Games that require more 24 VRAM...

[Sunny and 75]

Games generally are developed for consoles first then get ported to PC, so that's why 16GB VRAM will be more than enough for the time being.

And that is until PS6 comes out. It will be interesting to see if SONY ships the PS6 with 24GB or 32GB configuration. Only time will tell.

 

[soPvN]

Using 8K to test for “stable performance” is… a take.
And I somehow doubt that the new flagships will receive 32 gigs of VRAM because holy shit, talk about unnecessary. And if the rumors are correct and we are moving to GDDR7, that would also be eyewateringly expensive both to produce and, obviously, buy.

Only tagging this because it didn't age well

 

[Onasi]

Only tagging this because it didn't age well

I didn’t really have 5090 as a 2000 dollar professional card for AI workloads on my bingo card a year ago, no. Surprisingly, I don’t possess a crystal ball to tell the future. It technically aged just fine - it IS eyewateringly expensive and it IS completely unnecessary FOR GAMES. So I would say that I came out ahead decently well in my predictions.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I didn’t really have 5090 as a 2000 dollar professional card for AI workloads on my bingo card a year ago, no. Surprisingly, I don’t possess a crystal ball to tell the future. It technically aged just fine - it IS eyewateringly expensive and it IS completely unnecessary FOR GAMES. So I would say that I came out ahead decently well in my predictions.

I'll back you up on that point. Your original comment seems to have aged well. You may have misjudged makers producing 32GB cards, but the need for them for anything other than high-end, high-level compute is still spot on.

 

[harm9963]

The most I seen with my 4090 ,is 22GB , that was Harry Potter , but since then more and more of games are up there .

 

[SPDIF]

If this trend continue, gaming will soon be only for rich people on PC. Then i think it's better to spend your money on a PS5 or so... Uses less energy, no burning wires, no 1000W Power Supply, no excessive cooling method, less noise, less energy cost's. And with the money left over go on vacation with your wife and children.

 

[Dragam1337]

If this trend continue, gaming will soon be only for rich people on PC. Then i think it's better to spend your money on a PS5 or so... Uses less energy, no burning wires, no 1000W Power Supply, no excessive cooling method, less noise. And with the money left over go on vacation with your wife and children.

The bar being moved so much for what you can expect to get for 500 usd is deffo an issue. Used to get you a highend gpu, now it's getting you trash tier.

Everything costing an arm and a leg will be the death of pc gaming, cause while rich people can buy whatever hardware they want, game makers needs the masses to purchase their games for it to be profitable - not just the top 5% richest people in 'murica. Unless they are also willing to spend 1000 usd per game that is.

But the likely scenario is that the amount of pc gaming hardware being sold will decrease if current trend continues, and a big portion of pc gamers will move onto console - i know quite a few people who have done this already, as they couldn't justify spending more than 5 times as much on a gaming pc vs a ps5.

 

[SPDIF]

For a modern GPU card you almost have to sell your kidney. What's next? A 1600W Power Supply? It's really begin to come crazy these days.

 

[Dragam1337]

For a modern GPU card you almost have to sell your kidney. What's next? A 1600W Power Supply? It's really begin to come crazy these days.

1600w psu's have been a thing for a long time - even 2200w.

But i see pricing being the biggest issue.

 

[freeagent]

I agree.. this hobby is expensive, even more so these days.

But.. it has always been expensive

The good part is you don't have to upgrade every generation.

 

[Dragam1337]

I agree.. this hobby is expensive, even more so these days.

But.. it has always been expensive

The good part is you don't have to upgrade every generation.

It wasn't actually that expensive in the past. Like from the 90s and until crypto boom, prices were fairly reasonable.

Also, nvidia seems to be intent on you having to upgrade every gen with the implementation of the "great" 12pin connector... now that you don't get alot more performance every gen, they gotta give you another incentive to buy a new gpu...

 

[SPDIF]

Don't get me wrong, i like playing games on PC the most, but the prices and heat and energy... A 5090 can warm up your room with 500W, 900W in short spikes! Many people can't play a decent game because of costs, and it goes up every year...

 

[freeagent]

A 5090 can warm up your room with 500W!

Nah... I have run way more than that on older SLI systems hoping to heat my compooter room, it never works.

Maybe in the summer it would suck a bit, but my AC runs on hot days..

 

[Dragam1337]

Nah... I have run way more than that on older SLI systems hoping to heat my compooter room, it never works.

Maybe in the summer it would suck a bit, but my AC runs on hot days..

Same, ran quad sli in the past, but it does heat my place up alot. Increases temps by 5c - great in winter, less so in summer. We don't have ac here. So it will depend quite a bit on where you live, and how well isolated your buildings are.

 

[freeagent]

Same, ran quad sli in the past, but it does heat my place up alot. Increases temps by 5c - great in winter, less so in summer. We don't have ac here. So it will depend quite a bit on where you live, and how well isolated your buildings are.

Pipes and sewers are 15 feet underground so they don't freeze up here lol. My basement is 12 feet, and the part where the house sits on the foundation gets pretty frosty this time of year

 

[SPDIF]

But clearly you can see hat something has to be changed, burning cards and connectors melting, wires burning. Yes sure Expensive hobby these day's.

 

[arbiter]

unless you running 8k max settings then there is none but at that res you likely getting 12fps. Only games that really even use 16gb+ are games that use excessive vram cause that is way engine is designed to use every mb possible to start with not cause it needs it.

 

[Dragam1337]

unless you running 8k max settings then there is none but at that res you likely getting 12fps. Only games that really even use 16gb+ are games that use excessive vram cause that is way engine is designed to use every mb possible to start with not cause it needs it.

Incorrect - you can absolutely have 60+ fps at 8k with dlss .

 

[SPDIF]

Another thing that is important for me is that i don't like to put away old stuff that still works fine, i keep everything and i can't put it away. Radeon's, GTX970, GTX1060, RTX3060 and so on... All still working perfectly! I play older games with them on older rigs. And then i am happy that it still works fine when playing older games.
But that's maybe just me, i'm not so young anymore...

But anyway that's off topic.

But yeah truly expensive hobby these days and no idea where to specs later are going to. And with the new US tariffs it looks to be more expensive then ever.

 

[Dragam1337]

Another thing that is important for me is that i don't like to put away old stuff that still works fine, i keep everything and i can't put it away. Radeon's, GTX970, GTX1060, RTX3060 and so on... All still working perfectly! I play older games with them on older rigs. And then i am happy that it still works fine when playing older games.
But that's maybe just me, i'm not so young anymore...

But anyway that's off topic.

But yeah truly expensive hobby these days and no idea where to specs later are going to. And with the Trump tariffs it looks to be more expensive then ever.

I sell hardware when i buy new hardware - easy way to make it alot cheaper.

As for trump, probably not allowed to write anything as this is an american site. But suffice to say that eu needs an alternative to american hardware going forward. Thankfully europe has arm.

 

[SPDIF]

Yeah that's me i can't sell them for some reason because i never know when i going to need it later on. I like playing around with much older rigs. It's fun to see Windows 95 running and play old games for me. Still have an old WD RAPTOR HDD spinning at 10.000rpm with only 74GB space... From 2003.

I hope that later on playing decent games is in reach for everyone. Maybe with lower specs.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Only tagging this because it didn't age well

I don't blame @Onasi too much. No one can see the future, tbh. I didn't expect Nvidia to pull a 512-bit card out of their hat either, especially since we haven't seen a 512-bit high-end GPU since AMD Hawaii (R9 290X), released in 2013 (R9 390X/Grenada is just VRAM doubled Rebrandeon). Both vendors stopped at 384-bit for flagships ever since, as there are considerable engineering requirements for 512-bit cards that makes them very expensive to manufacture.

For a while, AMD even regressed into a 256-bit bus assisted by cache with Navi 21, which resulted in a quite balanced GPU which was the 6900 XT and Nvidia put their own spin on that, which was the 4080 - a design choice that lives on in the 5080 today. The specs may look paltry on paper, but the hardware utilization in all three of these tends to be pretty much near 100% without scaling issues, the same can't be said for the AD102 and GB202 chips above them.

I for instance didn't believe Intel would release a i9-14900KS and stated so numerous times myself, since the 13900KS is pretty much already at the limit of what Raptor Lake realistically does, yet they did so anyway and somehow found a way to turn the 13900KS into a mass produced processor in form of the 14900K (which in all fairness, is a bit more hit or miss regarding silicon quality, but nothing too major).

 

[alwayssts]

Only tagging this because it didn't age well

It didn't? Do we need 32GB or 8k? I don't think so. Not for gaming. Maybe for Deepseek/LLM.

The most I seen with my 4090 ,is 22GB , that was Harry Potter , but since then more and more of games are up there .

There are MANY games this is the case...I get the impression it's what needed for 1440p textures at 4k. I would in-fact say that 22 is a good way to think of the future we're headed towards:

~22GB for games (at high-end settings)
~22T for a CPUs (because this is an efficient use of a cpu). A topic for a different day.

You'll understand why it's ~20-23GB and not 24GB in a second.

Like I keep saying:

24GB: 4090; kinda the standard for 4k or 1440pRT 'high'->4k upscaling.
18GB: Kinda gonna be the standard for 1440p or 1080pRT 'high'->1440p/4k upscaling
16GB: Kinda the baseline for the future. Probably the base for many standard RT games and/or 1080pRT 'low' settings->1440p/4k upscaling; may or may not survive 1440p (in all instances).

You can calculate this out to roughly 'up to ~90TF', ~60-68TF, ~45-60TF. The scale is important because the bottom is for base resolution, the top-end for up-scaling (and/or RT).

PS6 will probably be on the threshold of 16/18GB, and have instances where both could be needed. Figure the average system ram usage is ~14GB (for a high-end game), which I'm sure many have seen in games.
Obviously some games could use less system ram and more for the inherent textures (say ~6/22 give or take), especially if the 'core' is based on this generation of consoles (a la a HD/RT remaster).

I'll give you another way to think of it:

Say a (typical) high-end game with everything turned up uses 45TF; add another ~20-25% for RT for ~53-56TF, which is not completely unusual.
Now apply DLSS3/FSR4 for a (around ~8%) perf hit. DLSS4 requires ~15%. This output would require ~60TF, or the approximate limitation of 16GB.
(Obviously not all games use all things, sometimes 45TF is the threshold for certain things, etc, and that 16GB could be used solely for pure rasterization and/or you don't need to use those features.)

This is my estimate for the PS6....perhaps something like 11264 @ 2700mhz (give or take?)...Because it fits the trend we're seeing perfectly.
This perf hit from up-scaling is also the difference between the usage of ~20+ - 22+GB from 24GB bc not all compute is being used for the game scenario (it's the difference from upscaling overhead).
This is why you see this very common theme, I think.

Numbers are not exact, but hopefully you catch what I'm putting down. Like I said, it's pretty apparent in games already (45TF/>12GB and will soon want 60TF/16GB+ for the common desirable scenario).

It's also how you can calculate how N48 (unless it overclocks pretty high in terms of clock/memory) may not age well for upscaling/RT, while 4070ti/5070 (<45TF/12GB) are living on borrowed time.
This is why 9070/9070xt should be cheap, why 12GB cards well...they just are.

Really hoping AMD explains this stuff with (explaining the segmentation of) N48, because I think all the variables confuse a lot of people. Base resolution, upscaling types, RT, FG, WTFBBQSAUCE.
Point is, I don't expect anything below a overclocked 9070xt and/or 9070xtx to live very long in the way most people want to use them (1440p, 1080pRT->1440p/4k 'low/standard' RT upscaling).
IOW, anything below a 4080/5070ti from nVIDIA...but even those don't exceed 60TF and could be limited by 16GB buffer. You can see how they're on the cusp (this is how planned obsolesence works).
For high-end gaming, that is, and not factoring in FG (because I wouldn't suggest using it below 60fps). Obviously people can enjoy whatever games and any game however they see fit and/or can afford.

Again, this is why I hope the LOW-END on 3nm is 16GB/45-60TF, Lower-mid 60-~70TF/18GB, higher-end up to 90TF/24, and halo whatever they want because ain't nobody probably going to buy it.
Which brings me full circle. Do we need 32GB? I don't think so. Will they make 32/36/48GB over the next few to several years? Probably; native 4kRT. Do I think most people will want/need them? No; upscale.

 

[arbiter]

Incorrect - you can absolutely have 60+ fps at 8k with dlss .

you miss the "max settings" part?