DCS and VRAM

[Mordant]

Hello all, 

I'm sure this has asked before but a 5 minute fury of google searches and a quick question on Hoggits discord didn't answer my question, so I've come to the forums. I have been hunting for a new GPU to replace my poor life decision of a 1650 4gb. Heres the catch: I am confident I can get a 3060 or a 3060Ti and the main difference is VRAM. Unless theres another massive improvement on the 3060Ti over the 3060, the 3060 has more VRAM than the Ti. Would it be lucrative or even worth it to sacrifice some computing power for more VRAM? I'm not sure how VRAM saturated DCS can be because obviously I'm always pegged at 4gb regardless. In general I don't know what DCS uses the most of a graphics card.

 

Thanks for all your help!

 

Smooth skies,

Mordant

Edited November 18, 2021 by Mordant
wording

[Hiob]

6 minutes ago, Mordant said:

Hello all, 

I'm sure this has asked before but a 5 minute fury of google searches and a quick question on Hoggits discord didn't answer my question, so I've come to the forums. I have been hunting for a new GPU to replace my poor life decision of a 1650 4gb. Heres the catch: I am confident I can get a 3060 or a 3060Ti and the main difference is VRAM. Unless theres another massive improvement on the 3060Ti over the 3060, the 3060 has more VRAM than the Ti. Would it be lucrative or even worth it to sacrifice some computing power for more VRAM? I'm not sure how VRAM saturated DCS can be because obviously I'm always pegged at 4gb regardless. In general I don't know what DCS uses the most of a graphics card.

 

Thanks for all your help!

 

Smooth skies,

Mordant

 

DCS will run with 8 GB VRAM without issues. It will as well of course use 12GB if it can. If that has a bigger impact on performance than the higher computing power of the ti..... I doubt it.

The product policies of Nvidia are an annoyance these days. Back in the glory days of the 1080ti - it was a no-brainer to go for the ti-versions...

[Boosterdog]

I play only at 1080P and SP but I dont see my 1080's VRAM being used much above 5.5GB even in a module like the Hind or F14 with their "always on" twin cockpits.  Personally I wouldnt pay what retailers here in the UK are asking for either product but I've already got 8GB and, resultantly, a buffer so go me.

The TI is always going to be a moderately better performer in most games over the vanilla version. Ultimately, a few extra frames for more hard earned but with no apparaent downsides apart from its current retailing price that would make Turpin blush....

....would be my uneducated opinion. 

[edmuss]

Of the two go for the 3060ti, the 12gb of the 3060 is a red herring and the memory bus isn't big enough to utilise all of it. I understand that the ram configuration can come in 6 or 12gb for 192 bit bus and 6gb is not going to cut it these days so they went with 12gb.  The 3060ti and 370 have a 256 bit width bus which I guess runs on 8 or 16gb.   Accordingly the 3080, 3080ti and 3090 have wider busses that allow a larger minimum working amount of ram.

In VR my 1070 smashes 7.8gb vram if I turn all the textures up without an issue but doesn't seem to suffer for hitting the limit, I if turn textures down so I'm only using 6.8gb vram the framerate doesn't change just has more overhead.

Personally I would go (am going when I can grab an FE card) for the 3070 but a 3060ti would probably suffice in a pinch.  Because I mainly play in VR the extra horsepower isn't wasted.

[Mordant]

2 hours ago, edmuss said:

Of the two go for the 3060ti, the 12gb of the 3060 is a red herring and the memory bus isn't big enough to utilise all of it.

I had an inkling that was an issue, 3060 0, 3060Ti 1.
 

2 hours ago, edmuss said:

In VR my 1070 smashes 7.8gb vram if I turn all the textures up without an issue but doesn't seem to suffer for hitting the limit, I if turn textures down so I'm only using 6.8gb vram the framerate doesn't change just has more overhead.

I am a TrackIr guy so I shouldn't have as much of a penalty for graphics. Either way, 3060 0, 3060Ti 2

4 hours ago, Boosterdog said:

I play only at 1080P and SP but I dont see my 1080's VRAM being used much above 5.5GB even in a module like the Hind or F14 with their "always on" twin cockpits. 

I play on a 1440p 75hz monitor, so as long as its higher than 75fps its doing fine. I do play a lot of Multiplayer on GaW and other Hoggit servers so I should be ok. 3060 0, 3060Ti 3.

2 hours ago, edmuss said:

Personally I would go (am going when I can grab an FE card) for the 3070 but a 3060ti would probably suffice in a pinch.  Because I mainly play in VR the extra horsepower isn't wasted.

I would absolutely go with a 3070 if I could(and if my power supply wouldn't die). Right now my local Micro Center has decently priced cards on a raffle. Because my store is one of the least populated and I've already accidently won a raffle for the wrong card(big oops). 


In conclusion, thanks for all your help. I didn't know DCS wasn't as VRAM heavy. I completely understand the memory bus is too small, and that's kinda the dealbreaker here. If I can scrape a few more bucks up I'll grab a 3070 but from a 3060 vs. 3060Ti standpoint the Ti is the best choice for DCS(and other games).

Cheers!

Edited November 18, 2021 by Mordant

[edmuss]

At 1080p completely maxed out my 1070 gets 45ish fps on the a10c instant action missions, I'm not too sure how much vram is being used at that though. Also I don't know what fps I get with my VR settings @1080p but it would be very playable.

In comparison in VR I get 40-45fps I always run plane textures at high and as the reverb G2 is essentially a 4k device and I still get 40-45 fps with it sat just below the 8gb limit it'll run fine.

I dare for 1440p you might be able to get away with a 1070 if you need to save some pennies? That said over here they're going for almost 3060 money second hand

edit: with my vr settings in 1080p pancake mode I get 100fps pretty solid and 6.6ish gb vram used, with everything maxed out I get 45-50 fps as above and 7.8gb utilised, none of the shared gpu memory was used at all, exactly the same vram usage as in vr.  System is ryzen 3600 @ 4.4ghz, 1070, 32gb 3200mhz ram, windows and dcs on nvme pcie ssd.

Edited November 18, 2021 by edmuss

[104th_Money]

Go for the best you can afford, higher than the 3060TI if you can. I fly at 1440p, had a 1080TI and it had a some stutters here and there but more or less hit 60fps with trackir. Decided to go for the 2080TI when it came out and spent $1800 for it. Sold my 1080TI for $450 so upgrade cost was $1350. Now I hit solid 60 and stutters are virtually non existent except for Marianas map.

The upgrade provided maybe a 8-10% increase in performance which was not very cost effective in itself but the enjoyment increase was much higher in having DCS run so smoothly that it was worth the cost to me.

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by 104th_Money