@@chillnspace777 192 bit bus is either 6GB or 12GB VRAM. 128 bit is 4GB or 8GB and 256 bit is 8GB or 16GB. What you probably meant to say is PCI-e 5.0x4 lanes.
@@dotjaz 9GB is not a thing, as it would require to use completely non-standard 288 bit bus (atm standard sizes are 32/64/96/128/160/192/256/320/352/384/448/512 afaik. Anything more is either for data centers or GPU with HBM memory). For context, there are only 1GB or 2GB of VRAM per package (maybe 4GB packages exist though, idk?), and GPU uses 32 bit bus to connect with each package. Currently both Nvidia and AMD use 2GB dies. Meaning 10GB would be possible with 160 bit bus and 5x2GB packages, but 9 GB will require 288 bit bus and 9x1Gb packages, which is non-viable for both Nvidia and AIB. Nvidia tries to cut costs on bus width more than anything, as it allows them to reduce manufacturing overhead by reducing die size more. Why? Because memory bus scales way worse with new tech processes compared to compute. And larger die sizes will reduce percentage of usable dies from wafer. Also GDDR7 vs GDDR6 will only give bandwidth between GPU memory and GPU core. It won't help you with data transfer between RAM and VRAM because it uses PCI-E lanes for that.
2007 - 8800GT 512MB - $350 2015 - R9 390X 8GB - $430 (in 8 years from 512MB to 8GB) 2017 - gtx1070 8GB - $380 2019 - 2060 S. 8GB - $400 2021 - 3060ti 8GB - $400 2023 - 4060ti 8GB - $400 (8 years later still 8GB for ~$400) In 2024 12GB of VRAM should be a bare minimum and 8GB cards should be only some entry-level sub $200 GPUs. $400 consoles have ~12GB of VRAM (from 16GB combined).
Haven't you posted this before? Get your dates right since you've been told already. The GTX 1070 released June 2016 NOT 2017 and the 3060 Ti released Dec 1 2020 NOT 2021.
So your saying the RX 6600, Rx 6600xt, Rx 6650xt, Rx 7600, Rx 5700xt ALL of them 8gb cads did not reach the bare minimum in 2024? LOL These 8gb cards can run any game ultra in 1080p.
The 4060Ti is a 50 class card, the die size matches it. The 4060 non-Ti is a 30/40 class card. But my hopes are that the rtx 5050 has 4GB of VRAM and costs 1000$ and I hope people buy the hell out of it.
there's another part to this compounding issue that you've had kind-of on screen but didnt actively mention unless i've missed it. at least in the first half, a lot of the games that had the 8gb version struggling already, were *also* sitting at or above 16 bg of system memory usage to make up for the missing vram, where the 16gb model was usually sitting a good bit lower. You can argue that not only would the type of people buying a 4060 8gb be disproportionally more likely to be running pcie 3.0, they would also be disproportionally be more likely to still be using 16gb of system memory at most as 32 has really only become the go-to default somewhat recently.
This is correct I think, and exactly where I'm at. Z490, i5 10400, 16gb 3200mhz ram, and a 4060ti 8gb, and a 550w psu. All cobbled together from used parts, and sort of boxed in really with no easy answer.
That's a very good point! 32GB is pretty standard for modern DDR5 systems, but previously 16GB was/is common on older ones such as those with PCIe3 where 16GB was/is enough for most games (I have 5800X3D with 16GB, though with PCIe4 and a 6800 XT I'm not experiencing these issues highlighted in the vid).
@JomeFromWork No it hasn't suffered enough. If the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB was at most $350, even with "only" 12 GB of vRAM then I'd say it would be a pretty decent GPU for the price, especially with DLSS. But it's laughably bad at $500 just to "fix" the mistakes of running out of vRAM that lower end Nvidia GPUs face.
@@leovanlierop4580 It is only good when it is at $330 at most. Not $450. That is around RX7800XT price territory which is far more powerful than 4060Ti .
Rule of thumb: NEVER buy a GPU that has less VRAM than the current-gen consoles. In this case, 12 GB should be the bare minimum anyone should consider if they want to play the newest games.
That's also assuming you're going to play new games at the same resolution and texture quality as consoles. In some cases you can't actually lower the graphics to match consoles. There was a great video a few years ago showing how COD on consoles had some settings like particle quality that were below the lowest PC setting.
The 60 series should have been a 12GB card. The Ti could be the same but faster. Nvidia don't seem to get this... it wouldn't even necessarily break their product stack at all. Of course 70 series should be 16GB, 80 series should be 16GB but a lot faster, 90 can be whatever they want since eating into the pro market there is already factored in.
ps5 has 16 unified, in this case 4GB system memory thats a bare minimum of 12 of vram for this current gen asuming youre gaming at 1440p 60 but if you play medium 1080p , 8gb will do most of the time
PS5 unified memory is still way better and more efficient than dedicated 12GB GPUs lmao. My games run better at 4k on a ps5 than my RTX 4070 at the same settings with DLSS. Wake up nvidia!!!
People were so desperate after the mining boom to get their hands on new GPUs that they ended up paying $500-$750 for 8GB cards, and now few are willing to upgrade. This would not be the first example of NVIDIA holding back the industry, as people during the GeForce 4 MX era might remember.
Well, I didn't. So last year, I changed my 3070 for a 7900 XT with 20GB! The sad part is I didn't listen to Hardware Unboxed who did mentionned in its review of the 3070 about the 8GB potential limitations.
I got one this year, runs most games above 100fps and badly optimised ones at above 60fps with FSR, well apart from Callisto Protocol which sucked anyway and I wish I could get my money back lol.
That's why I made the decision to "upgrade" from a 3070 Ti to a 7800 XT. Nvidia wasn't willing to give us reasonable amounts of VRAM at a good value, so I went elsewhere for it.
@@patrickjohansson3076 Are those common issues in this room with us right now? Got zero issues with the 5700 XT for two years and the 6900 XT for a year and a half.
@@patrickjohansson3076 If you don't run Windows (such as running Linux), then AMD is actually more stable than Nvidia, especially Nvidia before Turing.
12GB of VRAM is the *bare minimum* today, and Nvidia charges a premium for it. The 20-series was a scam. The 30-series was crippled by VRAM limitations. The 40-series is straight up extortion; so what's the 50-series going to be like?
Probably like the gestapo coming to your house and holding your family at gunpoint. They are going to introduce 50xx series exclusive features and then a bunch of prior gen cards are going to crap the bed as they are barely ridding the line with just enough VRAM. Just like the 4000, 3000, and 2000 series you'll need to buy the xx80 or higher in order to get a GPU with enough VRAM and that can actually run any of the features they advertise.
The 20 series was a lesser scam than the gtx 1000 series and rtx 4000 series. Those two are the biggest scam. The gtx 1000 series were just as overpriced as the rtx 4000 series, it's just that the numbers were lower, but the percentage of profit margins were about equal.
@@badass6300 At least the 1070 was a good buy. High-end GPU, cut down, 8GB of VRAM was plenty back then. 1060 6Gig was decent value, too. 20 series though, even the 2070 was basically too slow to run RT on, which was the whole point of the generation. By the time enough games actually supported RT, the 2080ti was the only card left that could really run it - and that was already a four-digit-card. 3000 being extortion isn't all nVidias fault - but they sure did learn their lesson: people will buy even at twice the usual price. VRAM wise, 3070 and 3070ti were already cutting it close. People recommended against these because of questionable longevity, but imho people who bought these got their life out of them, even if $700+ was crazy money. But 4060ti should have had 10 or 12 GB. It coming with 8 is another testiment to 4060ti being a 4050ti sold with the wrong badge. 8 gigs are fine for the entry level. A card for 1080p used to cost under $200. A **60 used to be a midrange card with the best fps/$ value in the product stack. Never forget what they took from us!
@@badass6300 GTX 1080Ti was great. It cost 700 for what today would be 1600+ 4090. Also the performance increase from 900 series was massive. VRAM capacities increased too and clocks nearly doubled. 10 series was one of the best Nvidia ever put out.
For a new build I start my GPU search at 12GB regardless of price and 16GB above $400. Paying over $400 for an 8GB graphics card is nuts. Drivers and software "features" get better, but the VRAM on your card is what it is.
Yup and us OGs warned you guys but you didn't listen, because muh Blurlss/FSR/frame magic will save us lol. 16gb is also not enough for a 4k card like a 4080. AMD or a 4090 is the only real choice long term, if you are gaming and not doing some CUDA stuff.
people just keep buying them. Honestly if people are gonna be so ignorant than there's no reason to stop this practice from their perspective. Just keep on making more money, get that stock price up.
Shunt modded 3060 12gb maybe a better idea than a 3060ti and of course 4060ti at this point. Assuming the model has a good cooler stacking a 015 shunt for 33% more on the 8 pin with overclock could return that 25% performance gap between Ti while having the 12GB’s
That served me well enough for a couple of years at 1080p, now at 1440p I sold it last month and bought a used 6800xt in mint condition for like $90 more. It's soooooo much better
Of course Ngreedia will stick to 8GB. They will as long as people will buy them. It is such a great planned obsolescence feature they can't stop using it.
I'm playing 3-4 year old games that pull just under 10gb at max settings. So not even a modern year title and I'm all ready blowing past 8gb of VRAM. I recently built a new computer and went with a 6750xt 12gb because there were no Nvidia GPU's with more then 8gb in my price range. Glad I did.
@@Marauder-q2v We all know that for 200$ from Ngreedia we would only get 4GB for sure. There is no way they would let you have the full 8GB for only 200$. Did they not charge 100$ or more for extra 8GB on the 4060Ti when it cost them about 40$.
It's both funny and annoying to see people saying stuff like "enjoy your crashes LOL" whenever Radeon is brought up, it's instantly clear that they haven't used an AMD card in a very long time if at all.
Yea it's a strange remark, I've got a 5700xt in one of my rigs, never had one issue, turns on and plays overtime, where as my 3070 I must turn the system on and off once every week or two after an update due to weird behaviour
I’ve owned both the 5700xt and 7700xt with no issues. My brother has a 6700xt and once again no issues. It really just comes down to what is best value between AMD and Nvidia
AMD drivers have been excellentnovrrall for ages it's almost always a case of bad user installs and crap like faili g to do a clean install for new vid drivers then the dolts whine and bitch Meanwhile team greed u cant evenbstart the shit drivers wo logging in ffs
Current day GPU buyers cant fathom the idea of having more VRAM than you need for todays games so your GPU can last more than few years. They ve been frog boiled into accepting this planned obsolescence. If RX480 and GTX 1070 had 8GB 8 years ago theres no reason why modern 400$ cards dont have more
That's why I'm gonna get more than 16 GB VRAM for my next GPU (currently a 12 GB one) even if I only play at 1080p/1440p sometimes. I want the VRAM to never be a problem, at least for 4 years. Then I would normally upgrade again anyway.
exactly. I for example went from a 1080 ti 11gb to a 3080 10gb and while gaming improved, in some games that needed more vram for textures the 1080 ti was best vs the 3080 because of that extra 2 gb of vram. I could not afford at the time the 3080 12gb or ti model so I reduce some settings or adjust the DLSS effect. This last purchase made me realize pascal gen gpus was a big win for gamers and nvidia needed to never do that again by planned obsolesce the enxt generations of gpus
This IS why you are mad ? Look at AMD they learned 😂 Rx6700xt 350 Back then and 12 GB vram and Same Performance then a 4060ti but one Generation older 😂 i mean WHO in this Planet bought for real a RTX 4060ti and even If you Had a Budget, there was the RX7700xt so it IS No excusen 😂 the rx7700xt Beat the 4060ti even in raytracing 😂 come on they Show the people two plates one with good and one with 💩 and people Chose secound one for ther meal
How come you think VRAM makes you invulnerable in the next years? I'd give $50 bucks to you if you can prove 3060 12Gb is better than 3070 8Gb. Your idea os the most beginner and average joe I have ever heard.
@izeinmendoza9766 My man im typing this on a PC with 3070 right now, i dont need to prove you anything. I never said that high VRAM alone makes a great GPU, but low VRAM makes a good GPU age worse
We dont take kindly on 8gb around these parts. Daily reminder that nvidia advertised this to people who still use the gtx 1060, which means they are not running on pcie 4.0 but 3.0 or worse.
Moral of the story... don't overflow your VRAM limit. I think 8GB should be the minimum at this point and should only be seen on 50 class cards. But that's what happens when you try to sell a 50 class card as a 60 class card.
@@bubalom Here's the problem with that... they heavily pushed DLSS and FG as selling points, implying you could run 1440p with it... something this testing shows it's perfectly viable for with enough VRAM. Not to mention that charging $400 for a 1080p card in 2023 is absurd. You can't polish this turd.
5700xt beats the 3060 in games that haven't been gimped through drivers to make the 6000 and 7000 series sell and the 4060 is a marginal improvement over the 3060
@@ArchieBunker11 so far i couldn't give less fucks about RT. And you seem to forget the price difference these two cards had back then. And for pure rasterisation i remember the 5700 xt being neck and neck with the 2070 super in alot of games so why lie and try to revise history.
If you can find a 6800-non-XT at a reasonable price, pounce on it. It's exactly as fast, and uses exactly the same power, as a 7700XT but trades AV1 hardware encoding for 16GB of RAM. That would open the door to 1440p for you, should you want to go there.
I have a 6650xt which is basically a 6600xt overclocked. I do understand that for modern games 12gb is the bare minimum and I hate how nvidia is doing planned obsolescence on that, but I honestly agree with you. Most games I play are 2010 to 2015 AAA or indie, not new games or anything like that. The only exceptions I'm considering is Fromsoft games and Baldur's Gate 3. That's it
I just upgraded from my sapphire nitro+ Rx 590 to an Rx 6800 xt. I had a chance to finally upgrade my pc, my Rx 590 with my i5 12600kf was really good. The Rx 6800 xt is a beast though. I find so many games play absolutely fine on 8gb.
People across the board should speak up about the Nvidia's low Vram decisions, from UA-camrs to customers. The more informed people are the less of these types of cards will be bought.
"What do you mean?! I can run this very easy to run title from 2019 with max ray tracing on at 1440p without any issues! Surely this has to be the case for every single game out there!"
Where you see comments like those. Nvidia sub? You have to realize these people are paying 30 to 50% more money for on average 30% less fps compare to Radeon cards. So they have to say something to justify it. It's like buying a Honda civic si for $70,000 when people were buying a Z for $50,000
@@hardergamer as a 4090 owner on a 1440p ultrawide monitor I can safely say this is false unless you enjoy playing at extremely low frame rates. I can’t max everything out and keep my fps above a hundred in everything. In cyberpunk for example with path tracing on I get less than 20 fps. So anyone using a card with about 1/10th the performance isn’t playing anything at 1440 maxed out.
There's some dude showing his 4090 in 1080p max in newer titles. Barely even hitting 144 max of his monitor WITH DLSS. Unreal 5 will laugh at next gen.
Ngreedia fked me hard, it was hot summer 2022 when I decided to buy 3070ti for 2k resolution, payed 1k $ for that. By the winter same year i already was feeling a little 8gb peepee close to my mouth. By the summer 2023 i already felt miserable because in number of titles I was forced to use medium textures. So, january this year I sold 3070ti and got an 6900xt, cost of that trade was 150$. That is literally the best upgrade in my entire 36 years of life. AMD ❤
@@defranken went from a rtx 2060 6gb (which served me well) to a 7800xt 16gb and never looked back. Nvidia wanted to charge me an arm and a leg for the 4070 8gb whilst potentially screwing me over in a few months with its limitations.
It's well thought out, for their pockets. The average user wouldn't know that 8GB isn't sufficient, a few years later they'll just think their GPU is outdated and buy another one when in fact it's just a VRAM issue.
According to gpu buyers nvidia can do no wrong and game developers are never allowed to make a game that needs more than 8GB of memory at maximum settings.
Wow. This actually explains why I was able to extend the life of my GTX1070 when I upgraded CPUs from 2500k to a 5900x going from PCIe 2.0 to 4.0. It fixed my lows and resolved the stuttering issues in a couple games like Elden Ring. I thought it was the CPU itself and wasn't even considering PCIe as a factor.
What a suprise. Consoles with 16GBs of System Memory launched _4 years ago_ Also: Back when I bought the 12GB Version of the 3080 every tech outlet called it something like "useless". What about now? Looks like it was a good decision to wait for "downgraded versions".
@@imo098765 doesn't make it useless. Also there already were plenty of outlets lambasting the 3070 and up because it was clear that these wouldn't last long with how little VRAM they had. All the texture compression and better memory management in the world can't save these and nVidia knew. That was the point. They wanted the few that cared about tech to be upsold to the 3080 and up. And they wanted the many that will always but a **70 no matter what to have to buy a new card when the 50 series is out.
Hardware Unboxed didn't say it was useless, just that it was a shameless cash grab. It's also worth remembering, and you'd hear this in Steve's review, that the prices were still heavily inflated and 3080 availability in general was still limited, which made the small spec differences look less important in the big picture of the time.
Had not watched HUB's videos for a while (general fatigue of everything ) and this one was a great piece to return back to one of my favourite UA-cam content creators. Great job of producng video that brings techcnical insight X entertainment for those who like to have their fair share of PC Hardware. But getting back on track with the topic of the video -since the moment this 8gb debacle had started, I was always like"is it that bad, to actually have those 8GBs of vram, really? Maybe it won't be bad to upgrade to more contemporary GPU, but with the same amount of VRAM as my currently used 1080 GTX... but thankfully I had abstained from doing so as I feel like that would've been akin to throwing money straight into the bin (and I'm not an avid, but once in a blue moon pc-gamer). So thanks for videos like these and keeping would-be-buyers from making mistakes and reminding that if it sounds bad on paper - there is a big chance it actually is.
@@takik.2220 its benq 27inch 1440p 144hz monitor . powered by i7 12700 non k with asus tuf z690 plus wifi d4 bought at the cost of single i9 12900k in jan 2022 launch 😊
Nvidia: How about you pay me 500€ for a 4060 Ti? Me: How about I buy a used 2080 Ti for half the price, more RAM and the same performance? Nvidia: Wait, that's illegal!!!
Utterly hilarious how a GPU like the RX 6800 non-XT from THREE YEARS AGO ages better than a GPU just from last year!!! MASSIVE F on nvidias part. I feel bad for people that genuinely don’t know better and simply go with nvidia because of their mindshare, buy this card, put it in a system with PCIE 3.0 (or god forbid 2.0) and gimp their performance.
To be fair, the 6800 was a mid-to-high-end part, while 4060ti is an overpriced entry-level part. Them performing similarly is reasonable. But of course people buy green no matter what, because they always have ang green has the faster cards. Even when, no especially when they don't buy the top tier. Which is like buying an overpriced minivan from a car maker because they make the fastest racecar as well.
Again I would love to see a visual comparison when lowering settings to get similar performance on the 8GB card. Basically what do you sacrifice visually if limited to 8GB.
It was really great seeing the smoothness of the video feeds next to one another. It made it much easier to see how significant the differences are, especially when planning the camera, more than just charts with averages and 1% lows. Thanks Steve 🙂
The 6900gre is the single best bang for you buck avail esp from better mfrs like XFX, sapphire etc not the crap power color aka red devil with pathetic warranty or horrid qual and CS like GB or asus
@konnorj6442 7900gre is basically a 7800xt on steroids. Same card, same value overall, a bit more expensive for a bit more performance. It smokes the joke that the 4070ti is. Unfortunately, it's the only AMD win in this generation. The 4080 super is way better than the 7900xtx, and the 4060 and 7600/7600xt are such terrible options anyway that it is hard to say who beats who
The shills at r/nvidia say turning down settings to high gets rid of these problems. But why should someone have to turn down settings (if they can already reach their desired fps on max settings), just because NVIDIA fucked up by putting 8GB of VRAM on this gpu?
And worse: why would you NOT turn textures back up to ultra when that is the single setting that improves visuals with practically not hit performance. The reason the RX 580 was such a god damn trooper for me was because I could chose medium geometry and lighting settings and still use ultra textures. That always looked worlds better than just the medium preset and kept the card viable until I decided to go 1440p and upgrade to an XTX. Getting 6 years out of a $220 GPU was stupid good value.
The REASON why we can charge so much for only 8GB is in the end. YOU BUY IT ANYWAY! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL LULZ! Thanks for the leather! hahahahahahha
One thing I've noticed about Doom Eternal with RT enabled is that initially it'll run pretty poorly with RT enabled on 8GB or less cards, even with more modest settings. The interesting thing here though is that if I turn off RT, set everything to low, click apply, and then enable everything again (including RT), all of the sudden it runs fine and the assets load properly so I know it isn't failing to load in anything. It doesn't happen at all on the 12GB GPUs that I have, so odds are there is some sort of VRAM related issue going on, but at the same time I also think it's a bug since I did all of my testing at 1080p and I only used the high settings preset and not nightmare or ultra nightmare. The GPUs I've tested were the RTX 2060, RTX 2070 super, RTX 3060ti, and the RX 6700XT and the CPU being used was an i5-12600KF with 32GBs of DDR4 memory at 3200MT/s.
I had tons of graph artifacts and crashes with 8Gb VRAM. Since moving to 12 they are solved. However, I wonder if you guys also noticed how VRAM over time tends to just keep filling up, as the PC is running. As if it’s not getting “flushed” properly after running things. In short: even the 8Gb VRAM was enough for most of my needs, as long as I was doing regular PC restarts, like once every 1-2 days.
These people be like "I have an 8Gb card I can run games pretty fine" as if the problem is running games rather than heavy stutters and texture pop ins.
im here stuck witn 4gb of Vram cause i got a 1050ti laptop planned to get 4070 8gb of Vram cause theres no way im gonna pay double for 4080 and theres no much AMD GPU laptop out there and why i need a laptop cause i live with communist parents and i cant have my own room so portability is a must
This really highlights an issue I’ve had with hardware reviews for years now; as much as it’s useful to know what these components are capable of when nothing else in the system is creating bottlenecks, it isn’t a realistic scenario for 99.99% of the audience that are actually going to be buying them. The WORST case scenario in regards to components is just as valuable as the best case scenario, because it will give the full range of what you can expect when purchasing a product. I know it would be doubling your workload, but showing how GPU’s and CPU’s in particular perform with the lowest compatible parts people might actually be using, in edition to the normal all high end configurations you use, would be vastly more informative to your audience.
yep and the rumour is now theyre cutting the 5070 to 8 lanes too seeing they now are using pcie gen 5. Not like theyd actually be able to mask shitty 12gb of vram with a gen5x16 bus or anything, no no, we at nvidia want you to know and feel how little vram we put on our cards 😁. My 8gb 3060 ti is only just getting away with stable framerates at 1440p in war thunder (a 12 year old game btw!) because i have the full gen 4x16 lanes and ddr5 bandwidth to always feed it 30GB/s and even then i lose some fps and frame stability. now, nvidia is deciding to remove the only mitigation to low vram aswell seemingly, great.
@@yasu_red try to tell them a Radeon 6700 would be so much better as it also uses less CPU ..nope they go buy pre built on Amazon with first gen i7 920 and gt1030
@@Navi_xoo the rx 6700 XT with 12GB can still be had for ~$300. Arguable if that is budget, but it certainly is a much better buy than anything from nvidia in that range or lower. FSR is not trash, it is slightly worse than DLSS, but very much usable - and that it is not quite as good as DLSS is not a valid argument if you compare it to an nvidia card that runs out of VRAM once you enable it.
16GB should be the bare minimum in 2024 I think, my 1070 has 8GB of memory and that came out a long time ago now. No way in hell a 60Ti card in 2024 should have the same amount of memory.
to be fair 1060 was 6 gigs , so i think that 4060/ti should have had 10-12 gigs of vram , that's enough for the type of videocard it is , don't get me wroing but 4060ti is not capable to put up to work the 16 gigs vram because of the 128 bit bus , so id rather take a 12 gigs 4060ti with 192 bit bus or at least a 10 gig version with 160bit bus, that would have been massively better received than what we have right now. But , there is a big but , 4060ti is a high end 1080p card , and to be honest i don't think 8 gigs will limit you in any shape or form if you are playing on 1080p native without framegen or stuff like that that eats up to 3 gigs of vram out of nowhere :D
@@Integroabysalin what world is a $400 gpu a 1080p card? I've been on 1440p since I had a RX 480 8gb back in the day. In 2024 anything above $200 should be expected to play games at 1440p. I mean we're at a place where good 1440p high refresh rate monitors are commonly found at $200 USD. No one spending $400+ on a GPU is playing at 1080p
@@Msoul11 you can play 1440p on intel integrated graphics all day , when did I tell that you can't buy a 400$ card and play 1440p ? I just said that usually the 300-400$ price point is the high end of 1080p that was always like that.
1070 was gddr5 though and we have gddr6 memory. Not saying nvidia shouldn't provide more vram but the memory on the 1070 was a lot slower than what we have today.
Games have been held back by 8GB cards for quite a while now, I noticed a lot of games have a hard cap at 8GB VRAM usage and don't make use of any more, even on 16GB+ cards, and rely on performance-hungry texture streaming instead, causing stutters and texture pop-ins even when your VRAM is only half full. some examples for this are battlefield 2042, anno 1800, Arma Reforger and Kingdom Come Deliverance.
I think this highlights the importance of also doing some reviews/testing on systems that aren't just "top spec"/removing other bottlenecks which sometimes ends up hiding some issues that actual users face. Might be worth including a few tests on pcie 3.0 next time you do a graphics card review at least on a lower end card since there are still a fair number of people who might be using a system limited to it (and also apparently amd is releasing a am5 chipset that is limited to pcie3 only...).
Oh I remember those shouting matches on steam forums and reddit about how "nobody can even use more than 8GB VRAM". Problem was, that was wrong even back then, depending on what you played. DCS for example already was hungering for more, especially if you played in VR, and that was pre-2019.
This was an excellent demonstration of the importance of more VRAM. And the point about texture quality will be an eye opener for many who are content with the bare minimum.
@@badass6300 Yeah well, thrown in the towel 3 months ago. Really glad i got rid of that disaster. Maybe it`s a bit better now, but i don`t believe in miracles.
Enquiring minds want to know this sort of stuff. This is great content. It can also tie into the "should I upgrade my CPU to go from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0?" question as well as the VRAM question. Well done
It's strange how long I've had a 16GB card. From early 2018 with the Vega FE, to the VII, then to my current 6900XT, I've only been sidegrading across 16 gigs.
I like this video a lot, I have never been a fan of releasing these cards with 8x of bandwidth, and its good you did testing on 3.0 (and 2.0) as lots of people that buy these mid range cards will be using such systems. I also like that you bring attention to the VRAM loss of texture quality, as too many people just say "it still runs as fast so VRAM isnt needed" without realising the loss of quality.
I honestly never understood why this card even existed. After a single year in 2021, it got so obvious that this card will age horribly. Packing enough power to maybe last for half a decade as a good GPU, just like the GTX 1080, but limited by the VRAM to be obsolete within 2. Crazy.
@@Chrissy717 I won mine at auction for £400 just a year after release and was a serious upgrade on my 2070 which i sold for £250 meaning i got a 3080 for £150. It was a no brainer but now im having to playing on high/medium settings simply because of VRAM. Its rough but the 4000 series are so insanely overpriced that im happy to compromise.
@@Chrissy717the GTX 1080 lasting a half a decade is the exact reason it is VRAM limited. NVIDA will endeavor to never make the “mistake” of making a card that is “too good” again if they do not have a pressing reason to. Otherwise they won’t get enough pressure to upgrade and artificially inflate demand so they can overcharge.
@@erraldstyler "At max" is not the issue here. It's normal that lower tier PC parts aren't meant for high settings. The problem is that some games will stutter or not load textures properly even at low-mid settings with 8 and less VRAM.
thats pathetic from the perspective of being a game developer, imagine needing 10gb vram to game at 1080p be because they cant be bothered to optimize theyre product
I work in retail. Unfortunately this is what the average gamer can afford when building a completely new PC these days. Options from AMD and Intel aren't that much different either
The point is Nvidia should have made it at least 10GB/160-bit to begin with. They can even use GDDR6 to reduce the cost and sell at $409. I doubt people willing to spend $399 can't spend $10 more for more than 10% gain in many cases.
Don't agree, at 400€ you can buy a RX 6700 XT or even a 6750 XT that are both 12GB GPU's with 192bits bus. You may lose on RT performance and have a tad lesser upscaler (that IMO is good enough) but you gain strong raster performance, way faster at that then even more expensive Nvidia GPU's and raster, contrary to people belief (people that don't know what raster even does) is still very important.
@@Argoon1981 In these parts, 6700 XT are hard to come by at most big computer parts retailers and 6x50 cards virtually non-existent - Those few that were available were priced higher than 7700, the latter being not particularly attractive at current prices. Reflecting the OP's statement, I just built a new rig and took the 3080 from my previous rig - I'm waiting to see if it is worth getting a 5080, or if not, waiting for the 4080 Super to drop to A$1500 or lower. In the meantime, for the old rig - finding a worthwhile mid/low spec card at a reasonable price locally (new or 2nd hand) was fraught.
I remember the days when the "10" version of the cards got degraded (GT 710). Then the "30" got degraded with limited PCIE bandwidth (i.e. GT 1030). Then the "50" series got degraded (RTX 2050) Then the "60" series and even 60 Ti got degraded (4060) Maybe the RTX 5070 will be the first to feature half the PCIE lanes of its predecessor.
After so many years of overpriced GPUs due to covid, mining and whatever most people just wnd buying what they can afford. A medium PC built around a 4060 8GB is already quite expensive.
How anyone can view these side by side comparisons and then take to twitter to say it isn't (that big of) a problem is insane to me, especially when you're testing DLSS and they handwave the entire video because the graphics preset is "too high." This is exactly what Nvidia wants you to do with their entry level GPUs, and it becomes a stuttering mess when you have the """wrong""" setup. Thank you for providing these comparisons and helping consumers make informed decisions as always.
exactly, they market these features and people dont buy amd gpus because they say "dlss is better" "the ray tracing is better" but if you use those features you run out of vram. Like some messed up feedback loop.
It’s because, out of all the games these reviewers show, people own maybe 1 or 2 or none of those games. What ever happened to the graphics don’t make a game good? Now, listen, I’d like more VRAM too but I think the more pressing matter is how these cards are held back in performance rather than VRAM. Have you seen current budget cards? Less than 192bit bus widths!? x8 bus interfaces!? I think this is just another Nvidia Strategy to make gamers overlook their other faults…
The graphics preset clearly isn't "too high" when the 16GB variant delivered absolutely playable performance in all but one game (if we consider 60FPS to be the hard cut-off and anything below is automatically disqualified).
@@thetechrealist Graphics don't make a game but it's nonsensical to imply that people buying GPUs should just not care about performance / graphics when that's the whole point in buying a GPU in the first place.
This is why I switched to AMD. It's been great also with 0 issues. I don't use any NVIDIA features, and simply value raw performance and having enough VRAM. I enjoyed my NVIDIA cards also.. but i appreciate what you're doing with pushing them to bring better products, it benefits everyone.
One thing that NEEDS to be done on a per game basis WHEN your game lowers textures because you don't have enough VRAM then it should indicate as such either in a synthetic test or better directly in settings telling a rough guidance on how much VRAM is required for various texture settings
GDDR7 (3GB chips version) i think will not work with RTX 4xxx GPU's. ... but it will with RTX 5xxx. So i hope for minimum 12GB VRAM in RTX 5060 128bit GPU (4x3GB). 8GB VRAM in RTX 5060 (5060Ti?) will be disaster.
From my own experience my 4080FE (16GB Vram) Vs my older 2070 Super (8GB Vram) was not just a night and day difference it was ALL the difference. (FULL Specs: i7 9700K @ 4.9 All core OC / 3200 Kit Dom Plats OC'D @ 3333 / ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 MOBO) It seen HEAVY gaming usage EVERY DAY for the last 5-6 Years and I have in all that time had maybe 10 crashes (mostly due to game wonky-ness or me trying to do something crazy in game like make a box fortress in BG3) HAHAH... I cannot express HOW powerful and flawless this build was, most games cannot use multi-core so the 4.9 is MORE than enough.....after 5-6 Years THIS THING STILL KICKS ALL THE ASS....If you told me it was 5-6 Years old I WOULD NOT BELIEVE YOU.... The Old 2070S crashed a lot and I have come to believe it was 100% BC of the Vram (8GB SHOULD be enough)...but in truth its HOLDING YOU BACK. I CANNOT MAKE MY PC CRASH....with the 4080FE and aside from cyberpunk on ultra settings it can MAX out all my games (it legit plays games like the developer intended....flawless, smooth, quite with the over sized cooler, STABLE, did I say stable? THing is UN-crashable)....I should add here I game on 1440 (2K) on my Alienware 3440X1440 monitor @ 120Hz, I don't do 4K (1: because my monitor doesn't natively support it and 2: because it COULD push my 4080FE into resolutions it can't pump out beyond what I need). I think LOTS of people think they need 4K Etc. Etc. (TRUST ME 2K @ 100Hz or more IS gaming at its BEST!!!) its like playing on a DEV box, its THE PERFECT EXPERIENCE!
Two years ago I updated from an I7 9700K/RTX3800 to a RTX4800 but found out that the CPU was quite a bottleneck when playing CPU demanding games like MS Flight Simulator. Update to a ryzen 7 5800x3d helped alot. I don´t play competitive games so it is quite decent even in 4K.
@@funzario144 I think Flight Sim is hard for any CPU/GPU tbh. Especially if your trying to get 4K out of it...yeah 9700K maybe not the best for that task but for Elden ring/ WItcher 3/ or BG3 for example it runs butter smooth in the city with no stutter at all, not to say it never stutters a little(1%) in certain locations for various reasons (usually waiting a turn to process or massive explosion)
Really interesting testing Steve, I agree. Also agree with targetting the higher priced and lower vram cards first, start at the top and work your way down. By the upper cards having a higher minimum, it pushes up the headroom for more affordable cards to have higher vram as well, eg. If you can sell a 8GB card for $400, why would more Vram be put on a $200-$300 card? More likely it'll have less, or at most, the same.
Nvidia doesn't want to exist in majority range of 300$. Those spending above 500$ on some fan boxes are less and simply doesn't care what company is charging them... either too rich or just a stuphid to spend soo much on toy boxes
Save what exactly? Still no one knows 🤣🤣 all tech is becoming old within 2-3 years now... we are way beyond exponential growth in tech so idk what nvidia wants us to save 🤣🤣
I got 6 years out of my RX 580 and the only reason I upgraded was a desire to go to 1440p because long hours of reading/writing code was starting to demand better text clarity for my old eyes. I suspect my XTX will last even longer as modern games are disappointing me time and time again. Sooo much "safe" slop.
@@andersjjensen The rx 580 was long lived because it came out in the middle of the PS4/Xbox One generation, which was under-powered at launch and by 2016/2017 was just entry-level performance. The PS5/XSX came out and their GPUs were as good as the rtx 2080 Super and rtx 2080Ti respectively and then count in the much better console optimization, they aren't easy to overpower as the ps4/xbox one.
I don't have much to add to this conversation, I'm taking notes at this point. I'm one of those 1080p60 gamers who's making the most of an 8GB card (one I bought recently! a used 3070 at ~$270 after tax.) But I must say hats off to continuing to make this subject clearer and keeping up the advocacy on the subject, since it's not so well understood. Indeed, with so many variables between the GPU speed, CPU speed, system memory speed/latency, VRAM speed/bandwidth, and even now platform performance (e.g. PCIe version)... it's a lot to sort through! But every time this subject is revisited on this channel, a new piece of the puzzle comes into focus, and both your channel and the public begin to be able to make more and more laser precise comments and observations on the state of the market. I may be convinced that my 8GB card works *for me* most of the time, but as soon as I upgrade my monitor, I think I'll start to feel it a bit more. And then I'll wonder if Nvidia saving its BOM and manufacturing costs will make sense when it gets delivered to me the consumer at these prices... or whether I feel ripped off. It's not that games strictly need more than 8GB of VRAM. It's that it's where artists and game engine engineers want to go with the tech, and it's where the hardware spec to hit the top of the line performance consumers are probably expecting is starting to trend to. If Nvidia (or AMD, or don't forget much of intel's Alchemist lineup is stuck at 8GB) aren't delivering that at multi-hundred-dollar price tags, I think "holding back the industry" is a fair take. So, all that to say: thanks. I've been trying to answer this question "how much VRAM is enough right now?" for the past maybe three years or so when I've been in the market for GPUs. I finally think I have confidence in answering it. A bit of the old "it depends," but I can now say on *what* it depends, and that feels invaluable. So there you have it, thanks so much for the work you're doing and the explanations you're taking the time to give as well. Best to you all! *P.S.* to be a little more specific about what I think was learned from this video: Slowing down the speed the GPU can offload things to system RAM is very clever, and lets you selectively magnify the performance impact of "over-VRAM" situations, or at least so it would appear. I can't think of another explanation, and I agree this really lets you zoom in on characterizing what performance hit is based on overflowing the VRAM, vs whatever other of a dozen variables tech press have been trying to isolate over the years. Very well done there! I'm taking notes on that one, big-time. I suppose there is still the hidden variable of whether the game is heavily streaming assets over PCIe to begin with even before overflowing VRAM, as in whether it's overall saturating the VRAM/PCIe bandwidth or not. But on the other hand, the lower PCIe 2.0 data rates in and of themselves may be the bottleneck if data access can't be parallelized enough (which would be good, it would make this test work regardless of any such theorized "hidden variable"!). So I expect the degree to which this "lower PCIe version" test magnifies the performance hit of overflowing VRAM could still be game-dependent. And especially settings-dependent -- I vaguely recall ray tracing and frame gen can be pretty taxing on PCIe bandwidth? (Or is that only if overflowing VRAM? In which case, this is actually a bang-on valid test.) I *guess* games that normally load a lot in VRAM and hold onto it, instead of normally streaming stuff in/out all the time, might show little difference and could be a "false pass" in this test, since the difference might appear negligible from PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0. In theory, haven't tested this myself. But even then, this test is one more strong hint to what's going on. And in situations where the difference is clear, I would agree it implicates VRAM size pretty darn clearly. Anyway. Maybe *some* answers remain elusive, but they're finer and finer points. Either way, progress is progress, and this feels like big progress in this area of testing, IMO. Hopefully they will give us more VRAM on cards and we can put this testing to bed! Maybe some day. Until then we really need this! Anyway! Thanks very much once again!
That as well. Games just don't give a damn anymore. We already had better textures on 32 megabyte cards in 1999: ua-cam.com/video/SqYyL3vsjmU/v-deo.html
Craft computing recently did a comparison on older GPUs for cloud gaming--gaming on shared hardware. He found that higher compute cores were better for fewer clients, but HBM shined and gave a card with less compute more performance when there was more than one client using the same GPU. Memory performance and capability are very important, especially data locality.
Thank you for this Steve. This has REALLY interesting implications that trickle down to Thunderbolt 3/4 eGPUs as well (for very small form factor systems and laptops). 40 gigabits per second under Thunderbolt 3/4 works out to 5 gigabytes per second on the chart, equal to between PCIe 2.0 8x and PCIE 3.0 8x, meaning the performance impact should be minimal in most games with this class of GPU, assuming you don't exceed the VRAM. So something like a 3060 12 GB is unlikely to have any performance impact running in a PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 slot in 8x, compared to through a Thunderbolt 3/4 eGPU interface.
8 GB wasn'T enough for 1080p in 2022 already. I bought a 3070 for 1000 bucks when the mining craze was going around. And I couldn'T play cp2077 or Farcry 6 and many others in 1080p max settings. Not because the gpu chip was to slow. I started out with 60-80 fps and then when vram was full I was dropping to 20-30 fps and stayed there till i restarted the game. Then after a few minutes the same. Never again under 16 gb of vram. 16 gb is the bare minimum now for 1440p with some games already using over 14 gb, Avatar 1440p unobtanium already uses 16 gb. So for 4k you at least need 20+ gb of vram, That is also why the 90 series comes out with 24 gb, they know you need it for 4k and they just wanna upsell. But AMD is sadly completely unbuyable tdue to shitty FSR and no raytracing power. Imagine bringing out the 7900xtx with so much rasterpower but when you turn rt you get bottlenecked to death. And on top you get no AV1 encoder. So AMD is completely unbuyable and NVidia only 4070 ti super, 4080 and 4090 are really buyable for 1440p+ and 4070 super and ti or 4060 ti 16 gb for 1080p gaming. I went with 4070 ti super till rtx 5000 comes around and I will only buy 16gb+ and hope that the 5070 ti packs almost 4090 power with 16 gb GDDR7.
I don´t think we´ll see a 5070 Ti at release, since the 4070 Ti was released to cover up the 4080 12gb screw up. There are rumors out the 5080 will come along with 16gb like the 4080. If this is true, I´d bet 5080 16gb and 5090 24 or 30gb at launch, followed by the 5070 12gb, the 5060 8gb and the 5060 16gb. They need to stumble the 80 series in vram to upsell the prosumers into the 90 series. Most of them don´t need the raw power of the 4090 but they need every byte of vram. As long as AMD isn´t competitive for gamers at the 80 series or prosumers in the 90 series, Nvidia won´t change anything.
The 7000 series of AMD cards have AV1 encoding, so you're wrong there.. AMD may be unbuyable for you and that's your choice, but many other people are gaming more than happily on one.
For a while I did not understand why Doom Eternal practically dies when I turn on DLSS with RT. Then I changed my 3080 to a 3090, check the vram consumption, and understood it. The above change made Ghostwire: Tokyo from a stutterfest to a very nice game as well. Yes, that required also about 11-12GB vram
It would be real interesting to see a visual representation of the "distance" that going to system memory is like. Something like a line zoomed out to represent the time taken to hit the different functions. It would certainly be easier than the analogy I use with friends .. goes like, L0 - An accountant at their desk writing the math on small scrap piece of note paper. L1 - the notebook of work and problems they're working on. L1 cache - the rest of the papers on their desk they shuffle around as needed. L2 - binders the room down at the end of the hall, or the studio office on the other side of the building. L3 - storage rooms about 3 blocks over, takes 15 min just to get the car over there. L4 - the warehouses on the other side of town traffic is always congested, about 3 hour drive away minimum. L5 (System Memory) - the main distribution warehousing several states over, think about getting something from Texas to California. L6 - the storage drives, now you're going overseas to get the papers...
NVidia lesson learned: "So you are saying we need PCIe 5.0 on next gen?, We got you. RTX 5060 Ti 8GB PCIe 5.0 incoming".
192bit bus
@@chillnspace777 192 bit bus is either 6GB or 12GB VRAM. 128 bit is 4GB or 8GB and 256 bit is 8GB or 16GB.
What you probably meant to say is PCI-e 5.0x4 lanes.
@@DimkaTsv or 9GB GDDR7.
@@dotjaz 9GB is not a thing, as it would require to use completely non-standard 288 bit bus (atm standard sizes are 32/64/96/128/160/192/256/320/352/384/448/512 afaik. Anything more is either for data centers or GPU with HBM memory). For context, there are only 1GB or 2GB of VRAM per package (maybe 4GB packages exist though, idk?), and GPU uses 32 bit bus to connect with each package. Currently both Nvidia and AMD use 2GB dies. Meaning 10GB would be possible with 160 bit bus and 5x2GB packages, but 9 GB will require 288 bit bus and 9x1Gb packages, which is non-viable for both Nvidia and AIB.
Nvidia tries to cut costs on bus width more than anything, as it allows them to reduce manufacturing overhead by reducing die size more. Why? Because memory bus scales way worse with new tech processes compared to compute. And larger die sizes will reduce percentage of usable dies from wafer.
Also GDDR7 vs GDDR6 will only give bandwidth between GPU memory and GPU core. It won't help you with data transfer between RAM and VRAM because it uses PCI-E lanes for that.
Haha right. And don't forget, also a bigger L2 cache because that also compensates for inadequate VRAM according to Nvidia.
Can't wait for a brand new RTX 5060Ti with 8Gb VRAM, 4 PCI-E lanes for as low as $500, would be awesome
i prefer 6gb
On a 64bit memory bus
🤣
Don't! Nvidia doesn't understand sarcarsm... :P
RTX 5060 TI 2GB
2007 - 8800GT 512MB - $350
2015 - R9 390X 8GB - $430 (in 8 years from 512MB to 8GB)
2017 - gtx1070 8GB - $380
2019 - 2060 S. 8GB - $400
2021 - 3060ti 8GB - $400
2023 - 4060ti 8GB - $400 (8 years later still 8GB for ~$400)
In 2024 12GB of VRAM should be a bare minimum and 8GB cards should be only some entry-level sub $200 GPUs. $400 consoles have ~12GB of VRAM (from 16GB combined).
2014 r9 290x 8gb
Haven't you posted this before? Get your dates right since you've been told already. The GTX 1070 released June 2016 NOT 2017 and the 3060 Ti released Dec 1 2020 NOT 2021.
fully agree with you
Memory hit the wall everywhere, just like the CPU frequency:
PS1 - 1995 - 2 MB
PS2 - 2000 - 32 MB (-> 16x)
PS3 - 2006 - 512 MB (-> 16x)
PS4 - 2013 - 8 GB (-> 16x)
PS5 - 2020 - 16 GB (-> 2x !!!)
So your saying the RX 6600, Rx 6600xt, Rx 6650xt, Rx 7600, Rx 5700xt ALL of them 8gb cads did not reach the bare minimum in 2024? LOL
These 8gb cards can run any game ultra in 1080p.
$400+ for PCIe 8x, 128-bit. 🤨 Nvidia can get bent.
Should've been named 4050 and sold for $149-179 max.
Rtx4030 super tbh
The 4060Ti is a 50 class card, the die size matches it. The 4060 non-Ti is a 30/40 class card.
But my hopes are that the rtx 5050 has 4GB of VRAM and costs 1000$ and I hope people buy the hell out of it.
there's another part to this compounding issue that you've had kind-of on screen but didnt actively mention unless i've missed it.
at least in the first half, a lot of the games that had the 8gb version struggling already, were *also* sitting at or above 16 bg of system memory usage to make up for the missing vram, where the 16gb model was usually sitting a good bit lower.
You can argue that not only would the type of people buying a 4060 8gb be disproportionally more likely to be running pcie 3.0, they would also be disproportionally be more likely to still be using 16gb of system memory at most as 32 has really only become the go-to default somewhat recently.
This is correct I think, and exactly where I'm at. Z490, i5 10400, 16gb 3200mhz ram, and a 4060ti 8gb, and a 550w psu. All cobbled together from used parts, and sort of boxed in really with no easy answer.
yup very important point to make.
Not your average user here using the 16GB model with 128GB of memory. Strangely I haven't ran out yet!
That's a very good point! 32GB is pretty standard for modern DDR5 systems, but previously 16GB was/is common on older ones such as those with PCIe3 where 16GB was/is enough for most games (I have 5800X3D with 16GB, though with PCIe4 and a 6800 XT I'm not experiencing these issues highlighted in the vid).
I think he didn't mention that as he made a video about that exact thing some time ago.
Who took your chair :(
I'm exercising!
It couldn't be rendered due to VRAM limits
😂@@plasma06
😂😂@@plasma06
😂😂😂 @plasma06
4060 ti: Have I not suffer enough?! What do you want me to do?!
Steve: *proceeded to drag it to the mud even further*
@JomeFromWork No it hasn't suffered enough. If the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB was at most $350, even with "only" 12 GB of vRAM then I'd say it would be a pretty decent GPU for the price, especially with DLSS. But it's laughably bad at $500 just to "fix" the mistakes of running out of vRAM that lower end Nvidia GPUs face.
@@cameronbosch1213 16GB version 4060Ti is $450 right now. Nvidia read the room and officially dropped the price but not low enough...😪
@@fleurdewin7958 Yep that's still too goddamn much for what it's.
16 GB model came out good though.
@@leovanlierop4580 It is only good when it is at $330 at most. Not $450. That is around RX7800XT price territory which is far more powerful than 4060Ti .
I love Steve, you guys being independent is so important for the community
same ❤
Agree 100%
Repeat after me: Thanks Steve!
Rule of thumb: NEVER buy a GPU that has less VRAM than the current-gen consoles.
In this case, 12 GB should be the bare minimum anyone should consider if they want to play the newest games.
That's also assuming you're going to play new games at the same resolution and texture quality as consoles. In some cases you can't actually lower the graphics to match consoles. There was a great video a few years ago showing how COD on consoles had some settings like particle quality that were below the lowest PC setting.
The 60 series should have been a 12GB card. The Ti could be the same but faster.
Nvidia don't seem to get this... it wouldn't even necessarily break their product stack at all. Of course 70 series should be 16GB, 80 series should be 16GB but a lot faster, 90 can be whatever they want since eating into the pro market there is already factored in.
I'd say 16 because ps5 has access upto 14gb for vram and games made for 1 architecture are more efficiently optimized so 16 is it
ps5 has 16 unified, in this case 4GB system memory thats a bare minimum of 12 of vram for this current gen asuming youre gaming at 1440p 60
but if you play medium 1080p , 8gb will do most of the time
PS5 unified memory is still way better and more efficient than dedicated 12GB GPUs lmao. My games run better at 4k on a ps5 than my RTX 4070 at the same settings with DLSS. Wake up nvidia!!!
People were so desperate after the mining boom to get their hands on new GPUs that they ended up paying $500-$750 for 8GB cards, and now few are willing to upgrade. This would not be the first example of NVIDIA holding back the industry, as people during the GeForce 4 MX era might remember.
just a bloke talking about vram, love to see it
still thankful I chose a 6800xt over a 3070 back in 2021
Well, I didn't. So last year, I changed my 3070 for a 7900 XT with 20GB! The sad part is I didn't listen to Hardware Unboxed who did mentionned in its review of the 3070 about the 8GB potential limitations.
I bought a 3080 12GB over a 6800 XT. The only 6800 XT's i could find in stock for a long time, was like 2 of the worst models at around $1200 lol
For real, I bought one from second hand for $400 and I couldn’t be happier
i immediately went to rtx 4070 ti super gigabyte eagle oc 16gb at launch Jan 2024 from my 3yr old rtx 3070 Founders edition bought in jan2021😊
I got one this year, runs most games above 100fps and badly optimised ones at above 60fps with FSR, well apart from Callisto Protocol which sucked anyway and I wish I could get my money back lol.
That's why I made the decision to "upgrade" from a 3070 Ti to a 7800 XT. Nvidia wasn't willing to give us reasonable amounts of VRAM at a good value, so I went elsewhere for it.
it's a shame because your 3070ti has enough power to game comfortably but the vram kills it
And get green screen of death with instable AMD again. Last time i.heard bios crash. Now cards😂😂😂
@@patrickjohansson3076 Are those common issues in this room with us right now?
Got zero issues with the 5700 XT for two years and the 6900 XT for a year and a half.
@@patrickjohansson3076 If you don't run Windows (such as running Linux), then AMD is actually more stable than Nvidia, especially Nvidia before Turing.
As someone who uses GPU also for non-gaming stuff I don't really have the luxury to switch to Radeon, unfortunately ;(
12GB of VRAM is the *bare minimum* today, and Nvidia charges a premium for it.
The 20-series was a scam. The 30-series was crippled by VRAM limitations. The 40-series is straight up extortion; so what's the 50-series going to be like?
Probably like the gestapo coming to your house and holding your family at gunpoint. They are going to introduce 50xx series exclusive features and then a bunch of prior gen cards are going to crap the bed as they are barely ridding the line with just enough VRAM. Just like the 4000, 3000, and 2000 series you'll need to buy the xx80 or higher in order to get a GPU with enough VRAM and that can actually run any of the features they advertise.
@@giglioflex If you can't buy secondhand Nvidia, buy AMD. _Really_ show you're serious.
The 20 series was a lesser scam than the gtx 1000 series and rtx 4000 series. Those two are the biggest scam. The gtx 1000 series were just as overpriced as the rtx 4000 series, it's just that the numbers were lower, but the percentage of profit margins were about equal.
@@badass6300 At least the 1070 was a good buy. High-end GPU, cut down, 8GB of VRAM was plenty back then. 1060 6Gig was decent value, too. 20 series though, even the 2070 was basically too slow to run RT on, which was the whole point of the generation. By the time enough games actually supported RT, the 2080ti was the only card left that could really run it - and that was already a four-digit-card.
3000 being extortion isn't all nVidias fault - but they sure did learn their lesson: people will buy even at twice the usual price. VRAM wise, 3070 and 3070ti were already cutting it close. People recommended against these because of questionable longevity, but imho people who bought these got their life out of them, even if $700+ was crazy money.
But 4060ti should have had 10 or 12 GB. It coming with 8 is another testiment to 4060ti being a 4050ti sold with the wrong badge. 8 gigs are fine for the entry level. A card for 1080p used to cost under $200. A **60 used to be a midrange card with the best fps/$ value in the product stack. Never forget what they took from us!
@@badass6300 GTX 1080Ti was great. It cost 700 for what today would be 1600+ 4090. Also the performance increase from 900 series was massive. VRAM capacities increased too and clocks nearly doubled. 10 series was one of the best Nvidia ever put out.
For a new build I start my GPU search at 12GB regardless of price and 16GB above $400. Paying over $400 for an 8GB graphics card is nuts. Drivers and software "features" get better, but the VRAM on your card is what it is.
Didn't you know? The human body can only use 8gb of ram anyway. So it's perfectly fine!
Wow I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing that useful fact 😂
The human eye can only see 2 fps so you don't really need high fps.
I choked 💀💀
Avg human can only consume 8gb per day, otherwise you can get bloated with textures
Where did you shove it? You have a PCIe port?
Inflation is real even steve has to sell his chair to keep up
Oi vey.
i feel like nvidia cucked everyone with a 12gb lineup of midrange
Of course they did. Planned obsolescence is a great feature for Ngreedia's profits.
@@cajampa i wish EU fined them for pushing super series 6 months later just to exploit people who had fomo over mining scalpers
Yup and us OGs warned you guys but you didn't listen, because muh Blurlss/FSR/frame magic will save us lol.
16gb is also not enough for a 4k card like a 4080. AMD or a 4090 is the only real choice long term, if you are gaming and not doing some CUDA stuff.
people just keep buying them. Honestly if people are gonna be so ignorant than there's no reason to stop this practice from their perspective. Just keep on making more money, get that stock price up.
@@N4CR getting a rtx 4080 is like to get ferrari xD low hp vs nissan gtr-35 xD
Me looking at my 3060 12gb, "it's okay little guy, you won't get replaced yet"
I'm the same with my 6700xt. I'm sure we're gonna be good for a decent amount of time
It also comes with full x16 pcie lines.
Shunt modded 3060 12gb maybe a better idea than a 3060ti and of course 4060ti at this point. Assuming the model has a good cooler stacking a 015 shunt for 33% more on the 8 pin with overclock could return that 25% performance gap between Ti while having the 12GB’s
That served me well enough for a couple of years at 1080p, now at 1440p I sold it last month and bought a used 6800xt in mint condition for like $90 more.
It's soooooo much better
@@soto_arc that little guy holds majority of gpu user percentage, they'll toss you out .. better watch ur mouth next time
Gods work Steve! So important! Thanks for all the testing! Must have taken days!
I've legit seen people defending 8 gb current gen cards just a day ago. And from rumours, 50 series will also be 8gb in the most popular 60 class
Buy a 16 GB VRAM card then, just wait to have more money... And maybe stick to 1080p gaming, way easier to run.
Of course Ngreedia will stick to 8GB.
They will as long as people will buy them. It is such a great planned obsolescence feature they can't stop using it.
I'm playing 3-4 year old games that pull just under 10gb at max settings. So not even a modern year title and I'm all ready blowing past 8gb of VRAM. I recently built a new computer and went with a 6750xt 12gb because there were no Nvidia GPU's with more then 8gb in my price range. Glad I did.
I think 8 gigabyte cards are fine as long as they stick to 200$ cards.
@@Marauder-q2v We all know that for 200$ from Ngreedia we would only get 4GB for sure. There is no way they would let you have the full 8GB for only 200$. Did they not charge 100$ or more for extra 8GB on the 4060Ti when it cost them about 40$.
I got my 6700 xt for $330 and I don't have any issues. AMD drivers have never been a problem for me. 12 GB of VRAM has never been a problem.
It's both funny and annoying to see people saying stuff like "enjoy your crashes LOL" whenever Radeon is brought up, it's instantly clear that they haven't used an AMD card in a very long time if at all.
Yea it's a strange remark, I've got a 5700xt in one of my rigs, never had one issue, turns on and plays overtime, where as my 3070 I must turn the system on and off once every week or two after an update due to weird behaviour
I’ve owned both the 5700xt and 7700xt with no issues. My brother has a 6700xt and once again no issues. It really just comes down to what is best value between AMD and Nvidia
AMD drivers have been excellentnovrrall for ages it's almost always a case of bad user installs and crap like faili g to do a clean install for new vid drivers then the dolts whine and bitch
Meanwhile team greed u cant evenbstart the shit drivers wo logging in ffs
Oh I have loads of problem whit my Rx 5700 xt drivers stil
Current day GPU buyers cant fathom the idea of having more VRAM than you need for todays games so your GPU can last more than few years. They ve been frog boiled into accepting this planned obsolescence. If RX480 and GTX 1070 had 8GB 8 years ago theres no reason why modern 400$ cards dont have more
That's why I'm gonna get more than 16 GB VRAM for my next GPU (currently a 12 GB one) even if I only play at 1080p/1440p sometimes. I want the VRAM to never be a problem, at least for 4 years. Then I would normally upgrade again anyway.
exactly. I for example went from a 1080 ti 11gb to a 3080 10gb and while gaming improved, in some games that needed more vram for textures the 1080 ti was best vs the 3080 because of that extra 2 gb of vram. I could not afford at the time the 3080 12gb or ti model so I reduce some settings or adjust the DLSS effect. This last purchase made me realize pascal gen gpus was a big win for gamers and nvidia needed to never do that again by planned obsolesce the enxt generations of gpus
This IS why you are mad ? Look at AMD they learned 😂 Rx6700xt 350 Back then and 12 GB vram and Same Performance then a 4060ti but one Generation older 😂 i mean WHO in this Planet bought for real a RTX 4060ti and even If you Had a Budget, there was the RX7700xt so it IS No excusen 😂 the rx7700xt Beat the 4060ti even in raytracing 😂 come on they Show the people two plates one with good and one with 💩 and people Chose secound one for ther meal
How come you think VRAM makes you invulnerable in the next years? I'd give $50 bucks to you if you can prove 3060 12Gb is better than 3070 8Gb. Your idea os the most beginner and average joe I have ever heard.
@izeinmendoza9766 My man im typing this on a PC with 3070 right now, i dont need to prove you anything. I never said that high VRAM alone makes a great GPU, but low VRAM makes a good GPU age worse
We dont take kindly on 8gb around these parts.
Daily reminder that nvidia advertised this to people who still use the gtx 1060, which means they are not running on pcie 4.0 but 3.0 or worse.
Moral of the story... don't overflow your VRAM limit. I think 8GB should be the minimum at this point and should only be seen on 50 class cards. But that's what happens when you try to sell a 50 class card as a 60 class card.
Эта карта изначально предназначалось для игр с разрешением 1080р
@@bubalom Here's the problem with that... they heavily pushed DLSS and FG as selling points, implying you could run 1440p with it... something this testing shows it's perfectly viable for with enough VRAM. Not to mention that charging $400 for a 1080p card in 2023 is absurd. You can't polish this turd.
No, it was the limit for a 50 class card in 2020. Should be 10-12GB since 2022.
Sad when my old 8GB 5700XT performs better than the 8GB 4060 because of the PCI-E lanes alone.
AMD was first to come with such idea with RX6600 XT.
😂 really
5700xt beats the 3060 in games that haven't been gimped through drivers to make the 6000 and 7000 series sell and the 4060 is a marginal improvement over the 3060
Its weird that people always tout the 5700xt, when the 2070S beats it all day and has DLSS, whilst also beating the 6700xt at RT
@@ArchieBunker11 so far i couldn't give less fucks about RT. And you seem to forget the price difference these two cards had back then. And for pure rasterisation i remember the 5700 xt being neck and neck with the 2070 super in alot of games so why lie and try to revise history.
6600xt represent! I'm tempted to get a 16gb card... BUUUUT I'm not finding I play enough games that need it. I rarely play games made after 2020 :(
I have the same GPU from Sapphire . And I have exactly the same approach to gaming as you . And I prefer playing in high details anyway 😂
stick with your GPU then, simple as that
If you can find a 6800-non-XT at a reasonable price, pounce on it. It's exactly as fast, and uses exactly the same power, as a 7700XT but trades AV1 hardware encoding for 16GB of RAM. That would open the door to 1440p for you, should you want to go there.
I have a 6650xt which is basically a 6600xt overclocked. I do understand that for modern games 12gb is the bare minimum and I hate how nvidia is doing planned obsolescence on that, but I honestly agree with you. Most games I play are 2010 to 2015 AAA or indie, not new games or anything like that. The only exceptions I'm considering is Fromsoft games and Baldur's Gate 3. That's it
I just upgraded from my sapphire nitro+ Rx 590 to an Rx 6800 xt. I had a chance to finally upgrade my pc, my Rx 590 with my i5 12600kf was really good. The Rx 6800 xt is a beast though. I find so many games play absolutely fine on 8gb.
And this is why I picked up a 6800 for 400 euro 😃 Anyone who wants to play above 1080p should have bought a 12+gb card in the past 2 years
@-firefly7931 60 fps ? I like my games above 90 at least. But 144 if possible.
@-firefly7931 and do you play at native 4k, or just upscale something ?
People across the board should speak up about the Nvidia's low Vram decisions, from UA-camrs to customers. The more informed people are the less of these types of cards will be bought.
People don't like future proof. They always buys the cheaper from the moment, and Nvidia knows it
This really dissproves the comments that say they have a 3060/4060 8gb card and playing everything maxed out with RT at 1440p.
"What do you mean?! I can run this very easy to run title from 2019 with max ray tracing on at 1440p without any issues! Surely this has to be the case for every single game out there!"
They forget to mention it’s at a locked 15fps😂
Where you see comments like those. Nvidia sub? You have to realize these people are paying 30 to 50% more money for on average 30% less fps compare to Radeon cards. So they have to say something to justify it. It's like buying a Honda civic si for $70,000 when people were buying a Z for $50,000
@@hardergamer as a 4090 owner on a 1440p ultrawide monitor I can safely say this is false unless you enjoy playing at extremely low frame rates.
I can’t max everything out and keep my fps above a hundred in everything.
In cyberpunk for example with path tracing on I get less than 20 fps.
So anyone using a card with about 1/10th the performance isn’t playing anything at 1440 maxed out.
There's some dude showing his 4090 in 1080p max in newer titles. Barely even hitting 144 max of his monitor WITH DLSS. Unreal 5 will laugh at next gen.
Ngreedia fked me hard, it was hot summer 2022 when I decided to buy 3070ti for 2k resolution, payed 1k $ for that. By the winter same year i already was feeling a little 8gb peepee close to my mouth. By the summer 2023 i already felt miserable because in number of titles I was forced to use medium textures. So, january this year I sold 3070ti and got an 6900xt, cost of that trade was 150$. That is literally the best upgrade in my entire 36 years of life. AMD ❤
Same story for me, except I got the 7900XT, the 20gb should keep me going for a while! Never going back to asshole nvidia.
@@defranken went from a rtx 2060 6gb (which served me well) to a 7800xt 16gb and never looked back.
Nvidia wanted to charge me an arm and a leg for the 4070 8gb whilst potentially screwing me over in a few months with its limitations.
@@detroid89 Good choice!
Thanks Steve.
Thanks Steve.
Back to you Steve.
The more you Steve, the more you Steve.
A $500 8 gigabyte graphics card was really poorly thought out, but what's worse is that people were willing to buy it at that price.
and defend it, that is the weird part!
It's well thought out, for their pockets. The average user wouldn't know that 8GB isn't sufficient, a few years later they'll just think their GPU is outdated and buy another one when in fact it's just a VRAM issue.
I believe the 8g version is $400 and the 16g version is $500
Pricing is different from country to country and not everyone has the use case for 8 GB. It's just not a relevant point for some buyers.
According to gpu buyers nvidia can do no wrong and game developers are never allowed to make a game that needs more than 8GB of memory at maximum settings.
Wow. This actually explains why I was able to extend the life of my GTX1070 when I upgraded CPUs from 2500k to a 5900x going from PCIe 2.0 to 4.0. It fixed my lows and resolved the stuttering issues in a couple games like Elden Ring. I thought it was the CPU itself and wasn't even considering PCIe as a factor.
What a suprise. Consoles with 16GBs of System Memory launched _4 years ago_
Also: Back when I bought the 12GB Version of the 3080 every tech outlet called it something like "useless".
What about now? Looks like it was a good decision to wait for "downgraded versions".
the 12GB one was useless because it was already stated that the base 3080 should've been a 16GB card
@@imo098765 doesn't make it useless. Also there already were plenty of outlets lambasting the 3070 and up because it was clear that these wouldn't last long with how little VRAM they had. All the texture compression and better memory management in the world can't save these and nVidia knew. That was the point. They wanted the few that cared about tech to be upsold to the 3080 and up. And they wanted the many that will always but a **70 no matter what to have to buy a new card when the 50 series is out.
Hardware Unboxed didn't say it was useless, just that it was a shameless cash grab. It's also worth remembering, and you'd hear this in Steve's review, that the prices were still heavily inflated and 3080 availability in general was still limited, which made the small spec differences look less important in the big picture of the time.
@@ETophales HWU didn't but @imo098765 did.
Had not watched HUB's videos for a while (general fatigue of everything ) and this one was a great piece to return back to one of my favourite UA-cam content creators. Great job of producng video that brings techcnical insight X entertainment for those who like to have their fair share of PC Hardware.
But getting back on track with the topic of the video -since the moment this 8gb debacle had started, I was always like"is it that bad, to actually have those 8GBs of vram, really? Maybe it won't be bad to upgrade to more contemporary GPU, but with the same amount of VRAM as my currently used 1080 GTX... but thankfully I had abstained from doing so as I feel like that would've been akin to throwing money straight into the bin (and I'm not an avid, but once in a blue moon pc-gamer).
So thanks for videos like these and keeping would-be-buyers from making mistakes and reminding that if it sounds bad on paper - there is a big chance it actually is.
Watch how Nvidia gonna release $450 5060 with 8GB and people are still going to buy/defend it.
cattle =/= people
Glad i jump ship from 1070 to 6700 xt in 2022. That 12gb vram will probs last another 2 years.
yep, also depends on resolution... i havent had issues yet in 1080p xD
i immediately went to rtx 4070 ti super gigabyte eagle oc 16gb at launch Jan 2024 from my 3yr old rtx 3070 Founders edition bought in jan2021😊
@@CaptainScorpio24 damn, enjoy your upgrade! (btw are you playing at 1440p or 4k now?)
@@takik.2220 its benq 27inch 1440p 144hz monitor . powered by i7 12700 non k with asus tuf z690 plus wifi d4 bought at the cost of single i9 12900k in jan 2022 launch 😊
@@CaptainScorpio24 nice, ngl kinda jealous on my 1080p 180hz monitor and rx 6600 + 5600 build, 1440p looks insane.
Nvidia: How about you pay me 500€ for a 4060 Ti?
Me: How about I buy a used 2080 Ti for half the price, more RAM and the same performance?
Nvidia: Wait, that's illegal!!!
Utterly hilarious how a GPU like the RX 6800 non-XT from THREE YEARS AGO ages better than a GPU just from last year!!! MASSIVE F on nvidias part. I feel bad for people that genuinely don’t know better and simply go with nvidia because of their mindshare, buy this card, put it in a system with PCIE 3.0 (or god forbid 2.0) and gimp their performance.
People still buying it new in America for under 350$
To be fair, the 6800 was a mid-to-high-end part, while 4060ti is an overpriced entry-level part. Them performing similarly is reasonable. But of course people buy green no matter what, because they always have ang green has the faster cards. Even when, no especially when they don't buy the top tier. Which is like buying an overpriced minivan from a car maker because they make the fastest racecar as well.
Very much enjoyed this testing, super useful real world comparisons, nice one boss 👌🏼now get back to work 😉
Thanks minion.
@@Hardwareunboxedthanks to channels like you, gamers and people are educated with what bs is going on ....
Again I would love to see a visual comparison when lowering settings to get similar performance on the 8GB card. Basically what do you sacrifice visually if limited to 8GB.
True! In many cases changing just a few barely noticeable settings would remove the memory limitation on the 8GB card.
It will be like in Halo and Forspoken, but for all games.
2060 super to 6800 xt here, until Ngreedia decides to add more VRAM, I'll be on Team Red for a while.
It was really great seeing the smoothness of the video feeds next to one another. It made it much easier to see how significant the differences are, especially when planning the camera, more than just charts with averages and 1% lows. Thanks Steve 🙂
If u need a GPU badly, kinda seems like an overlocked 7900gre is the best option
The 6900gre is the single best bang for you buck avail esp from better mfrs like XFX, sapphire etc not the crap power color aka red devil with pathetic warranty or horrid qual and CS like GB or asus
@@konnorj6442 yea, i have the XFX 7900gre and its holding 2416MHz Fast timings and 2703-2803Mhz at 990mV
@konnorj6442 7900gre is basically a 7800xt on steroids. Same card, same value overall, a bit more expensive for a bit more performance. It smokes the joke that the 4070ti is. Unfortunately, it's the only AMD win in this generation. The 4080 super is way better than the 7900xtx, and the 4060 and 7600/7600xt are such terrible options anyway that it is hard to say who beats who
My Vega 56 had 8GB of VRAM in 2017.
every R9 390 had 8gb in 2015. Many 290X had it the year before. RX 470 came with 8 if you paid $30 more. 8GB today is like 4GB in that era.
The shills at r/nvidia say turning down settings to high gets rid of these problems. But why should someone have to turn down settings (if they can already reach their desired fps on max settings), just because NVIDIA fucked up by putting 8GB of VRAM on this gpu?
They didn't "fuck up", they did it on purpose to force people to upgrade or buy more expensive stuff
And worse: why would you NOT turn textures back up to ultra when that is the single setting that improves visuals with practically not hit performance. The reason the RX 580 was such a god damn trooper for me was because I could chose medium geometry and lighting settings and still use ultra textures. That always looked worlds better than just the medium preset and kept the card viable until I decided to go 1440p and upgrade to an XTX. Getting 6 years out of a $220 GPU was stupid good value.
The REASON why we can charge so much for only 8GB is in the end.
YOU BUY IT ANYWAY! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL LULZ!
Thanks for the leather! hahahahahahha
A real man of the people who can afford to not stay at the YMCA, but he does anyway! An inspiration to young men everywhere!
Also you should have spent more for a 16 Gb 4080 super or something. After all, we all know that the more you buy the more you save
One thing I've noticed about Doom Eternal with RT enabled is that initially it'll run pretty poorly with RT enabled on 8GB or less cards, even with more modest settings. The interesting thing here though is that if I turn off RT, set everything to low, click apply, and then enable everything again (including RT), all of the sudden it runs fine and the assets load properly so I know it isn't failing to load in anything. It doesn't happen at all on the 12GB GPUs that I have, so odds are there is some sort of VRAM related issue going on, but at the same time I also think it's a bug since I did all of my testing at 1080p and I only used the high settings preset and not nightmare or ultra nightmare. The GPUs I've tested were the RTX 2060, RTX 2070 super, RTX 3060ti, and the RX 6700XT and the CPU being used was an i5-12600KF with 32GBs of DDR4 memory at 3200MT/s.
I had tons of graph artifacts and crashes with 8Gb VRAM.
Since moving to 12 they are solved.
However, I wonder if you guys also noticed how VRAM over time tends to just keep filling up, as the PC is running. As if it’s not getting “flushed” properly after running things.
In short: even the 8Gb VRAM was enough for most of my needs, as long as I was doing regular PC restarts, like once every 1-2 days.
AGAIN, those poor souls shouting 8 GB vram is enough
It's as if they don't even want more VRAM
These people be like "I have an 8Gb card I can run games pretty fine" as if the problem is running games rather than heavy stutters and texture pop ins.
@@GearheadK20C4ikr, not wanting a better performance is stupid
im here stuck witn 4gb of Vram cause i got a 1050ti laptop
planned to get 4070 8gb of Vram cause theres no way im gonna pay double for 4080
and theres no much AMD GPU laptop out there
and why i need a laptop cause i live with communist parents and i cant have my own room
so portability is a must
They're coping trying to justify their poor purchases
This really highlights an issue I’ve had with hardware reviews for years now; as much as it’s useful to know what these components are capable of when nothing else in the system is creating bottlenecks, it isn’t a realistic scenario for 99.99% of the audience that are actually going to be buying them.
The WORST case scenario in regards to components is just as valuable as the best case scenario, because it will give the full range of what you can expect when purchasing a product.
I know it would be doubling your workload, but showing how GPU’s and CPU’s in particular perform with the lowest compatible parts people might actually be using, in edition to the normal all high end configurations you use, would be vastly more informative to your audience.
Another takeaway is that if you are going to handicap your GPU with suboptimal VRAM then don't also kneecap it with by being only 8x.
That surprised me more than the 8GB of Vram. Completely unacceptable for any graphics card in 2023. Any card aimed at gaming at least.
yep and the rumour is now theyre cutting the 5070 to 8 lanes too seeing they now are using pcie gen 5. Not like theyd actually be able to mask shitty 12gb of vram with a gen5x16 bus or anything, no no, we at nvidia want you to know and feel how little vram we put on our cards 😁.
My 8gb 3060 ti is only just getting away with stable framerates at 1440p in war thunder (a 12 year old game btw!) because i have the full gen 4x16 lanes and ddr5 bandwidth to always feed it 30GB/s and even then i lose some fps and frame stability. now, nvidia is deciding to remove the only mitigation to low vram aswell seemingly, great.
These tests are arguably more important than the normal tests, as they show current/future real world experiences, thanks Steve!
"i nEEd tO bUy nvIDiA foR RtX!!!!!1!1!1" average customer for 800 euros computer
And they say that to justify buying an RTX 3050 or something
@@yasu_red try to tell them a Radeon 6700 would be so much better as it also uses less CPU ..nope they go buy pre built on Amazon with first gen i7 920 and gt1030
All radeon budget are 8gb or trash and fsr is trash so yeah people should still buy nvidia. Not worth saving 50 bucks for amd.
@@Navi_xoo the rx 6700 XT with 12GB can still be had for ~$300. Arguable if that is budget, but it certainly is a much better buy than anything from nvidia in that range or lower. FSR is not trash, it is slightly worse than DLSS, but very much usable - and that it is not quite as good as DLSS is not a valid argument if you compare it to an nvidia card that runs out of VRAM once you enable it.
@@Hugh_I 6700xt runs circles around 4060ti both 8gb and 16gb version, has 16x pcie and cost 25% less
16GB should be the bare minimum in 2024 I think, my 1070 has 8GB of memory and that came out a long time ago now. No way in hell a 60Ti card in 2024 should have the same amount of memory.
to be fair 1060 was 6 gigs , so i think that 4060/ti should have had 10-12 gigs of vram , that's enough for the type of videocard it is , don't get me wroing but 4060ti is not capable to put up to work the 16 gigs vram because of the 128 bit bus , so id rather take a 12 gigs 4060ti with 192 bit bus or at least a 10 gig version with 160bit bus, that would have been massively better received than what we have right now. But , there is a big but , 4060ti is a high end 1080p card , and to be honest i don't think 8 gigs will limit you in any shape or form if you are playing on 1080p native without framegen or stuff like that that eats up to 3 gigs of vram out of nowhere :D
@@Integroabysalin what world is a $400 gpu a 1080p card? I've been on 1440p since I had a RX 480 8gb back in the day. In 2024 anything above $200 should be expected to play games at 1440p.
I mean we're at a place where good 1440p high refresh rate monitors are commonly found at $200 USD. No one spending $400+ on a GPU is playing at 1080p
@@Msoul11 you can play 1440p on intel integrated graphics all day , when did I tell that you can't buy a 400$ card and play 1440p ? I just said that usually the 300-400$ price point is the high end of 1080p that was always like that.
1070 was gddr5 though and we have gddr6 memory. Not saying nvidia shouldn't provide more vram but the memory on the 1070 was a lot slower than what we have today.
@@mikopium258 Yes and no , if we play the leatherjacket game 1070 memory system is actually only 10% slower than 4060ti mem system XD
That 7700XT I got for ~$380 USD is feeling pretty good right now compared to the 4060TI
If you only have an 8GB graphics card just download 8GB more and you'll have 16!
you can't download ram
Games have been held back by 8GB cards for quite a while now, I noticed a lot of games have a hard cap at 8GB VRAM usage and don't make use of any more, even on 16GB+ cards, and rely on performance-hungry texture streaming instead, causing stutters and texture pop-ins even when your VRAM is only half full.
some examples for this are battlefield 2042, anno 1800, Arma Reforger and Kingdom Come Deliverance.
I think this highlights the importance of also doing some reviews/testing on systems that aren't just "top spec"/removing other bottlenecks which sometimes ends up hiding some issues that actual users face.
Might be worth including a few tests on pcie 3.0 next time you do a graphics card review at least on a lower end card since there are still a fair number of people who might be using a system limited to it (and also apparently amd is releasing a am5 chipset that is limited to pcie3 only...).
or
Oh I remember those shouting matches on steam forums and reddit about how "nobody can even use more than 8GB VRAM". Problem was, that was wrong even back then, depending on what you played. DCS for example already was hungering for more, especially if you played in VR, and that was pre-2019.
And today it is easy to get 20+gb of Vram usage on DCS MP servers as well, so 24 is kinda the minimum going forward for that game
DCS isn't exactly a normal game lol. The point stands though
Oh boy r/nvidia is gonna have fun with this one...
Thanks Steve I do enjoy these 👍
You're welcome and I recon they will be big fans :D
I think NVIDIA will not jeopardize sales of high end cards by giving decent vram to midrange cards..
I have 4070 ti with 12gb vram and considering how much I paid for it, I am not happy...
This was an excellent demonstration of the importance of more VRAM. And the point about texture quality will be an eye opener for many who are content with the bare minimum.
My old PC had a gtx 1070 with 8 GB VRAM. Released in 2016 as mid-range card.
Lol 10/10 video, I used to be thinking to myself 8GB ain't as bad as they say, but I realize now, I'm on PCIe 4.0 😂
Boy does this A770 owner feel good.
Good luck with your driver support, you`re going to need it.
@@brugj03 Intel already has rock solid drivers for 99.99% of games. You've been living under a rock or something?
@@badass6300 That`s pure comedy man. Keep up the good work.
@@brugj03 I recommend watching something for the A770 from the last 1-2 months.
@@badass6300 Yeah well, thrown in the towel 3 months ago.
Really glad i got rid of that disaster.
Maybe it`s a bit better now, but i don`t believe in miracles.
Enquiring minds want to know this sort of stuff. This is great content. It can also tie into the "should I upgrade my CPU to go from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0?" question as well as the VRAM question. Well done
It's strange how long I've had a 16GB card. From early 2018 with the Vega FE, to the VII, then to my current 6900XT, I've only been sidegrading across 16 gigs.
I like this video a lot, I have never been a fan of releasing these cards with 8x of bandwidth, and its good you did testing on 3.0 (and 2.0) as lots of people that buy these mid range cards will be using such systems.
I also like that you bring attention to the VRAM loss of texture quality, as too many people just say "it still runs as fast so VRAM isnt needed" without realising the loss of quality.
My 10GB 3080 is getting scared
I honestly never understood why this card even existed. After a single year in 2021, it got so obvious that this card will age horribly.
Packing enough power to maybe last for half a decade as a good GPU, just like the GTX 1080, but limited by the VRAM to be obsolete within 2. Crazy.
It should be quaking in it's boots.
@@Chrissy717 I won mine at auction for £400 just a year after release and was a serious upgrade on my 2070 which i sold for £250 meaning i got a 3080 for £150. It was a no brainer but now im having to playing on high/medium settings simply because of VRAM. Its rough but the 4000 series are so insanely overpriced that im happy to compromise.
@@Chrissy717the GTX 1080 lasting a half a decade is the exact reason it is VRAM limited. NVIDA will endeavor to never make the “mistake” of making a card that is “too good” again if they do not have a pressing reason to. Otherwise they won’t get enough pressure to upgrade and artificially inflate demand so they can overcharge.
I hope you have it in a PCIe 4.0 system, because it won't be long before you'll start seeing 1% Lows doing funky things.
10Gb should be now standard on entry level cards for 1080p
12 is the absolute minimum for 1080p now, if you want to play the newest titles at max that is.
@@erraldstylerI also don't get why all this entry level cards are on 8x PCiE bus and not 16 that limits me for example on my b450 PCiE 3.0 16x
@@erraldstyler "At max" is not the issue here. It's normal that lower tier PC parts aren't meant for high settings. The problem is that some games will stutter or not load textures properly even at low-mid settings with 8 and less VRAM.
@@kazioo2 it is the issue here tho, all the tested games are in maximum settings
thats pathetic from the perspective of being a game developer, imagine needing 10gb vram to game at 1080p be because they cant be bothered to optimize theyre product
I work in retail. Unfortunately this is what the average gamer can afford when building a completely new PC these days. Options from AMD and Intel aren't that much different either
The point is Nvidia should have made it at least 10GB/160-bit to begin with. They can even use GDDR6 to reduce the cost and sell at $409. I doubt people willing to spend $399 can't spend $10 more for more than 10% gain in many cases.
Don't agree, at 400€ you can buy a RX 6700 XT or even a 6750 XT that are both 12GB GPU's with 192bits bus.
You may lose on RT performance and have a tad lesser upscaler (that IMO is good enough) but you gain strong raster performance, way faster at that then even more expensive Nvidia GPU's and raster, contrary to people belief (people that don't know what raster even does) is still very important.
@@Argoon1981 and a 7700 XT isn't much more expensive
You literally can get a 6700 xt for 10-15% cheaper and for a bit more a 6800 which drags the 4060 ti through the mud.
@@Argoon1981 In these parts, 6700 XT are hard to come by at most big computer parts retailers and 6x50 cards virtually non-existent - Those few that were available were priced higher than 7700, the latter being not particularly attractive at current prices.
Reflecting the OP's statement, I just built a new rig and took the 3080 from my previous rig - I'm waiting to see if it is worth getting a 5080, or if not, waiting for the 4080 Super to drop to A$1500 or lower.
In the meantime, for the old rig - finding a worthwhile mid/low spec card at a reasonable price locally (new or 2nd hand) was fraught.
I remember the days when the "10" version of the cards got degraded (GT 710).
Then the "30" got degraded with limited PCIE bandwidth (i.e. GT 1030).
Then the "50" series got degraded (RTX 2050)
Then the "60" series and even 60 Ti got degraded (4060)
Maybe the RTX 5070 will be the first to feature half the PCIE lanes of its predecessor.
This is why i went back to AMD back in 2021. Still wont give up my 6800xt.
After so many years of overpriced GPUs due to covid, mining and whatever most people just wnd buying what they can afford. A medium PC built around a 4060 8GB is already quite expensive.
the point is you can buy an amd 6800 with 16gb that would crush the 4060ti 8 AND 16 gb versions. In all but rtx. for the same $$$
How anyone can view these side by side comparisons and then take to twitter to say it isn't (that big of) a problem is insane to me, especially when you're testing DLSS and they handwave the entire video because the graphics preset is "too high." This is exactly what Nvidia wants you to do with their entry level GPUs, and it becomes a stuttering mess when you have the """wrong""" setup. Thank you for providing these comparisons and helping consumers make informed decisions as always.
exactly, they market these features and people dont buy amd gpus because they say "dlss is better" "the ray tracing is better" but if you use those features you run out of vram. Like some messed up feedback loop.
It’s because, out of all the games these reviewers show, people own maybe 1 or 2 or none of those games.
What ever happened to the graphics don’t make a game good?
Now, listen, I’d like more VRAM too but I think the more pressing matter is how these cards are held back in performance rather than VRAM.
Have you seen current budget cards?
Less than 192bit bus widths!?
x8 bus interfaces!?
I think this is just another Nvidia Strategy to make gamers overlook their other faults…
The graphics preset clearly isn't "too high" when the 16GB variant delivered absolutely playable performance in all but one game (if we consider 60FPS to be the hard cut-off and anything below is automatically disqualified).
@@thetechrealist The full quote is "Graphics doesn't make a game good, but a good game can be let down by bad graphics".
@@thetechrealist Graphics don't make a game but it's nonsensical to imply that people buying GPUs should just not care about performance / graphics when that's the whole point in buying a GPU in the first place.
Premium price for premium upscalers.
I call it a "six finger mark up"
i call that 1 finger vote with my wallet :p
This is why I switched to AMD. It's been great also with 0 issues. I don't use any NVIDIA features, and simply value raw performance and having enough VRAM. I enjoyed my NVIDIA cards also.. but i appreciate what you're doing with pushing them to bring better products, it benefits everyone.
One thing that NEEDS to be done on a per game basis WHEN your game lowers textures because you don't have enough VRAM
then it should indicate as such either in a synthetic test or better directly in settings telling a rough guidance on how much VRAM is required for various texture settings
when 3GB vram comes out. 4060 can be upgraded to 12gb and 4070 to 18gb vram
GDDR7 (3GB chips version) i think will not work with RTX 4xxx GPU's. ... but it will with RTX 5xxx. So i hope for minimum 12GB VRAM in RTX 5060 128bit GPU (4x3GB). 8GB VRAM in RTX 5060 (5060Ti?) will be disaster.
@@kylekyle1665 it will be 2*3gb = 6gb 5060
Lets be real, 3gb vram would probably mean we're getting a 9GB 5060 ti lmao
@@kylekyle1665 3*3 = 9gb 5060
Back to 6 GB
From my own experience my 4080FE (16GB Vram) Vs my older 2070 Super (8GB Vram) was not just a night and day difference it was ALL the difference. (FULL Specs: i7 9700K @ 4.9 All core OC / 3200 Kit Dom Plats OC'D @ 3333 / ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 MOBO) It seen HEAVY gaming usage EVERY DAY for the last 5-6 Years and I have in all that time had maybe 10 crashes (mostly due to game wonky-ness or me trying to do something crazy in game like make a box fortress in BG3) HAHAH... I cannot express HOW powerful and flawless this build was, most games cannot use multi-core so the 4.9 is MORE than enough.....after 5-6 Years THIS THING STILL KICKS ALL THE ASS....If you told me it was 5-6 Years old I WOULD NOT BELIEVE YOU.... The Old 2070S crashed a lot and I have come to believe it was 100% BC of the Vram (8GB SHOULD be enough)...but in truth its HOLDING YOU BACK. I CANNOT MAKE MY PC CRASH....with the 4080FE and aside from cyberpunk on ultra settings it can MAX out all my games (it legit plays games like the developer intended....flawless, smooth, quite with the over sized cooler, STABLE, did I say stable? THing is UN-crashable)....I should add here I game on 1440 (2K) on my Alienware 3440X1440 monitor @ 120Hz, I don't do 4K (1: because my monitor doesn't natively support it and 2: because it COULD push my 4080FE into resolutions it can't pump out beyond what I need). I think LOTS of people think they need 4K Etc. Etc. (TRUST ME 2K @ 100Hz or more IS gaming at its BEST!!!) its like playing on a DEV box, its THE PERFECT EXPERIENCE!
I have heard OTHERS running the 13 & 14 gen intel CPU's people getting more than 10 crashes a WEEK!!!!!!
Two years ago I updated from an I7 9700K/RTX3800 to a RTX4800 but found out that the CPU was quite a bottleneck when playing CPU demanding games like MS Flight Simulator. Update to a ryzen 7 5800x3d helped alot. I don´t play competitive games so it is quite decent even in 4K.
@@funzario144 I think Flight Sim is hard for any CPU/GPU tbh. Especially if your trying to get 4K out of it...yeah 9700K maybe not the best for that task but for Elden ring/ WItcher 3/ or BG3 for example it runs butter smooth in the city with no stutter at all, not to say it never stutters a little(1%) in certain locations for various reasons (usually waiting a turn to process or massive explosion)
Amazing, just the perfect video to watch/listen while trying to troubleshoot my Pc which doesn't turn on.
I have been playing the First Descendant on my 4060 fine with no issues other than bugs that have been reported. Not all games use over 8 gb vram.
Really interesting testing Steve, I agree. Also agree with targetting the higher priced and lower vram cards first, start at the top and work your way down. By the upper cards having a higher minimum, it pushes up the headroom for more affordable cards to have higher vram as well, eg. If you can sell a 8GB card for $400, why would more Vram be put on a $200-$300 card? More likely it'll have less, or at most, the same.
No one understood NVIDIA exactly.
The more you buy the more you save.
In other words, the less you buy the more you are screwed....
Nvidia doesn't want to exist in majority range of 300$. Those spending above 500$ on some fan boxes are less and simply doesn't care what company is charging them... either too rich or just a stuphid to spend soo much on toy boxes
Save what exactly? Still no one knows 🤣🤣 all tech is becoming old within 2-3 years now... we are way beyond exponential growth in tech so idk what nvidia wants us to save 🤣🤣
No . They want us to upgrade every generation and to destroy the used market
Yeah pretty much.
What about to demand games developers to optimize their games and doesn't swallow that amount of VRAM GB???
2016 AMD RX 480 had 8gb variants. Nearly a decade and we can't get more vram, the default should be 32gb at this point.
I got 6 years out of my RX 580 and the only reason I upgraded was a desire to go to 1440p because long hours of reading/writing code was starting to demand better text clarity for my old eyes. I suspect my XTX will last even longer as modern games are disappointing me time and time again. Sooo much "safe" slop.
@@andersjjensen The rx 580 was long lived because it came out in the middle of the PS4/Xbox One generation, which was under-powered at launch and by 2016/2017 was just entry-level performance. The PS5/XSX came out and their GPUs were as good as the rtx 2080 Super and rtx 2080Ti respectively and then count in the much better console optimization, they aren't easy to overpower as the ps4/xbox one.
@@badass6300 the RX580 was long lived because it *was* the PS5/XSX pro GPU. Every console release was tweaked and optimized to run on these.
R9 390s came with 8GB standard the year before. We will see 32GB next year, just not this side of the $1000 mark.
@@andreewert6576 Hopefully the 32GB card is 10 000$ and people buy it.
This is the most important video on UA-cam for everyone to learn: Game developers, Nvidia Corp. And gamers
I don't have much to add to this conversation, I'm taking notes at this point. I'm one of those 1080p60 gamers who's making the most of an 8GB card (one I bought recently! a used 3070 at ~$270 after tax.)
But I must say hats off to continuing to make this subject clearer and keeping up the advocacy on the subject, since it's not so well understood. Indeed, with so many variables between the GPU speed, CPU speed, system memory speed/latency, VRAM speed/bandwidth, and even now platform performance (e.g. PCIe version)... it's a lot to sort through! But every time this subject is revisited on this channel, a new piece of the puzzle comes into focus, and both your channel and the public begin to be able to make more and more laser precise comments and observations on the state of the market.
I may be convinced that my 8GB card works *for me* most of the time, but as soon as I upgrade my monitor, I think I'll start to feel it a bit more. And then I'll wonder if Nvidia saving its BOM and manufacturing costs will make sense when it gets delivered to me the consumer at these prices... or whether I feel ripped off.
It's not that games strictly need more than 8GB of VRAM. It's that it's where artists and game engine engineers want to go with the tech, and it's where the hardware spec to hit the top of the line performance consumers are probably expecting is starting to trend to. If Nvidia (or AMD, or don't forget much of intel's Alchemist lineup is stuck at 8GB) aren't delivering that at multi-hundred-dollar price tags, I think "holding back the industry" is a fair take.
So, all that to say: thanks. I've been trying to answer this question "how much VRAM is enough right now?" for the past maybe three years or so when I've been in the market for GPUs. I finally think I have confidence in answering it. A bit of the old "it depends," but I can now say on *what* it depends, and that feels invaluable. So there you have it, thanks so much for the work you're doing and the explanations you're taking the time to give as well. Best to you all!
*P.S.* to be a little more specific about what I think was learned from this video: Slowing down the speed the GPU can offload things to system RAM is very clever, and lets you selectively magnify the performance impact of "over-VRAM" situations, or at least so it would appear. I can't think of another explanation, and I agree this really lets you zoom in on characterizing what performance hit is based on overflowing the VRAM, vs whatever other of a dozen variables tech press have been trying to isolate over the years. Very well done there! I'm taking notes on that one, big-time.
I suppose there is still the hidden variable of whether the game is heavily streaming assets over PCIe to begin with even before overflowing VRAM, as in whether it's overall saturating the VRAM/PCIe bandwidth or not. But on the other hand, the lower PCIe 2.0 data rates in and of themselves may be the bottleneck if data access can't be parallelized enough (which would be good, it would make this test work regardless of any such theorized "hidden variable"!). So I expect the degree to which this "lower PCIe version" test magnifies the performance hit of overflowing VRAM could still be game-dependent. And especially settings-dependent -- I vaguely recall ray tracing and frame gen can be pretty taxing on PCIe bandwidth? (Or is that only if overflowing VRAM? In which case, this is actually a bang-on valid test.)
I *guess* games that normally load a lot in VRAM and hold onto it, instead of normally streaming stuff in/out all the time, might show little difference and could be a "false pass" in this test, since the difference might appear negligible from PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0. In theory, haven't tested this myself. But even then, this test is one more strong hint to what's going on. And in situations where the difference is clear, I would agree it implicates VRAM size pretty darn clearly. Anyway. Maybe *some* answers remain elusive, but they're finer and finer points. Either way, progress is progress, and this feels like big progress in this area of testing, IMO. Hopefully they will give us more VRAM on cards and we can put this testing to bed! Maybe some day. Until then we really need this!
Anyway! Thanks very much once again!
I think getting 240hz would be a priority here over getting more than 8GB VRAM. It will be a significantly better experience.
Keep up the good fight, Tech Nerds!
Nvidia's solution for the 5060Ti will be to use PCIE 5.0 and still default to 8GB.
Those forspoken textures on 8gb cards look worse than stuff from 2005 lol
That as well. Games just don't give a damn anymore. We already had better textures on 32 megabyte cards in 1999: ua-cam.com/video/SqYyL3vsjmU/v-deo.html
Craft computing recently did a comparison on older GPUs for cloud gaming--gaming on shared hardware. He found that higher compute cores were better for fewer clients, but HBM shined and gave a card with less compute more performance when there was more than one client using the same GPU. Memory performance and capability are very important, especially data locality.
Thank you for this Steve. This has REALLY interesting implications that trickle down to Thunderbolt 3/4 eGPUs as well (for very small form factor systems and laptops).
40 gigabits per second under Thunderbolt 3/4 works out to 5 gigabytes per second on the chart, equal to between PCIe 2.0 8x and PCIE 3.0 8x, meaning the performance impact should be minimal in most games with this class of GPU, assuming you don't exceed the VRAM.
So something like a 3060 12 GB is unlikely to have any performance impact running in a PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 slot in 8x, compared to through a Thunderbolt 3/4 eGPU interface.
RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) owners: "Why does Steve hate us so much?" 😆
fix: why does nvidia do this :/ 8gb shouldve been a 4050
@@Rogerkonijntje good point! But even then, I think we should do away with 8GB GPUs. 12GB or 16GB should be the standard minimum moving forward.
@@ApexLodestar yup i agree
I feel like the minimum for the 4060 /4060 ti should've been 10gb, one can dream right?
Games here are using close to 12gb on max settings 1080p when not vram limited so min should be 16gb so people have an extra 4 gb just in case
8 GB wasn'T enough for 1080p in 2022 already. I bought a 3070 for 1000 bucks when the mining craze was going around. And I couldn'T play cp2077 or Farcry 6 and many others in 1080p max settings. Not because the gpu chip was to slow. I started out with 60-80 fps and then when vram was full I was dropping to 20-30 fps and stayed there till i restarted the game. Then after a few minutes the same. Never again under 16 gb of vram. 16 gb is the bare minimum now for 1440p with some games already using over 14 gb, Avatar 1440p unobtanium already uses 16 gb. So for 4k you at least need 20+ gb of vram, That is also why the 90 series comes out with 24 gb, they know you need it for 4k and they just wanna upsell. But AMD is sadly completely unbuyable tdue to shitty FSR and no raytracing power. Imagine bringing out the 7900xtx with so much rasterpower but when you turn rt you get bottlenecked to death. And on top you get no AV1 encoder. So AMD is completely unbuyable and NVidia only 4070 ti super, 4080 and 4090 are really buyable for 1440p+ and 4070 super and ti or 4060 ti 16 gb for 1080p gaming. I went with 4070 ti super till rtx 5000 comes around and I will only buy 16gb+ and hope that the 5070 ti packs almost 4090 power with 16 gb GDDR7.
I don´t think we´ll see a 5070 Ti at release, since the 4070 Ti was released to cover up the 4080 12gb screw up. There are rumors out the 5080 will come along with 16gb like the 4080. If this is true, I´d bet 5080 16gb and 5090 24 or 30gb at launch, followed by the 5070 12gb, the 5060 8gb and the 5060 16gb.
They need to stumble the 80 series in vram to upsell the prosumers into the 90 series. Most of them don´t need the raw power of the 4090 but they need every byte of vram. As long as AMD isn´t competitive for gamers at the 80 series or prosumers in the 90 series, Nvidia won´t change anything.
The 7000 series of AMD cards have AV1 encoding, so you're wrong there.. AMD may be unbuyable for you and that's your choice, but many other people are gaming more than happily on one.
For a while I did not understand why Doom Eternal practically dies when I turn on DLSS with RT. Then I changed my 3080 to a 3090, check the vram consumption, and understood it.
The above change made Ghostwire: Tokyo from a stutterfest to a very nice game as well. Yes, that required also about 11-12GB vram
It would be real interesting to see a visual representation of the "distance" that going to system memory is like. Something like a line zoomed out to represent the time taken to hit the different functions.
It would certainly be easier than the analogy I use with friends ..
goes like, L0 - An accountant at their desk writing the math on small scrap piece of note paper. L1 - the notebook of work and problems they're working on. L1 cache - the rest of the papers on their desk they shuffle around as needed. L2 - binders the room down at the end of the hall, or the studio office on the other side of the building. L3 - storage rooms about 3 blocks over, takes 15 min just to get the car over there. L4 - the warehouses on the other side of town traffic is always congested, about 3 hour drive away minimum. L5 (System Memory) - the main distribution warehousing several states over, think about getting something from Texas to California. L6 - the storage drives, now you're going overseas to get the papers...