Why GFX card with more RAM?

[icarus]

Originally Posted by Codex

No. VRAM usage is increasing with many newer games, particularly with more games using tessellation and advanced shader routines..

Except I have not ever seen any games use over 2 gb vram even at 2650 x 1600 res with AA at 16x super and I have seen Cod use well over 2 Gb with no AA or AF. That seems exceptional to me.

[Codex]

Originally Posted by icarus

Except I have not ever seen any games use over 2 gb vram even at 2650 x 1600 res with AA at 16x super and I have seen Cod use well over 2 Gb with no AA or AF. That seems exceptional to me.

There are a few reasons why I think this may the case. Mind you I'm only speculating here:

1) I believe the code base of CoD lives in the managed world, i.e. .NET and it makes unmanaged function calls to the DX API to render the graphics. This style of programming model is inherently a more memory intensive operation and slower (only slightly) as there's lots of storing of memory heaps and stacks and buffers going on. But it means more manageable code, no need to worry about memory leaks as much as unmanaged code and easier to update / modify.

2) We're dealing with a flight simulation that needs to create a land mass which is not only accurate but vast as seen from the sky, this means more memory is needed than the average game to store the environment. On top of all that, you have textures and buffers (pixel, vertex, shaders etc.), and 3D models with a higher than average poly count.

3) Optimization. I don't think CoD is properly optimized, hence why it's going through a complete rewrite at the moment.

[icarus]

Originally Posted by Codex

There are a few reasons why I think this may the case. Mind you I'm only speculating here:

1) I believe the code base of CoD lives in the managed world, i.e. .NET and it makes unmanaged function calls to the DX API to render the graphics. This style of programming model is inherently a more memory intensive operation and slower (only slightly) as there's lots of storing of memory heaps and stacks and buffers going on. But it means more manageable code, no need to worry about memory leaks as much as unmanaged code and easier to update / modify.

2) We're dealing with a flight simulation that needs to create a land mass which is not only accurate but vast as seen from the sky, this means more memory is needed than the average game to store the environment. On top of all that, you have textures and buffers (pixel, vertex, shaders etc.), and 3D models with a higher than average poly count.

3) Optimization. I don't think CoD is properly optimized, hence why it's going through a complete rewrite at the moment.

Agreed, which makes it more memory intensive than other games or even other sims. I've seen it in Evga Precision peak at 2.5 Gb vram! That is exceptionally high and most likely a result of #3 not so much #2.

[Liz Lemon]

Originally Posted by icarus

Except I have not ever seen any games use over 2 gb vram even at 2650 x 1600 res with AA at 16x super and I have seen Cod use well over 2 Gb with no AA or AF. That seems exceptional to me.

So what? That doesn't change the fact that there are games that use over 2gb of vram - and cod is one of those titles.

Also keep in mind that the game is using a deferred rendering pipeline. That means that the game is rendering to multiple buffers - all of which take up space that is directly tied to resolution.

[icarus]

Originally Posted by Liz Lemon

So what? That doesn't change the fact that there are games that use over 2gb of vram - and cod is one of those titles.

Also keep in mind that the game is using a deferred rendering pipeline. That means that the game is rendering to multiple buffers - all of which take up space that is directly tied to resolution.

Name one that uses 2.5 gb vram with no AA or AF applied. Crysis2 and BF3 use 1-1.5 gB with 16x AA and 16x AF and there is no sim that uses 2.5 Gb with no AA and AF. CoD uses so much, not because it is so complex, it is because it is not optimized. That is why they are redoing the graphics engine.

BTW, I'm not being negative here, I'm being positive. When this is optimized there will be hope for those with less than 3 Gb ram.

[SEE]

The discussion regards Vsync and Triple Buffering interested me based on the frame rate integer jumps that Ataros mentioned.

I have always had Vsync enabled and triple Buffers set but decided to test a MP session with Vsync disabled and Triple buffers Off. Apart from the screen tearing, I was acheivineg 80+ fps at altitude and game play was much better even in the hotspots were FPS sink badly - it seemed much smoother even when fps went below 30.

I am torn wether to put up with the screen tearing (which isn't so bad that its unplayable with headtracking) or go back to Vsync capping at 60hz

EDIT: After writing this I did a bit of googling and found this interesting article regards Vsync/Triple Buffering and the advantages/disadvantages.


http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html


This link explains how Triple Buffering works - why it isn't supported in DirectX3D, etc.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2794/1