takaozo
Posts: 944 +1,479
New games? pretty much yes. Good thing there are lots of older games that are more fun than shiny puddles and no fun.
8GB VRAM vs. 16GB VRAM: RTX 3070 vs. Radeon 6800
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
Imagine all those who bought RTX 3000 series within the last 2 years often a lot above MSRP only to find out it's a garbage product now. Ouch
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Old games and indies are great, but why do I need to buy new hardware for them? I am happy with my old hardware, it works great.
Bamda
Posts: 518 +285
It just warms my heart hearing all the apologists defending Nvidia's graphic cards. Jensen the new messiah is working miracles, he is selling lesser VRAM cards for massive profits. And the trend continues to this day. LOL
kiwigraeme
Posts: 1,999 +1,410
That was interesting - mentioning some day to day variable like price in many game summaries is really a No No - You normally see price in reviews as statement at beginning and at end for all types of reviews - eg Cars, Audio - unless a specific point - eg at this price point of $5000 for the car one can't expect more than a simple wishbone suspension - at the $1000 point just a wooden yoke and springs
b3rdm4n
Posts: 180 +130
In todays test, Steve sets out with the goal to choke an 8GB card, make his point, and conclude he's correct.
The results, to nobodies surprise, show you can choke an 8GB card when you purposely design the test to do so. RT shadows at 1440P with everything maxed, yeah super realistic. Crap ports that need more patches, nice one.
Well done Steve.
The results, to nobodies surprise, show you can choke an 8GB card when you purposely design the test to do so. RT shadows at 1440P with everything maxed, yeah super realistic. Crap ports that need more patches, nice one.
Well done Steve.
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b3rdm4n
Posts: 180 +130
lol, it speaks volumes that both AMD superfans and Nvidia superfans think Steve is biased toward the respective other team. Your quotes and added commentary gave me a good laugh though - next level, truly.
LetTheWookieWin
Posts: 157 +339
That, and NVIDIA’s “planned obsolescence”.
All of the content you've linked to, fairly pointed out the cons and pros of both products. The concerns with the RTX 3070 were all clearly highlighted. This is all the time I'm giving you on this.
brucek
Posts: 1,725 +2,694
Makes sense, thanks for the info. I'm going to take that to mean that the texture packs and other assets can and do make sense within a more mainstream VRAM budget if not pushed out of it by enabling additional settings. And if that's true, it is an important counter-weight to this article, by implying that there are likely settings that will provide both a good experience within the developer's artistic intent, and not incur the performance issues being flagged here.
I am a little surprised that publishers will let their games crash, stutter badly, and otherwise appear to malfunction from VRAM exhaustion, as opposed to simply disabling settings beyond a certain point or providing a clear error message ("You do not have sufficient VRAM to play at these settings.")
Whatever those guardrails would cost to develop, has to be be less expensive than the customer support calls, urgent patch releases, refunds/chargebacks, and brand reputation losses they are incurring now by not having them. The Last of Us in particular is taking a shellacking and if a lot of it is really just "you need to turn your settings down", what a waste of time for all involved.
If this is your take away you need to read the article again. I showed where 8GB's of VRAM is an issue, showed where it isn't and clearly explained that this isn't an issue for all games. I also showed what you have to do to get RT working in Hogwarts Legacy and The Last of Us Part 1. I'm also using quality presets like most gamers, I'm not going out of my way to exceed the VRAM buffer in these games.
Yeah imagine price being relevant. I got it wrong, delivering 11% more performance while costing 16% more is actually good value, silly me.
LetTheWookieWin
Posts: 157 +339
I’ve been harping on NVIDIA for skimping on their VRAM buffers for several generations, though I don’t think things are presently as gloomy for the 3070 and 3070 Ti as this article portends. My brother owns a 3070 and plays Elden Ring, RDR2, CP2077, MSFS, etc with no issues and good frame rates. He also has a Valve Index and has had zero issues with it.
My father (a former pilot) owns a 3070 Ti that he uses exclusively with MSFS and an HP Reverb G2 and gets great performance (solid 45 fps on VR). I had considered AMD cards, but frankly their drivers were widely reported to not work as well in VR/MSFS.
I get that this article’s point is that the RX 6800 has aged much better (and will continue to do so) due to the higher VRAM buffer. But considering the horrendous supply issues last gen, and how many people were ready to make an anatomical donation to land either card, I wouldn’t feel too terrible if I were a 3070 owner.
My father (a former pilot) owns a 3070 Ti that he uses exclusively with MSFS and an HP Reverb G2 and gets great performance (solid 45 fps on VR). I had considered AMD cards, but frankly their drivers were widely reported to not work as well in VR/MSFS.
I get that this article’s point is that the RX 6800 has aged much better (and will continue to do so) due to the higher VRAM buffer. But considering the horrendous supply issues last gen, and how many people were ready to make an anatomical donation to land either card, I wouldn’t feel too terrible if I were a 3070 owner.
"That doesn't mean all 8GB graphics cards are now useless or obsolete, or that all graphics cards released in the last few years should have had more than 8GB of VRAM. Rather, we're seeing clear evidence that 8GB graphics cards are shifting towards the low-end, and therefore you can now consider 8GB of VRAM entry-level."
Also none of the games you mentioned were highlighted as having issues.
Again...
"To repeat ourselves, graphics cards with 8GB of VRAM are still very usable, but they are now on an entry-level capacity, especially when it comes to playing the latest and greatest AAA titles.
For multiplayer gamers, the RTX 3070 and other high-end 8GB graphics cards will continue to deliver the goods, as games like Warzone, Apex Legends, Fortnite and so on are typically played with competitive quality settings which heavily reduce VRAM consumption."
b3rdm4n
Posts: 180 +130
I've read it and watched it, I stand by my conclusion, but thanks for the reply!
Steve, you sort of proved Avro point by your reply, and reading it all in text really brings his point across.
What was his point? That he doesn't understand that if a product is 11% faster but costs 16% more it's not particularly good value? The reality is he's attacking one of the few content pieces that clearly highlighted the 8GB VRAM buffer as being an issue and then years later that same media outlet is the only one to investigate the issue. Talk about friendly fire.
No one in their right mind would argue that the RTX 3070 hasn't been the vastly superior choice for ray tracing over the past few years. But we are starting to see a shift now, as I accurately predicted 2 years ago.
The TechSpot article is also a summary of my opinion (edited by Julio) from the original video, and I feel the video was a bit more critical of the RTX 3070. In the video I basically said I'd buy the RX 6800 over the RTX 3070...
"I was quite impressed with the RX 6800 in my day one review and felt it would be my go to option for $600 US or less, and despite the few hiccups seen in this testing I’m mostly still leaning that way. That said there’s a lot to talk about and depending on your preferences one might be better than the other."
Guys like Avro are very disingenuous with their analysis because they are fanboys, just look at his comment history, he argues with anyone who says anything slightly negative about an AMD product but is more than happy to **** on Nvidia/Intel.
RDNA2 had its fair share of issues when first released, there were a number of serious driver issues.
Anyway I'm very pleased with how my conclusion has aged and I stand by everything I said in the video:
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Who wouldn't **** on Nvidia/Intel when they caused so much harm to the PC market. AMD would possibly have done the same if they had had their position, but Nvidia/Intel were the ones to do it.
I appreciate your channel most than most channels, but it could be good to reevaluate your conclusions about the 4070 and the RT DLSS vs RAM benefit.
BTW, interesting article. Thanks for the hard work.
That's the kind of crap the fan boys get into, we're not reviewing the company, we're reviewing the product. That said we certainly push back against anti-consumer behavior.
FROM MY REVIEW
"And while on the topic of VRAM, I’ll just quickly note that 12GB’s is now what we consider to be the bare minimum, so that is to say you shouldn’t purchase a graphics card with less than 12 GB’s, certainly not when spending over $200 US. It is our opinion that 8GB’s should be reserved only for the most entry-level gaming products, and anything less than 8 GB’s isn’t suitable for current generation gaming.
Really the RTX 4070 should have at least 16 GB’s of VRAM and the same is also true for the Ti model, more so in fact. That said I’m not saying the 12GB VRAM buffer is a deal breaker, rather I’m cautioning you that this is now the bare minimum moving forward and therefore this product might not age as well as those with 16GB’s or more VRAM."
What would you like me to re-evaluate? Again I mentioned the VRAM several times in my RTX 4070 review. I'm not sure what more you guys want from me? I've been on Nvidia's case about VRAM capacities for years now, and received a huge amount of flack for doing so, but I'm continuing to dig into it as the evidence mounts.
LetTheWookieWin
Posts: 157 +339
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the reply and all the great content you produce. I sincerely appreciate your methods and analysis, and have relied on your testing for many years now.
To be clear, I wasn’t insinuating your commentary in the article was misleading the masses, but I do think the impression that many readers will come away with (despite your very clear and repeated disclaimers as you fairly quoted) is that 8 GB cards like the 3070 have suddenly fallen off a cliff. Reading some of the other comments, I think it might have been interesting to include a few more titles in your charts (e.g., repeat a portion of your tests from your December 2020 article https://www.techspot.com/review/2174-geforce-rtx-3070-vs-radeon-rx-6800/ as a control group). This might have alleviated some of the critiques you received surrounding test selection and reinforced your written comments. Honestly, though, this is really picking nits and I still think this was an excellent article.
As to the point I was making: I was simply attempting to note that there are still many popular titles that are great on a card like the 3070, lest someone think their $700 card (crypto-inflated pricing!) needs to be replaced.
Thanks again, Steve, and please keep harping on VRAM capacity!
P.S. It would be interesting to see how the other 3070 competitor (6700 XT w/ 12 GB) compares in these newer titles. From my experience, it was a lot easier to find a 6700 XT than a 6800 last year at this time.
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Steve, don't let the fanboys get you down. Just keep putting actual data in and evaluating and reevaluating as we get new data. No human being can predict the future and nobody is always right, intelligent individuals use the info they have at hand and reevaluate over time. Stupid people make conclusions and then doggedly defend them, until they randomly switch if they switch.
I've put a few people on block on here for their fanboying and aggressive attacks. Tech is just a hobby for me and I have no allegiances.
Also I was actually curious if you were the same Steve as HardwareUnboxed, and I guess you are. I thought there was supposed to be an actual HUB site coming up, but I'm good with articles on Techspot. Prefer them over the videos although I'll occasionally check those out, as well as GamersNexus. Not a fan of MLID but I did see you guest on his, before I put his channel on ignore.
We need tech journalists that hold all these companies accountable. I have an AMD GPU and I am actually critical of them. Nvidia's prices and VRAM are dumb, but I think their product is still superior. Of course it depends on the specific product too, I would not buy an 8GB GPU today and even a 12 GB one I wouldn't pay more than $300 for. Maybe I'd pay $500 max for a 16 GB 4070.
I've put a few people on block on here for their fanboying and aggressive attacks. Tech is just a hobby for me and I have no allegiances.
Also I was actually curious if you were the same Steve as HardwareUnboxed, and I guess you are. I thought there was supposed to be an actual HUB site coming up, but I'm good with articles on Techspot. Prefer them over the videos although I'll occasionally check those out, as well as GamersNexus. Not a fan of MLID but I did see you guest on his, before I put his channel on ignore.
We need tech journalists that hold all these companies accountable. I have an AMD GPU and I am actually critical of them. Nvidia's prices and VRAM are dumb, but I think their product is still superior. Of course it depends on the specific product too, I would not buy an 8GB GPU today and even a 12 GB one I wouldn't pay more than $300 for. Maybe I'd pay $500 max for a 16 GB 4070.
So, Plague Tale Requiem (with RT off) Is one off the best if not the best looking game, much better than TLOU, godfall, Forspoken and all these amd sponsored games that look mediocre to average. Yet at 4k ultra I see it using between 4.5 and 6.3gb vram depending on the scene. 6.3 is the MAXIMUM. At 4k ultra. And somehow the conclusion out of all this is, that 8 gb of vram is not enough, because terribly optimized games like TLOU eat up 3 times that for worse visuals. Okay...
6700XT was the true counter for 3070.
6750XT was the counter for 3070 Ti.
It makes no sense to compare 3070 which launched at 499 to 6800 which launched at 579. 6800 was the better card to begin with and was priced in another pricerange for a reason.
3070 still beats 6700XT in 2023 in pretty much any game, outside of rushed and bugged console ports like TLOU maybe.
None of these cards were ever meant for 4K without DLSS/FSR.
Even 6900XT/6950XT and 3090/3090Ti feels dated for 4K gaming in 2023.
Thats what I am trying to say, they were never in the same bracket. It's like trying to compare a 3080 with a 6750XT. The 3080 will win with ease.
3070 was a 6700XT competitor, and both cards do well still in 1440p, the 3070 wins in pretty much all games.
Oh, certainly! If one takes TLOU as an example, the various graphics settings can be filtered into the following categories:
(Put it as a quote to stop it from making this post too long)
So there are a vast number of settings that one can mess about with. Arguably, though, it's far too many -- too many for the internal and out-sourced testing teams to reliably go through the various combinations of settings and PC configurations to ascertain the relevant performance impacts and visual quality changes.
It's simply about hitting publishing deadlines -- at the end of the day, it's a product that needs to be sold and given the hype around a lot of these new titles, the pressure to release on time is huge. I first learned of this first-hand many years ago, when I first started working for Futuremark (or MadOnion as it was back then): 3DMark2001 was released without being tested on any shader-capable graphics cards, because no company could provide one in time. The devs created the whole program using the Direct3D software renderer -- fortunately, it worked just fine.
It's not, unfortunately. The majority of large dev houses will significantly scale back the amount of resources allocated to a title, post-launch. In some cases, it'll just be a handful of staff who are responsible for creating patches, alongside the rest of their normal duties.
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