enough actual needed vram and the spare allocation goes to ram instead of vram, which is why it is important to have at least 2x8gb ram for gaming ever since last gen gaming started, especially with the 6gb+ vram gpu's in any resolution... as even if they don't see maxed out allocated vram usage, you still end up getting maxed out 0.1% and 1% low frame rate results as well as averages... so it is down to what your total available shared memory pool is too... like 16gb vs 32gb ram is already showing a small fps lead with 4K gaming and a 2080Ti? Yep.
I've just remembered a good example seeing as you mentioned texture packs... Watchdogs 2 and the ultra texture pack runs fine on 6gb+ vram gpu's, but stutters and freezes like crazy with 8gb ram and doesn't with 16gb ram...
UltraTexture Pack
For Ultra Textures, you'll need 6GB of VRAM on your graphics cards, and a minium of 12GB of System RAM (16GB Recommended). (lol, a spelling mistake.)
Some games work out in different ways too, even if it isn't mentioned... like ROTR only suggests 8gb ram at most is needed, but you get object pop-in which is gone with 16gb ram, even with an 8gb vram gpu, but there is no stuttering and freezing occurring in this case, I guess that's why only 8gb ram is recommended as it does happen to maximise fps performance.
Not that I get why there is less fps showing here with 16gb ram, just ignore that must have been some kind of testing error lol. Jump to 3:40 for the part of the ROTR benchmark that shows what I'm talking about.
Oh yeah... someone who is into game development told me that somewhere around 11gb vram is the max looking to be used for the next gen gaming lifespan on PC, I have not been able to verify this but it does make a good bit of sense considering everything I've covered so far.
