![]() The short answer to our question then is that whether 2GB is enough VRAM is going to depend on the resolution and API used. For both Thief and BF4, the Mantle renderers in these games are far more at home with 3GB+ of VRAM, and ignoring the present issues with Mantle on Tonga (more on this later), 2GB just isn’t cutting it when Mantle is involved, which is something we’ve already seen on other 2GB cards such as the R9 270 series. The one global exception to this is in the case of Mantle, which throws a wrench in matters since it gives developers direct control over memory access. ![]() Otherwise if we drop down to 1920x1080, even with the aforementioned MSAA/SSAA, the 2GB R9 285 seems perfectly content. Even in those cases these signs are only occurring at 2560x1440 with MSAA and SSAA respectively, both of which tend to chew up memory to store the necessary anti-aliasing buffers. While we don’t have a 4GB card to use as a control at this time, of all of our benchmarks, the only Direct3D benchmarks that seem to show any signs of being impacted by 2GB of VRAM are Battlefield 4 and Thief. And to that end at least in our current benchmarks that’s generally not the case. The question in our minds then is this: is 2GB enough VRAM for a $250 video card? All things considered we’ll always take more VRAM there’s no performance penalty for having it, however there’s also no benefit to having it unless you can put it to good use. So depending on your starting point, 2GB of VRAM has been a standard of midrange cards for 2-3 years, which is about as long as we’d expect to go before we outgrow any given RAM capacity. In AMD’s ecosystem this has been the case informally since the 2GB 6950 fell to $250 in the middle of 2011, and formally since the 7850 launched with 2GB back in 2012. So a 2GB card is somewhat behind the times as far as cutting edge RAM goes, but it also means that such a card only has ¼ of the RAM capacity of the current-gen consoles, which is a potential problem for playing console ports on the PC (at least without sacrificing asset quality).įinally, midrange cards have been stuck at 2GB for some time now. The use of 4Gb chips would allow a standard 256 bit memory bus card to accommodate 4GB of VRAM, and in the Playstation 4’s case this is used in 16bit mode to give the console a full 8GB of VRAM. Despite R9 285 in most other ways being a lateral on R9 280 (including price), this is the one area where R9 285 is a clear downgrade compared to R9 280, losing 33% of its predecessor’s RAM capacity.īut second of all, midrange and high-end cards in general are in a bit of an odd spot due to the combination of a ready supply of 4Gb GDDR5 chips and the current-generation consoles. First and foremost, the R9 285 is a 2GB standard card that is replacing the 3GB standard R9 280. When it comes to VRAM capacity the R9 285 is in a particularly odd position for a few different reasons. Though not strictly a feature of R9 285 or Tonga, before diving into our benchmark breakdown we would like to spend a moment pondering VRAM capacity and how it impacts the R9 285. The 4GB Question, Mantle’s Teething Issues, & the Test
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