ASUS GTX1060 Strix Review

[AlienALX]

Games of course will use more than 4GB memory over time. It's naive to think they won't.

That all depends. Vulkan and DX12 are supposed to lower that, which was probably why AMD foolishly thought it was enough.

The here and now, 4GB appears to be just about enough.

It isn't.

If it were I would still be using a Fury X.

 

[SPS]

That all depends. Vulkan and DX12 are supposed to lower that, which was probably why AMD foolishly thought it was enough.

Why would VK or DX12 lower memory usage?

 

[Kaapstad]

My 1060 Strix on the Time Spy bench.

Score 5210

1060(1x) @2152/2400

6950X @4.4

Graphics Score 4732

CPU Score 12207

http://www.3dmark.com/spy/110056

 

[NeverBackDown]

It isn't.

If it were I would still be using a Fury X.

It is enough. I know because I also used a Fury X at 1440p for many games and NEVER ran into a vram issue. And that's inlcuding SoM with the insane 6GB texture requirement(capped at 3.8-.9 but windows never gave me a memory notification and performance never tanked). Heck i'm using an old 280x atm and with 3GB at 1440p only one game has used to much memory out of all the games I have played. And it still does damn well even in that game FPS wise. 3GB is the new minimum, anything above is just a bonus.

 

[SPS]

It is enough. I know because I also used a Fury X at 1440p for many games and NEVER ran into a vram issue. And that's inlcuding SoM with the insane 6GB texture requirement(capped at 3.8-.9 but windows never gave me a memory notification and performance never tanked). Heck i'm using an old 280x atm and with 3GB at 1440p only one game has used to much memory out of all the games I have played. And it still does damn well even in that game FPS wise. 3GB is the new minimum, anything above is just a bonus.

You wouldn't get a Windows notification. A game will handle not being able to allocate all the VRAM it wants.
The chances are you might not even know you're VRAM bound if the game handles it well enough.

 

[AlienALX]

It is enough. I know because I also used a Fury X at 1440p for many games and NEVER ran into a vram issue. And that's inlcuding SoM with the insane 6GB texture requirement(capped at 3.8-.9 but windows never gave me a memory notification and performance never tanked). Heck i'm using an old 280x atm and with 3GB at 1440p only one game has used to much memory out of all the games I have played. And it still does damn well even in that game FPS wise. 3GB is the new minimum, anything above is just a bonus.

OK try loading up BLOPS III and accessing the extra settings.When you find you can't hack the INI to enable them any way and then try and play the game. Or, load up ROTTR and set everything as high as you can and watch what happens. Then of course there is Doom. No nightmare settings etc.

4gb is not enough for 1440p, let alone 4k. It's bad enough at 1440p it's a joke at 4k.

You wouldn't get a Windows notification. A game will handle not being able to allocate all the VRAM it wants.
The chances are you might not even know you're VRAM bound if the game handles it well enough.

Nothing happens when you run out of VRAM such as warnings, messages ETC. The game either black screens (with sound still running, as in BLOPS III) or reboots your PC. Or, and I'm not sure if this is "worse" or not but with ROTTR the PC simply grinds to a halt, loops the sound and then stays like that for a minute or so before crawling on before it comes to a stop again.

There are no measures in place to stop that happening and no "pools" of RAM or anything else the PC can call from. It simply grinds to a halt or crashes.

That's why they now employ sniffers into their games that simply sniff out your VRAM and then show/don't show settings that your rig is capable of. And, disabling menu settings and options does not count as "Enough VRAM" IMO it just says that you don't have enough.

Nvidia tried a method called "Texture Streaming" in BF3. It used the paging file on your hard drive or SSD. It was awful, input lag was absolutely atrocious. I would imagine that's why they then started offering cards with enough VRAM, rather than trying to find a cheaper solution.

 

[NeverBackDown]

You wouldn't get a Windows notification. A game will handle not being able to allocate all the VRAM it wants.
The chances are you might not even know you're VRAM bound if the game handles it well enough.

I've gotten them before when my vram was nearly maxed out and my system memory still had 10-11GB available. If it wasn't vram idk what it was.

OK try loading up BLOPS III and accessing the extra settings.When you find you can't hack the INI to enable them any way and then try and play the game. Or, load up ROTTR and set everything as high as you can and watch what happens. Then of course there is Doom. No nightmare settings etc.

4gb is not enough for 1440p, let alone 4k. It's bad enough at 1440p it's a joke at 4k.

BLOPS III.. oh how i knew you would mention that game. It's terribly optimized, full of memory leaks and that is why you get insane vram consumption. It does not handle it well. ROTTR is debatable. Sure it uses all of it but you won't be bound to it, it handles it well and in addition turn off AA, you don't need it at 1440p anyway. Doom is a game i don't play, looks awfully dull and tbh is a cash grab imo more than anything. And the difference between ultra and nightmare is probably little, no sense in a performance hit if no IQ is even noticeable, or keep nightmare and turn AA off. Problem is probably going to be solved.

I never mentioned 4k. 4GB is enough. Like I said, i'm using 3GB right now in all my games at 1440p and i'm doing more than fine. Excluding TWW, not had any game use all 3GB of my available vram. And with TWW, using the 4GB i was using before, didn't have an issue and the game did not turn down my settings automatically to lower it's vram usage.

 

[AlienALX]

So what you are basically saying is that if you sacrifice settings it's enough. Turn off AA, reduce the detail from the max down a peg like AMD tell you do on their website and everything will be OK.

But it isn't, is it? you are sacrificing detail. You are turning things off. At this level of the market that's not acceptable, not at 1440p because Nvidia make a product (980ti) that does not come with those sacrifices.

I note you didn't do what I suggested with BLOPS III. It's not down to bugs either, once you have enough VRAM it does not happen and now at this point in time the game has been patched up to fix the early issues and runs like butter on my Titan X.

Then you go on to say "Doom is a game I don't play". That's fair enough, but the Fury X doesn't have enough VRAM for that either.

You can't even access Nightmare dude. As I said, a lot of the reason why you probably think 4gb is enough is because you obviously don't realise that certain games sniff out the VRAM and hobble themselves due to the lack of it.

With the Fury priced at around £300 here in the UK and the 980ti going for £340 or so you'd be absolutely crazy to buy a Fury card of any sort. They're crap at low resolutions too (I should know I have benched mine at 1080p and it was barely any better than a 390).

 

[NeverBackDown]

So what you are basically saying is that if you sacrifice settings it's enough. Turn off AA, reduce the detail from the max down a peg like AMD tell you do on their website and everything will be OK.

But it isn't, is it? you are sacrificing detail. You are turning things off. At this level of the market that's not acceptable, not at 1440p because Nvidia make a product (980ti) that does not come with those sacrifices.

I note you didn't do what I suggested with BLOPS III. It's not down to bugs either, once you have enough VRAM it does not happen and now at this point in time the game has been patched up to fix the early issues and runs like butter on my Titan X.

Then you go on to say "Doom is a game I don't play". That's fair enough, but the Fury X doesn't have enough VRAM for that either.

You can't even access Nightmare dude. As I said, a lot of the reason why you probably think 4gb is enough is because you obviously don't realise that certain games sniff out the VRAM and hobble themselves due to the lack of it.

With the Fury priced at around £300 here in the UK and the 980ti going for £340 or so you'd be absolutely crazy to buy a Fury card of any sort. They're crap at low resolutions too (I should know I have benched mine at 1080p and it was barely any better than a 390).

I said turn down AA. You don't notice it anyways at 1440p. That'll lower vram consumption greatly. It's really not a big deal like you claim so. 4GB is enough. Disagree all you want, but i've never ran into an issue with my fury x at 1440p. And with 3GB i'm not really running into any still bar one game.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

While I don't play BOIII, I have a Fury at 1440p and I have not noticed any issues with VRAM. The GPU hits its max limit before it hits the VRAM limit.