GTX 970 VRAM Segmentation Handled Properly in RED Engine?

[mouacyk]

GTX 970 VRAM Segmentation Handled Properly in RED Engine?

Being that the Witcher 3 is a GameWorks title, an upgrade to AMD is pretty much out of the question for me now. I am currently running SLI 660. Obviously, those have a VRAM limitation at 1.5GB, so I would not be able to enjoy this wonderful game optimally which I have pre-ordered.

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With current news that the GTX 970 can only uses 3.5GB VRAM properly and is problematic using up to 4GB, how many people here are planning to use this card to run the Witcher 3? I was planning for GTX 970 SLI at 1440p as a performance-budget upgrade but not being able to fully utilize the last 0.5GB could make me miss out on mods and enhancements like shaders and custom high-res textures. The great thing about a game like the witcher and its graphics so far is the diversity of textures in the world bringing it to life. It's no secret that having more unique textures in the world requires more VRAM.

Any fellow witcher concerns? Perhaps a mod or dev can comment on the impact of this VRAM segmentation on the Red Engine, if any? Thanks.

PS: GTX 980 SLI is out of the question -- I would need to make those cards do some non-gaming work to justify the cost. When the Witcher 2 came out, I actually dished out cash for a GTX 460 to better enjoy it than on my 8800GT.

 

[Asmodean778]

While I understand your concerns. You can't really expect game developers to accomodate in the render resource allocation, what is simply put - bad gpu design.

You can blame NV for it, not the game developers. They weren't being 'generous' when they priced the 970. They could do it by skipping on anything pricey that they could get away with.

Nvidia isn't known for it's 'fair priced' cards tbf. People were baffled by the pricing of the 970 when it came out. Now we might be starting to see why.

They can say what they like, but 9 times out of 10, you're probably going to have 3.5g workable vram to utilize with the 970.

Also, fyi, I've currently got a 680 in my system, so I'm not being blindly bias.

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Edit: I thought I should add, I'm in the same boat, myself at the moment. Because of the Gameworks stuff, I'm probably going NV for the next upgrade. If not for the Witcher. I'd probably go with AMD, because I've had little but trouble with my current card/drivers etc. I'm waiting to see if anything else comes out between now and April/May-ish to upgrade for this.

If nothing new comes ut, Not sure what I'm going to do. 970 is flawed by design, and the 980 is overpriced for what it is, by far. It's another 680..I'm not falling for that shit again ;p

 

[onionshavelayers]

Firstly, we don't really know the VRAM recommendation but we suspect it's 2Gb because the gtx 770 (which is recommend) is a 2Gb card (only some I' think were 4Gb).
And who knows by how much going to 1440p will affect the VRAM. Secondly, I think Nvidia drivers will handle the segemntation issue. And finally hairworks will work on AMD cards although I'm not sure if the reason for this is because it's not gpu accelerated (runs on cpu).

 

[GuyNwah]

Any well-built 3D software will budget VRAM. You can set the budget to make sure you don't need the top end of memory. It's not difficult programming. TW2 does it, though it's mostly to stay out of trouble on 512MB cards. But it is the sort of thing you'd do only as a patch and only if reports came in from tech support that it was needed. Any demand that they address it now would be premature.

At this point, I don't think 1440p is in the reach of any single card. And VRAM is used mostly to store textures. VRAM needed for frame buffers and computation is much less than the VRAM needed to make sure resources are on hand when they're needed.

 

[mouacyk]

Any well-built 3D software will budget VRAM. You can set the budget to make sure you don't need the top end of memory. It's not difficult programming. TW2 does it, though it's mostly to stay out of trouble on 512MB cards. But it is the sort of thing you'd do only as a patch and only if reports came in from tech support that it was needed. Demanding they address it now is premature.

At this point, I don't think 1440p is in the reach of any single card. And VRAM is used mostly to store textures. VRAM needed for frame buffers and computation is much less than the VRAM needed to make sure resources are on hand when they're needed.

Thanks. I know from my history with TW2, that there were tremendous patching efforts for the game. With it being very moddable, graphics settings could be tuned beyond what the game shipped with as default -- of course the continuous patching helped out with this greatly. I hope it is no less with TW3 beyond release. It's always the software guys who have to solve the hardware shortcomings... I get it.

If nothing new comes ut, Not sure what I'm going to do. 970 is flawed by design, and the 980 is overpriced for what it is, by far. It's another 680..I'm not falling for that shit again ;p

How much VRAM does your current 680 have? If you have the 4GB, grabbing another 680 would give you more horsepower to use that VRAM.

And finally hairworks will work on AMD cards although I'm not sure if the reason for this is because it's not gpu accelerated (runs on cpu).

I really do wish these features could be vendor-agnostic, so they can be powered by hardware from either company.

 

[prince_of_nothing]

I have two G1 GTX 970s and I game at 1440p. I plan on getting rid of them soon and buying a Titan X.. And thats not because of performance. The GTX 970 is an exceptional card for the price and power draw. The reason why I'm returning mine is because I never would have bought them had I known the memory system differed so drastically from the GTX 980. In fact, the reason why I bought the GTX 970s instead of the 980s is because they "supposedly" had the same ROP count, memory bus and L2 cache size. Of course this turned out to be incorrect. Also I want to ditch SLI and go back to a single card setup.

As far as VRAM allocation goes, it's not the developers responsibility to do what you're asking. It's the drivers. Since the GTX 970 has a peculiar memory system, NVidia's software engineers have taken that into account so it behaves properly. From my experience, it's very difficult to make the card go over 3.5GB of VRAM unless you use high levels of AA or you're running at extremely high resolutions.

The driver is smart enough to know to avoid using the last .5GB of VRAM, unless absolutely necessary. And even then, the performance doesn't really suffer. I've seen AC Unity use 3.7GB of VRAM and I encountered no stuttering or frame drops. It's likely that the driver is using the last .5GB as a cache, rather than for actual frame buffering..

 

[Asmodean778]

Any well-built 3D software will budget VRAM. You can set the budget to make sure you don't need the top end of memory. It's not difficult programming. TW2 does it, though it's mostly to stay out of trouble on 512MB cards. But it is the sort of thing you'd do only as a patch and only if reports came in from tech support that it was needed. Any demand that they address it now would be premature.

At this point, I don't think 1440p is in the reach of any single card. And VRAM is used mostly to store textures. VRAM needed for frame buffers and computation is much less than the VRAM needed to make sure resources are on hand when they're needed.

I understand what you're saying here, but I don't think that was the point(?). I was under the impression the OP was concerned about the 970 utilising the full 4gb for this game. Not whether the game will run with that amount of vram well, etc.

I'm assuming that it will just have the 3.5GB of 'usable' vram. because of the segementation of the last 0.5GB section differs. Saying that, typically you wouldn't want to be hitting the vram wall on any gpu, but this would just make that wall lower, than it would have been.

 

[mouacyk]

I understand what you're saying here, but I don't think that was the point(?). I was under the impression the OP was concerned about the 970 utilising the full 4gb for this game. Not whether the game will run with that amount of vram well, etc.

I'm assuming that it will just have the 3.5GB of 'usable' vram. because of the segementation of the last 0.5GB section differs. Saying that, typically you wouldn't want to be hitting the vram wall on any gpu, but this would just make that wall lower, than it would have been.

Not just the game, but mods also later that greatly enhance the graphics which has easy potential to max the VRAM. Having shared that I currently own and use the 660's in SLI, you already now how I feel about having 25% of my memory unable to work at full bandwidth (like 1/8 on the 970)... thus my concern for future upgrades and support.

 

[Asmodean778]

How much VRAM does your current 680 have? If you have the 4GB, grabbing another 680 would give you more horsepower to use that VRAM.

Na, mine's the 2GB version. I bought it when they first released. So even if I wanted to, sli of it is out of the question. (I personally don't like multi-gpu setups though. They're usually more trouble than they're worth).

I'm also running 2560x1440 native res. So I feel your pain ;p

 

[moonknightgog]

Can someone explain me what's the problem with the 970?

 

[Asmodean778]

Can someone explain me what's the problem with the 970?

Better off just googling "GTX 970 problems" tbh. But, here's an example: http://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx-970-slows-down-using-more-than-35gb-vram/

 

[eskiMoe]

Can someone explain me what's the problem with the 970?

 

[caruga]

Better off just googling "GTX 970 problems" tbh. But, here's an example: http://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx-970-slows-down-using-more-than-35gb-vram/

Looking at the benchmarks they did, it seems to not be a big deal?

*EDIT Nvm, overlooked the part about stuttering.

 

[Asmodean778]

^ that's literally the best thing I've seen in ages on youtube hahahahahahah xD

edit:: ugh, I can't stop watching it lmao

 

[caruga]

^ that's literally the best thing I've seen in ages on youtube hahahahahahah xD

edit:: ugh, I can't stop watching it lmao

I'm wondering what he really said...

 

[Asmodean778]

I'm still roaring laughing at that thing lolol. It matches his expressions/movements perfectly lol it's brilliant.

 

[KingHochmeister]

I'm wondering what he really said...

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/16079-Welcome-to-the-Hairy-Bear?p=1529346&viewfull=1#post1529346

 

[mouacyk]

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/16079-Welcome-to-the-Hairy-Bear?p=1529346&viewfull=1#post1529346

I thought he was an NVidia engineer being interviewed about the GTX 970...

 

[eskiMoe]

@mouacyk

There will be a lot of refurbished GTX 970s available for cheap in the upcoming months so I'd keep my eye out for them. Even with it's gimped memory, it's still a fast and efficient card with arguably enough VRAM to justify the cost. Especially if the cost is something like 300€ or less. Also, not all cards seem to hit the wall @ 3,5GB. While my other card does @ around 3,56GB my other one can go up to 3,75GB of VRAM usage before stutter and frame rate drops start to occur. Not sure why. There are a few theories though.

But for now, I'd withhold getting one and see first how the situation develops. Nvidia needs to address this one way or the other or they're going to be in deep s**t.

 

[Medy89]

@mouacyk

There will be a lot of refurbished GTX 970s available for cheap in the upcoming months so I'd keep my eye out for them. Even with it's gimped memory, it's still a fast and efficient card with arguably enough VRAM to justify the cost. Especially if the cost is something like 300€ or less. Also, not all cards seem to hit the wall @ 3,5GB. While my other card does @ around 3,56GB my other one can go up to 3,75GB of VRAM usage before stutter and frame rate drops start to occur. Not sure why. There are a few theories though.

But for now, I'd withhold getting one and see first how the situation develops. Nvidia needs to address this one way or the other or they're going to be in deep s**t.

So 980 gtx for now? I have to decide soon... damn this sucks... 970 was too good to be true xD