Should I buy a cheap gpu with 4gb vram?

[dreadflopp]

A question. Should i buy a new graphics card? I have a decent rig i think. 8 gb ram. Sandy bridge 2500k overclocked to 4,4 ghz. SSD. The problem with my rig is vram. I have an nvidia 570 gt 1280 mb card which cost about 250-300 euro. This card is good i think but lacks in vram to play skyrim with high res mods. With other games its fine. I have seen new cards, gt 630 for example, for about 70 euro. These cards have 4 gb vram and should be great (?) for skyrim but my current card outperforms gt 630 in bechmarks (https://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GT+630/review#). What would you have done? Buy a new one? Can you run a rig with 2 cards and swith to the one with more vram when youre going to play skyrim? Whats the downside of the cheaper card? 

[Besidilo]

The simple answer is: no. It's not how GPUs work. They don't share video memory.

 

There's no reason why 1.25GB VRAM would not be enough to play Skyrim with High-Resolution mods at 1920x1080. Just optimize the textures after installing the mods, use lighter forms of AA (e.g. SMAA instead of MSAA), and choose Lite or 1024K versions of large texture mods.

[dreadflopp]

Yeah I know I can't use them both at the same time. Was thinking about only using the cheap one to be able to use higher resolution mods. Does AA really use vram? But performance-wise maybe it's not worth it.

[Besidilo]

More VRAM only gives you a higher buffer. It won't magically improve the card's rendering capability, therefore you will be throttled by the low processing power of the GT 630.

 

So not worth it at all.

[dreadflopp]

Ok. I'll stick with my card then. Thank you for your help!

[Vypir]

Yes, AA uses a lot of VRAM. MSAA, for example. However, post-process AA like SMAA and FXAA do not use nearly as much VRAM. If you can tolerate the texture "shimmering," one of those can help reduce the stuttering associated with low VRAM.

[dreadflopp]

Ok I'll try that. To use SMAA I have to use ENB right? Any suggestion? I use RCRN pure now. I like dark nights and dark dungeons (sounds like a creepy contact ad lol). I don't like too saturated colours. North should be a little bleach.

 

 

 

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[Neovalen]

SMAA is not compatible with RCRN. So you'll have to use FXAA or MSAA.

[dreadflopp]

Ok. Figured I'd try ENB instead of RCRN to be able to use SMAA and wanted something a bit like RCRN pure in regards of colour and darkness, specially dungeons. Nights/inns don't have to be that dark. Tried vibrant ENB before which was too saturated for me. Have had problems with faces being totally unaffected by light sources and thus being dark even though the affected NPC was carrying a torch. Also noticed that when a group of maybe 10 NPC all were carrying torches the light was almost blinding. I'm guessing this is bugs in RCRN therefore I wanted to try something else.

[Neovalen]

Yeah blinding light was definitely the RCRN bug that killed it for me... I'm hoping 3.5 won't have the issue and it might become usable in my eyes.

As for ENBs, there are so many options I haven't found one that I am totally happy with just yet. Even after trying 10 or more.

[dreadflopp]

:-) guess I'll try some myself and maybe wait for next step to see what it suggests. And check that ENB comparison thread.

[LeetMiniWheat]

Try disabling aero/desktop composition to save about 100MB VRAM too.

 

And I would definitely not trade a 570 for a 630, you wouldn't have the GPU power to render high-res stuff even though you had the VRAM. I would carefully mix 1024 with 2048 res mods for 1.25GB, or go all 1024.

[dreadflopp]

I'm using windows 8 which doesn't have aero I believe. Will definitely look into ways of freeing up vram in the os though. When mixing 1k and 2k mods, which ones you think I should have in higher resolution? Landscape, trees/fauna, buildings, bodies, faces, armors/clothing, weapons, effects.

Feels like, to me, armors, weapons, faces and landscape should be prioritized.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[LeetMiniWheat]

Pretty sure it has to have some kind of desktop composition. Try this if the options exist:

 

[dreadflopp]

Prioritized meaning having higher resolution. On the other hand, it's always outside of towns that the game lags for me so lower landscape resolution would probably be a good idea performance wise. What about installing landscape mods, resize/optimize textures to 1k and then install the rest and shrink to 2k.

 

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[dreadflopp]

Will try that. Thanks!

 

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2