3060ti 8gb vs 3060 12gb

[Vayra86]

But I thought having 12GB of VRAM on a weaker card was better over having 8GB on a faster card?

I'm so confused. CP2077 can utilize up to 10GB of VRAM when RT is enabled (upwards of 7GB without RT), according to TPU and their benchmarking. Why is a 3060Ti with only 8GB out pacing a 3060 with 12GB? Last I checked 12 > 8.

Guru3D shows the 3060Ti, even with it's limited VRAM is 30-35% faster than the 3060 that has more VRAM.

Maybe it's just that game.....what other game can use lots of VRAM....?

Oh, maybe FarCry 6 will show how much better the 12GB is over 8GB.
At 1440p almost 8GB is used.
At 4k over 9GB can be used.
No...still seeing a 30-35% faster performance from the lesser VRAM 3060Ti over the 3060.

I just don't understand. What am I not getting? Maybe folks are saying that 4 years down the road the weaker 3060 with 12GB will give better performance over a 3060Ti with only a measly 8GB. Man. I'm just going to have to wait a while to see if this is true. Shucks, by then no one will care because we'll tall be talking/complaining about the current gen AMD/Nvidia/Intel will be providing.

Maybe the comparison now should be a focus on 6 versus 8 GB to see the gap. Then, FC6 shows its struggle. Older Ubisoft titles had similar issues. Engine quirk, but since the engine is used a lot, its there anyway. Pop in was always a thing in FC since part 3 as well.

Thats why Im saying : look back because history repeats, and higher VRAM cards just tend to last longer and resell for more on second hand markets.

The cards that stood out from midrange to high end over the last ten years have all been higher VRAM cards. Most notably, 7970 that would eclipse everything even years down the line due to combo of 3GB and wide bus. And the 980ti that is still relevant with its 6GB while any Fury X with 4GB (despite a superb bandwidth!!) is utterly pointless right now. The 1080ti is in a similar place, it will be relevant for quite a while still even with 5-6 years of age. With its 11GB it will eat any older, modded texture upped game at any res even ten years from now.

These differences dont show up in the first couple of years post launch. But year 3-5, they do. Its surprising even to me that we are actually already hearing issues with 10GB in certain titles. At the same time, the consoles with 16GB are pushing that mainstream bottom end up rapidly. Its a perfect storm for low VRAM to fall off faster than usual. Or at least require post launch dev/Nvidia TLC through patching or drivers. Its for that reason Nvidia has been shitting game ready drivers out of every hole for so long now.

And we can complain then that 'AMD is pushing useless stuff to fill 16 gigs', but what really happens is devs are using resources because it saves them effort. As they always have: once hardware gets mainstream it gets used.

 

[Bomby569]

I think one factor when considering how much VRAM is needed, is how much of a game you play in a single session. This is perhaps an area one could argue where benchmarking wont properly represent the playing experience, e.g. in Tales of Berseria if I just stay in one area, the VRAM usage may only be a couple of gigs, but if I start exploring the world, fight battles, let FMVs play and so forth it will consume triple the amount.

for my part on this i did test my 3060ti with RE Village, and got past the vram limit, i was playing fine, untill it got either some time limit or some zone (the game makes you go back and forwards a lot) and it simply couldn't handle it anymore, the fps started to drop of a cliff, it got so bad i was hearing the voices and the image didn't move anymore. I had to go to the menu a couple of minutes to get the image to continue to move.
It never crashed or got unresponsive to the point i couldn't go to menu. And it never happened again in my 9hrs or something like that. If anyone is wondering.

 

[AusWolf]

i tried to max it and it became a slide show, but i'm at 144, but i think even at 60 that should happen.



that's absolutely not true, it struggles at 1440p if you go past the vram limit, ask me how i know

That's strange. I have absolutely no issues running it maxed out at 1080p with a 2070. I played the demo for nearly an hour two days ago at a rock solid 40 fps.

 

[Vayra86]

This!

Let's not forget the fact that GPU performance improves through the years just as much as VRAM capacity does (if not more). Your "superior" 12 GB 3060 might run out of computational power long before more powerful, but lesser VRAM-equipped cards run out of VRAM. Futureproofing is a myth.

Edit: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/halo-infinite-benchmark-test-performance/4.html

Guys, let's look at two graphs: VRAM usage: 1080p: 6600 MB, 1440p: 7 GB. Yet, the 6 GB 1660 Ti runs it better than the 8 GB 1080 even at 1440p. It only shows its weakness at 4K. Why?

Not sure why but its clearly not VRAM related. Looks like a HALO problem. Look at the 1080ti and several other older cards. The 1660ti got driver TLC that Pascal didnt.

 

[AusWolf]

Not sure why but its clearly not VRAM related. Looks like a HALO problem. Look at the 1080ti and several other older cards. The 1660ti got driver TLC that Pascal didnt.

That's exactly what I mean.

 

[Vayra86]

That's exactly what I mean.

But it doesnt prove or disprove anything. It just shows us Halo might play better on newer architecture as 1660ti is Turing.

Far Cry 6 runs on ancient Dunia... so there we have something of a conclusion perhaps. Newer cards will more effectively use newer engines. But old engines are also used and improved over (several) decades. So this doesnt work out well as an example for your point.

 

[AusWolf]

But it doesnt prove or disprove anything. It just shows us Halo might play better on newer architecture as 1660ti is Turing.

Far Cry 6 runs on ancient Dunia... so there we have something of a conclusion perhaps. Newer cards will more effectively use newer engines. But old engines are also used and improved over (several) decades. So this doesnt work out well as an example for your point.

^This is exactly what it proves. VRAM is not everything, you also need more computational power and more efficient architectures for newer games.

 

[Vayra86]

^This is exactly what it proves. VRAM is not everything, you also need more computational power and more efficient architectures for newer games.

And then Far Cry 6 avoids that statement entirely. The majority of games gets built on old or refined engines. In practice you will always be using a wild mix of old and new stuff. And really, lots of new core power gets spent on silly stuff you really wont miss, like any of a dozen blur filters and overexpensive settings. Cut that away and the balance quickly leans over to be needy for VRAM as time passes.

 

[AusWolf]

And then Far Cry 6 avoids that statement entirely. The majority of games gets built on old or refined engines. In practice you will always be using a wild mix of old and new stuff. And really, lots of new core power gets spent on silly stuff you really wont miss, like any of a dozen blur filters and overexpensive settings. Cut that away and the balance quickly leans over to be needy for VRAM as time passes.

But then, Far Cry 6 is a game that runs over 30 FPS on a 6 GB 2060 at 4K.

When you're playing old games, you don't need to care about either VRAM or compute power. New stuff is a mixture of both, but a lot depends on your settings, too. If you don't game at 4K, or you're willing to put some settings down a notch, you're fine with less VRAM, but compute power is always needed, regardless of settings used.

 

[Vayra86]

But then, Far Cry 6 is a game that runs over 30 FPS on a 6 GB 2060 at 4K.

When you're playing old games, you don't need to care about either VRAM or compute power. New stuff is a mixture of both, but a lot depends on your settings, too. If you don't game at 4K, or you're willing to put some settings down a notch, you're fine with less VRAM, but compute power is always needed, regardless of settings used.

You keep talking about 4K but I never ever did but the impact of resolution is not that great on VRAM. The issues occur in certain games irrespective of res. Its about the needed bottom line, this is also why at some point you are forced to dial down graphics settings that really impact IQ.

 

[AusWolf]

You keep talking about 4K but I never ever did

The reason why I mentioned 4K is because 1. other people have mentioned it, 2. as far as I see, it's the only setting where VRAM really matters.

but the impact of resolution is not that great on VRAM.

To be fair, I see higher VRAM cards pull ahead only at 4K in some games. At lower resolutions, pure compute power wins all across the board. Though I agree that even this "pulling ahead" is not that great.

To bring my point closer back to OP - if we disregard 4K data (and the myth of futureproofing), the 3060 Ti wins against the 3060 12 GB every single time. The extra 4 GB VRAM doesn't give the 3060 enough advantage to beat the Ti in any situation.

 

[lexluthermiester]

2. as far as I see, it's the only setting where VRAM really matters.

This is not correct. Games will dynamically resize draw distance if more VRAM is detected. Some game will even default to higher quality textures. There are a lot of factors that go in to how games run. This applies equally to 1440p as well as 1080p. However, 4k is the larger concern. That said, the 3060 12GB is a capable 4k card. For perspective, the GTX1080 was a capable 4k card and the 3060 smokes it on all levels.

 

[efikkan]

To be fair, I see higher VRAM cards pull ahead only at 4K in some games. At lower resolutions, pure compute power wins all across the board. Though I agree that even this "pulling ahead" is not that great.

To bring my point closer back to OP - if we disregard 4K data (and the myth of futureproofing), the 3060 Ti wins against the 3060 12 GB every single time. The extra 4 GB VRAM doesn't give the 3060 enough advantage to beat the Ti in any situation.

As you can see in #217, RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 (both 8GB) increases their lead over RTX 3060 12GB with higher resolutions and details (on average). Any case this doesn't happen is probably due to inferior engine design rather than VRAM.

So let's talk some math and technical details again;
While this should be obvious, if your target frame rate is 60 FPS, then 12 GB VRAM for RTX 3060 is not going to help much, as the bandwidth of 360 GB/s would only permit a maximum of 6 GB read (if read 100% optimally, and the same data is never read twice, the game never reuses any resources and have only a single render pass), while RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB could manage to read ~7.5 GB of its VRAM. RTX 3060 Ti also have 26-45% higher texture fill rate, so there should be little doubt of which GPU is more capable of handling higher texture loads. In reality, the case for RTX 3060 12 GB is even worse, as most games will reuse the same textures multiple times, most have several render passes (e.g. for reflections), and definetly will reuse temporary buffers multiple times, leaving too little bandwidth to actually ustilize that 12 GB VRAM and ustain a high frame rate.

Now to the less obvious. You can probably see that most games get bottlenecked by computational performance as details increase. The underlying reason for this is not obvious to non-programmers. As resolution increases, the computational workload for pixel/fragment shaders is fairly linear with the amount of pixels on screen, but the texture data the TMU transforms comes from a larger block of memory, which means running multiple samples simultaneously gets a "streaming bonus" from VRAM. So even if the game increases the detail level, the computational workload nearly always grows quicker.
Secondly, there is the issue of "mipmaps". Even in a game with vast landscapes and incredible texture details, the majority of these textures will at any time be in fairly low detail in VRAM. (here is a random video illustrating texture detail levels, now imagine this on a larger scene with more distant objects)
Both of these elements combined contributes to a game being increasingly bottlenecked by computational resources as details increase, which seems to be contrary with what many of you would expect, but this is exactly what you see in the graph in #217. To those of us who have programmed with graphics APIs for many years, this stuff is obvious, and is why me and others have been pointing out this VRAM misconception for years.

 

[Ibotibo01]

If you will use RTX 3060 for 4 years with 1440p ultra settings(also texture quality is ultra), it will be more futureproof than 3060 Ti after 4 years but if you will be use RTX 3060 Ti for 2 years with 1440p ultra settings (also texture quality is ultra), it will be more future proof than 3060 for 2 years.

Concept of the future proof is changing with people' choices like playing on low settings or high settings furthermore it is about how many years people will use these GPUs.

I personally choose RTX 3060 Ti over 3060 because it has 4864 cores with 80 ROPs. 3060 has 48 ROPs with 3584 cores. Even RTX 3050s has 40 ROPs with 2048-2560 cores. Of course VRAM is important but almost half of the released GPUs(after 2016) has 8GB VRAM so game developers probably will focus on 8GB usage on GPUs. I think 8GB VRAM will be enough for 2 years with ultra. After the 2 years, ultra texture will probably using 10GB. (for 1080p)

 

[Vario]

Messing around with undervolting and gaming on this 3060. Seems to run well on 0.9 volt. Nice card but I do wish for a bit more performance, so I'll probably go for the 3060ti when available.

edit:

 

[eidairaman1]

The 780ti also aged terribly due to that 3GB.

970 did as well

 

[Bomby569]

someone pointed this out

the 1080ti and the 2080 ti are around the same performance as the 3060ti and they both have 11gb vram. Does this make sense?

 

[neatfeatguy]

someone pointed this out

the 1080ti and the 2080 ti are around the same performance as the 3060ti and they both have 11gb vram. Does this make sense?

In terms of relative performance, 1080Ti is about on par with the 3060. 2080Ti appears to be more on par with the 3060Ti.

 

[Selaya]

no the 2080ti's performing like the 3070, the 1080ti is between the 3060 and the 3060ti

 

[Bomby569]

In terms of relative performance, 1080Ti is about on par with the 3060. 2080Ti appears to be more on par with the 3060Ti.

what does "about" mean in English?

but that's really missing the point here.

 

[neatfeatguy]

what does "about" mean in English?

but that's really missing the point here.

About - used in this context I guess you could say it would mean "close to" or something along the lines of "similar"




Let's put all this to rest now that more VRAM is better for future gaming on a slower card.

Techspot got their hands on a RTX 2060 12GB and benched it. The card, even with more CUDA is only about 4% faster than the 6GB model. The 12GB model has all the specs of a 2060 Super, but keeps the original bus of a the 2060 and that is where its downfall is, choked by the lack of memory bandwidth

Techspot didn't bench 4k resolution, but let's be honest, 2060 and even the 3060 weren't designed for 4k resolution. And for the 3060 and for those that say, "but DLSS!" - not all games support DLSS. You need to go in expecting a game not to support DLSS and simply go by the relative performance of the 3060.

More VRAM, But for Who? Nvidia RTX 2060 12GB Review

Today we're taking a look at the new GeForce RTX 2060, you know, the 12GB model that gamers were hoping would help solve the GPU shortage, but...

www.techspot.com

 

[lexluthermiester]

The card, even with more CUDA is only about 4% faster than the 6GB model.

You missing the point. More VRAM has NEVER been about going faster. More VRAM equals more room for a game to play in requiring fewer trips to system memory and ultimately the storage. More VRAM is means that a game can display more textures at a higher quality.

but let's be honest, 2060 and even the 3060 weren't designed for 4k resolution.

Rubbish. A 2060Super is a capable 4k card, not with high or ultra settings, but still good quality. The 3060 is a large step above that. Any of the 3060's can do 4k well. Only the 2060 6GB will struggle at 4k with some games.

The 12GB model has all the specs of a 2060 Super, but keeps the original bus of a the 2060 and that is where its downfall is, choked by the lack of memory bandwidth

Your understanding of VRAM bandwidth need adjustment.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Specs

NVIDIA TU106, 1680 MHz, 1920 Cores, 120 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 6144 MB GDDR6, 1750 MHz, 192 bit

www.techpowerup.com

336GBps is more than enough bandwidth for most games.

Folks, how is the math difficult to understand? More VRAM equals good. Less VRAM equals not as good.

 

[ixi]

Folks, how is the math difficult to understand? More VRAM equals good. Less VRAM equals not as good.

Time to jump in in troll wagon.

Show us currently any title where 3060 eats 3060 ti in 4K or even after 3,4,5 years .

 

[AusWolf]

You missing the point. More VRAM has NEVER been about going faster. More VRAM equals more room for a game to play in requiring fewer trips to system memory and ultimately the storage. More VRAM is means that a game can display more textures at a higher quality.

I think you're missing the point. OK, the game can load more assets from VRAM, and less from system memory. Great! But what's the point, if it barely gives you any detectable performance increase?

Rubbish. A 2060Super is a capable 4k card, not with high or ultra settings, but still good quality. The 3060 is a large step above that. Any of the 3060's can do 4k well. Only the 2060 6GB will struggle at 4k with some games.

I respectfully disagree. Only an idiot (or a non-gamer) spends more money on a monitor than a graphics card, imo.

Your understanding of VRAM bandwidth need adjustment.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Specs

NVIDIA TU106, 1680 MHz, 1920 Cores, 120 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 6144 MB GDDR6, 1750 MHz, 192 bit

www.techpowerup.com

336GBps is more than enough bandwidth for most games.

VRAM is not for games. It is for game assets and textures. The higher detail and resolution you go, the more of it you need, just like of bandwidth, computing power, and basically everything. All I'm saying is that with higher resolutions, your requirement for GPU power and VRAM bandwidth increase more than your need for more VRAM does.

Folks, how is the math difficult to understand? More VRAM equals good. Less VRAM equals not as good.

Yes, when you're comparing two identical graphics cards. Other than that, more compute power is better than more VRAM. Or are you saying that the very rare GT 730 4 GB is better than my GT 1030 2 GB?

The RX 480 8 GB is better than the RX 480 4 GB.
The GTX 960 4 GB is better than the GTX 960 2 GB.
The 3060 12 GB than the 3060 Ti 8 GB or the 3070 (Ti) 8 GB? No. Just simply no.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I think you're missing the point.

No, I'm not.

But what's the point, if it barely gives you any detectable performance increase?

More VRAM isn't supposed to increase performance from the GPU, it's meant to grant more operating space for the GPU to do it's work. And you say I'M missing the point?

I respectfully disagree.

Ok, disagree. Buy what you want.

Only an idiot (or a non-gamer) spends more money on a monitor than a graphics card, imo.

Then you're calling a lot of very smart people idiots. Think that over for a moment..

This is not that complicated people. And I'm done debating this with brick walls. Buy whatever you want, be happy with it.