Question Less system RAM than GPU VRAM

[Cr4zyJoe]

Hi,

Quick question. I was wondering if having less system RAM than GPU memory is an issue or not, or if it matters at all ?

Let's say I have 8GB of RAM and I want to put a GPU with 11GB of VRAM. Will it perform as its best or more RAM is required for any reason ?

Thanks.

 

[Qasper77]

First of all the question you should be asking is, "having less physical RAM than GPU v-ram an issue or not"? because if a nerd like me shows up he would't understand a thing in the first place.
Secondly, it would best if a balance is kept between the two. More ram means better memory usage and dynamic memory allocation. So, more will give you a lag free gaming experience. It should not create any issues even if you have 8gb ram since its enough to play most AAA games at 1080p high preset

 

[Cr4zyJoe]

First of all the question you should be asking is, "having less physical RAM than GPU v-ram an issue or not"? because if a nerd like me shows up he would't understand a thing in the first place.
Secondly, it would best if a balance is kept between the two. More ram means better memory usage and dynamic memory allocation. So, more will give you a lag free gaming experience. It should not create any issues even if you have 8gb ram since its enough to play most AAA games at 1080p high preset

Thanks for your answer. You got the question right 😀

Actually, I don't know if data loaded in GPU V-RAM must go through RAM in a first place and, if it the case, the GPU could not load data as fast as possible if bottle-necked by a lack of RAM compared to the GPU V-RAM and thus affects the GPU overall performances.

 

[Oussebon]

First of all the question you should be asking is, "having less physical RAM than GPU v-ram an issue or not"? because if a nerd like me shows up he would't understand a thing in the first place.

But clearly a 'nerd like [you]' did understand the question though.

Also, not hyphenating VRAM is totally fine. In fact VRAM is far, far more common and seems to be the correct one of the two; AMD themselves even refer to VRAM as VRAM.

Quick question. I was wondering if having less system RAM than GPU memory is an issue or not, or if it matters at all ?

Let's say I have 8GB of RAM and I want to put a GPU with 11GB of VRAM. Will it perform as its best or more RAM is required for any reason ?

These are probably 2 different questions.

The first, the theoretical one about whether it can ever matter having more VRAM than RAM, probably isn't so much about having less RAM than VRAM as much as whether you have enough of both for the particular workload you're ask the PC to do.

As for the second question - the specific one about 8gb RAM with 11gb VRAM - for gaming you want 16gb RAM in a system with an RTX 2080 ti.

If you are looking at speccing a system, what is your full prospective spec, your budget, the country you are shopping in, and what monitor will you be gaming on? Also, any uses other than gaming?

 

[Cr4zyJoe]

But clearly a 'nerd like [you]' did understand the question though.

Also, not hyphenating VRAM is totally fine. In fact VRAM is far, far more common and seems to be the correct one of the two; AMD themselves even refer to VRAM as VRAM.



These are probably 2 different questions.

The first, the theoretical one about whether it can ever matter having more VRAM than RAM, probably isn't so much about having less RAM than VRAM as much as whether you have enough of both for the particular workload you're ask the PC to do.

As for the second question - the specific one about 8gb RAM with 11gb VRAM - for gaming you want 16gb RAM in a system with an RTX 2080 ti.

If you are looking at speccing a system, what is your full prospective spec, your budget, the country you are shopping in, and what monitor will you be gaming on? Also, any uses other than gaming?

Actually, I'm prepping my rig for the new NVIDIA GPUs. I'll definitely have 16GB of RAM. But then, I'm wondering if I'll buy the new GPU coming with 20GB of V-RAM if rumors are to be true of course, or with 10GB if enough. I didn't plan going higher than 16GB of RAM in a first place.

I'm using my PC essentially for gaming.

 

[Oussebon]

The simplest answer is to wait and see I suppose.

But as far as I know, if anything, the opposite would be true. i.e. having insufficient VRAM could benefit (relatively marginally) from having more RAM. I suppose because some textures might get put into RAM rather than VRAM - and RAM is slower than VRAM, so you take a performance hit with that. There are apparently instances where, say, having a GTX 1060 3gb might run less choppily on 16gb RAM than on 8gb RAM, whereas you see less of a difference between 8gb and 16gb RAM with a GTX 1060 6gb. See:

RAM Matters: How Much Do You Need for Gaming? 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB

The Benchmarks & Putting It All Together. Measuring the impact that RAM capacity has on gaming is harder than it sounds because of all the factors at play. However we've tested different hardware configurations...

www.techspot.com

But the best solution would be to have sufficient VRAM (or to intelligently manage your settings) in the first place.

It doesn't seem having lots of VRAM requires you to DOWNLOAD MOAR RAM!?. Apparently there was a myth to that effect (explored a bit here), but as with many PC myths it's rubbish. At least as far as gaming goes.

You shouldn't need to worry about your RAM quantity.

 

[Cr4zyJoe]

The simplest answer is to wait and see I suppose.

But as far as I know, if anything, the opposite would be true. i.e. having insufficient VRAM could benefit (relatively marginally) from having more RAM. I suppose because some textures might get put into RAM rather than VRAM - and RAM is slower than VRAM, so you take a performance hit with that. There are apparently instances where, say, having a GTX 1060 3gb might run less choppily on 16gb RAM than on 8gb RAM, whereas you see less of a difference between 8gb and 16gb RAM with a GTX 1060 6gb. See:

RAM Matters: How Much Do You Need for Gaming? 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB

The Benchmarks & Putting It All Together. Measuring the impact that RAM capacity has on gaming is harder than it sounds because of all the factors at play. However we've tested different hardware configurations...

www.techspot.com

But the best solution would be to have sufficient VRAM (or to intelligently manage your settings) in the first place.

It doesn't seem having lots of VRAM requires you to DOWNLOAD MOAR RAM!?. Apparently there was a myth to that effect (explored a bit here), but as with many PC myths it's rubbish. At least as far as gaming goes.

You shouldn't need to worry about your RAM quantity.

Thanks for your input on this. I've read some posts here and there, but these are more a PC myth like you said than tangible proofs.
But , hey, can't be too careful when you plan to put a fair amount of money in a new PC component.

 

[Oussebon]

Yeah, the proof is the total opposite.