Why does ns2 use so much vram?

Nordic

It is not a complaint, from me at least as I have 3gbs vram. I am just curious. I personally have seen myself use up to 1.5gbs vram at 1080p and have read of people using more. I am just curious as to what is filling up the vram.

YMICrazy

Textures. If you set them to medium and low it cuts back on the v ram a lot. So does texture streaming. Though I imagine you only need it if you get high frames but bad stuttering.

Nordic

I know the textures are are detail but are they really that much information on those textures to fill up 1.5gbs of vram.

IronHorse

No need to lower texture resolution to cut down on Vram..
Just enable texture streaming.. the maximum you'll use is around 300 MB typically.

Nordic

The vram is not a problem for me. I just did not thing the games textures use that much. Other games don't so I was wondering what it was.

IronHorse

Most other games have highly compressed art assets for consoles.
I am so grateful this game does not.
*off to try bioshock infinite and see how it's "raw art assets" look!*

ScardyBob

IronHorse wrote: »

Most other games have highly compressed art assets for consoles.
I am so grateful this game does not.
*off to try bioshock infinite and see how it's "raw art assets" look!*

Just need to convert all NS2 assets over to cel shading and it'll solve all our problems

Xao

9/10 people run this game on low just to get a slight FPS increase to stop from dipping below 40fps in fire fights, that's all the use raw art assets are here.

Super_Gorge

Xao wrote: »

9/10 people run this game on low just to get a slight FPS increase to stop from dipping below 40fps in fire fights, that's all the use raw art assets are here.

Pretty much.

I dunno about you, but I'd rather have better FPS then slightly better graphics.

Heck, I do this in TF2 as well. Get 120 to 150 FPS sometimes.

A_Pajander

Keeping texture quality on max is actually faster -- if you have the vram for it. At least that's usually the case, don't know why NS2 would be any different.

Nordic

Super_Gorge wrote: »

Xao wrote: »

9/10 people run this game on low just to get a slight FPS increase to stop from dipping below 40fps in fire fights, that's all the use raw art assets are here.

Pretty much.

I dunno about you, but I'd rather have better FPS then slightly better graphics.

Heck, I do this in TF2 as well. Get 120 to 150 FPS sometimes.

I hope you have a 120hz monitor or else that is pointless.

Ironsoul

Oh lawd someone brought up the refresh rate debate. Even if you can't see the higher framerate, you can feel it.

Wheeee

snaga wrote: »

Keeping texture quality on max is actually faster -- if you have the vram for it. At least that's usually the case, don't know why NS2 would be any different.

why is that?

Nordic

Wheeee wrote: »

snaga wrote: »

Keeping texture quality on max is actually faster -- if you have the vram for it. At least that's usually the case, don't know why NS2 would be any different.

why is that?

I would assume it is because of how a ram disk is faster than an ssd/hdd by a lot. Gddr5 ram is even faster than ddr3.

draktok

Solid state / ddr5vram master race

Locklear

Ironsoul wrote: »

Oh lawd someone brought up the refresh rate debate. Even if you can't see the higher framerate, you can feel it.

Exactly.

Ghosthree3

YMICrazy502 wrote: »

Textures. If you set them to medium and low it cuts back on the v ram a lot. So does texture streaming. Though I imagine you only need it if you get high frames but bad stuttering.

Hm, maybe that's why I stutter like a bitch sometimes while averaging 90fps in some areas. Isn't consistent though, generally doesn't happen. I'd enable texture streaming but last time I did that I got a lot of crashes at random mid game.

A_Pajander

Wheeee wrote: »

snaga wrote: »

Keeping texture quality on max is actually faster -- if you have the vram for it. At least that's usually the case, don't know why NS2 would be any different.

why is that?

Size vs. speed trade-off. You can compress the textures so they will take up less vram, but compressing requires computational power. Well it might be more complicated than that, I dunno. Might be I'm way off. But usually you don't really see a drop in framerates with high textures if you have enough vram for them.

|strofix|

Ironsoul wrote: »

Oh lawd someone brought up the refresh rate debate. Even if you can't see the higher framerate, you can feel it.

Your only senses are sight and sound. How does that work?

Nordic

I know I brought it up... But this is not really the thread for this fps/hz discussion.

CrazyEddie

|strofix| wrote: »

Ironsoul wrote: »

Oh lawd someone brought up the refresh rate debate. Even if you can't see the higher framerate, you can feel it.

Your only senses are sight and sound. How does that work?

Electromagnetic stimulation of the neural cortex.

Ironsoul

I would continue the discussion about senses, check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense#Kinesthetic_sense

Anyway, one reason ns2 uses so much VRAM is because on high texture setting, I think natural selection 2 uses 4096x4096 resolution textures. A source engine game such as half life 2, uses 512x512 resolution textures. Crysis 1 (cryengine 2) uses 2048x2048 textures(I think). RAGE, when forced to 16384x16384 resolution textures uses about 2.6GB of VRAM (still looks blurry, howd they manage that?).

So part of the main reason for NS2 using a lot of VRAM is the fact it has very high resolution textures, for everything. Don't forget VRAM is also used to store stuff such as the position of vertices and vectors and a z buffer for rendering and a lot of other stuff not directly related to rendering, it all goes into the VRAM as that's the fastest place to access it when rendering stuff. So considering the high resolutions of 1920x1080, the high texture resolution of 4096x4096 per texture, all the other rendering information for lights, occlusion culling, ambient occlusion etc, the real question should be, WHY DOES NS2 USE SO LITTLE VRAM?

Add: How the heck is this spam?