The advantage...

[76BigDeac]

Ok guys, I have been reading around these forums for a long time and I have been noticing lately that people that are running 3 ohh I would say 24" or bigger monitors are noticing that their video cards are running out of memory. Unless of course you are running 3 video cards. I was just going to let people elaborate on the advantages of getting a 3 gig GTX580 and why more companies are not making the main stream GTX580's 3 gig. Is it money? or what? Thanks for the discussion.

[BrightCandle]

Seems to be a cost thing and partly to do with power consumption. If you don't need the memory except in 3 way gaming then why make the majority of reviews show up your cards power/performance.

The 5970 only had 1GB per GPU to save cost and its proved to be a crippling choice a year later, it can regularly struggle to survive 5760x1200 on modern games even with dramatic reductions in graphics quality. 2GB seems to be the necessary amount of RAM on the GPU to work well enough in most games.

[1ke]

The answer above is very agreeable. I would like to add a bit more too. It costs money to design non-reference cards (R&D). Also, the segment of the market for ultra-high-end graphics is a lot smaller, and the fabrication of those cards will not meet the same economy of scale as the other cards which will raise costs. The most obvious point that hasn't been made is that high density RAM is expensive.

As for performance, I think its a sham unless you are doing multiple monitors for Nvidia surround, but then you already have 3gb from having 2 cards. So really its just a sham, performance difference is negligible and within the margin of error if I remember the reviews correctly.

[M31]

Supply and demand or demand and supply.

I'm on the three monitor upgrade path just now and never realised having 2 x GTX 570's would not double my VRAM for usage ... we live and learn ... at the end of the day I've still got 1280 VRAM to play with, but its ATI who are leading again in this area with sensible 2GB solution cards for those that want them and don't cost the earth either.

I'm guessing I'll be fine though, folk managed with 256mb cards for flight sim triple screen long before I considered this as my pet project just now

[76BigDeac]

I see where you guys are coming from, and going with this. As both of you said, and what I have found the main reasoning for GPU manufactures producing "low" persay memory cards comes down to coast. The demand for cards with large amounts of memory is not there. So it is reasonable to me that they would not push it.

One question I have been thinking about is would it be reasonable to say that running 3 cards with 1-1,5 GIG of GPU RAM is a waste of money and power consumption when you could just get 2 3 GIG GPU RAM cards? I know that it would give better performance with 3 cards but it seems that most people are having to run 3 cards just to have enough memory to push surround gaming scenarios.

Thanks for the input.

[M31]

As for performance, I think its a sham unless you are doing multiple monitors for Nvidia surround, but then you already have 3gb from having 2 cards. So really its just a sham, performance difference is negligible and within the margin of error if I remember the reviews correctly.

Apparently not ... I've just bought a second GTX 570 SC 1280 MB card (almost 1.3 GB each) and in SLI that I understand you need in wide screen gaming according to the Widescreen Gaming Forums site ... the two cards VRAM does not double up for my proposed 3 x 1920 x 1200 LCD's resolution of 5760 x 1200 ... I could go three GTX 570's for one LCD each, but that's another story.

I'm willing to be proved wrong by this BTW, posted in this sub category about my new SLI set up for three screens.

Cheers.

[1ke]

Here is your answer

The guy is using 3 3GB Palit GTX580s in three-way SLI. The VRAM never goes above 3 GB. That being said, it does get a little high on some games. You can formulate your own opinion but I would rather spend less now rather than buy the high end and be "future proof" until the next generation of cards comes out.
If Nvidia is correct in their estimates on Fermi architecture's scalability, it will continue to stomp the previous generation by considerable margins.

[Ket]

I wouldn't say the demand for cards with a lot of vRAM isn't there. Its more because it hasn't been pushed into the mainstream the demand isn't there. If a 2GB GTX460/560 wasn't so stupidly expensive just for a extra 1GB vRAM I would of bought one some time ago.

[luke997]

3GB is useful on 3 screens, 6000x1080 (5760 + BC) especially in 3D is memory hungry, check out some of my benchmarks:

Settings: Maximum
AA: 8x
Resolution: 6000x1080
Stereo 3D

F1 2010
Average: 39
VRAM Usage: 2600

Dirt 2
Average: 53
VRAM Usage: 2200