First-time PC builder: Do I need a 4GB GPU?

I'm building a gaming PC and I want it to be high-end. I'm well aware that PC hardware moves at a blistering pace so I'm not looking to 'future-proof' my build or anything. My limit on a GPU is ~£300-£330 right now.

I recently began looking into GPUs, and found a few options:

1. 2x Nvidia GeForce 650ti BOOST 2GB SLI - Seems both cheap and powerful, £280

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/19/nvidia-gtx-650-ti-boost-sli-omfg/

http://www.dabs.com/learn-more/components-and-storage/nvidia-gear-up-with-geforce-gtx-650-ti-boost-12285.html

2. 2x Nvidia GeForce 660 2GB SLI - A little more expensive, but more powerful, £320

http://www.dabs.com/learn-more/components-and-storage/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660---650-graphics-cards-11901.html

3. 1x Nvidia GeForce 670 4GB - Pretty damn expensive, but also serious potential for SLI in future, £360

http://www.dabs.com/products/evga-geforce-gtx-670-967mhz-4gb-pci-express-3-0-hdmi-superclocked--w-backplate-84GH.html

So there are my options. A close friend of mine who has already build a gaming PC and who works in IT recently told me that I should look into getting a >2GB card, because 2GB is becoming redundant. Is this true?

If anyone has any GPU reccomendations I'll gladly take them, I know nothing of the AMD equivalents.

If it's only £40 more, then you might as well...

EDIT: Oh I see that's the price for TWO of those things...

I don't think you'll see any major advantages for 4GB of onboard graphics memory. Not worth it.

Having said that, it depends on your monitor setup. If you plan on having a lot of high resolution monitors displaying your games, then it *might* be worth it. If, however, you're just planning on using this for outputting 1080p video then it's certainly not.

These days you generally only need more than 2 gb if you'll be heavily modding your games. However, with the new consoles having 8 gb it's really hard to say what WILL be needed.

I'd avoid SLI'ing mid-range cards and spring for a more powerful single card instead, as SLI support can be a fickle mistress.

It's not worthwhile trying to compare console specs to PC. For example, the 8GB memory you're referencing there is unified memory. That means it's shared by both CPU and GPU whereas onboard graphics card memory is for use exclusively by the GPU.

@kung_fu_viking: What do you think about getting 2x 660s over 2x 650ti boosts? I figured heat might be a bit of an issue with SLI? I have no idea. Help.

Well I'm no expert, but as killacam said, it's not a great idea to SLI mid-range cards; you won't get much out of it.

Again, the benfits of SLI are going to be largely down to your monitor setup. How many monitors are you wanting to output to and at what resolutions? Single screen 1080p (Or even a little higher) doesn't warrant SLI. Plus, as you said, you're not trying to future proof your machine. If you find you need the extra power from an SLI setup, you can easily buy another card and slot it in at a later date.

Also, yes, two powerful graphics cards will spit out a lot of heat and will take up a lot of space. Be sure to check your case specs for airflow issues and spacing issues before committing.

no. 2GB is fine for 1080P. any res larger than that like 1440p etc. you want 3GB or more. that is all.

Here's a comparison for the latest cards: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/19-Tom-s-Hardware-Index-C-Extreme,2977.html

I recently bought a HIS Radeon HD7970 GHz Edition IceQ X2, and that card will suffice for pretty much everything you can throw at it.

@kung_fu_viking: Yeah, but it is safe to assume that most of the memory will be used for high res textures, as game logic, sound and operating system are no memory hogs. Lets be generous and reserve 2gb for OS and game logic. That leaves us with 6gb for high res textures and geometry. My guess is that high res textures will be huge on the next gen consoles. Therefore additional memory in your graphics card can't hurt.

On the other hand it'll take some time till games are specifically developed for next gen. So currently a 2gb card should suffice, but the premium for 4gb is not so big. I myself settled with a 4gb 680 card, for about 25 euros more then the 2gb version.

Generally spending extra to future proof is an futile endeavor. Save the money on the 4 gig/SLI, get one good single GPU for what your needs are and save the extra money for a better/more power GPU when you need it down the road. If nothing else, reinvest that money into parts with better longevity like a sturdy case, good fans, mouse, keyboard, monitor, power supply, SSD etc... Always funny (and backwards) how people will constantly skimp on those essentials that have significant real life performance gains (longer shelf life, better ergonomics, superior picture quality etc..) to invest in minute and often unnoticeable theoretical performance gains with a top shelf CPU/GPU.

@jgf: Depends on the game, but you're right for the most part. High-fidelity animations can also be a massive memory hog, but you can't keep those in GPU memory.

You'd also hope that as textures get higher resolution, texture compression technology improves also.

It depends on the resolution you'll be running things at, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone needing 4 GB of GPU memory yet. Maybe if you are running at very high resolutions with very high fidelity textures. Also, I don't think you can fairly make a direct comparison to PC GPU memory and that of what consoles will have. They aren't designed in the same manner.

@kung_fu_viking: Yeah I'll be playing on a single 1080p monitor. It'll be a long time before 4k becomes commonplace so I think I'll be fine.

So you'd recommend the GTX 670? I suppose in time when a single-card doesn't suffice I could just slot in another at pretty low cost.

I'm not gonna recommend a specific card because I'm totally not up with the latest graphics card developments. All I can say is don't buy into SLI; get a more powerful single card and go for ~2GB unless you find an awesome deal for more Gigabytez. Also make sure it'll fit in the case and that you get a suitable PSU to power it or you'll run into all sorts of fun glitches and crashes.

@kung_fu_viking: Thanks for the advice duder. I had literally no idea what I was doing so you might well have saved my bacon.

This here ATI Radeon 7970 HD 3GB looks like a nice compromise. I'll have to do more research into ATI cards though first. Thanks again!

I hardly recommend you GTX 670. 4 GB won't effect so much. I'm using a 1.5 GB Graphic Cards and a 2 GB same on other PC. At least no much difference in games.

I'm running two 660s right now and that has been great so far. They scale really well and I haven't noticed any downsides other than heat and power consumption. I'd still recommend a more powerful single GPU if you can afford to spend all the money at once. I haven't had any problems with SLI, but I've heard about compatibility problems, and if you have a single GPU you don't have to worry. I started with a single 660 and it was fine for almost everything, but when I sold my old laptop I thought I'd splurge and go for SLI. I don't think having more than 2GB of memory will matter until winter next year or so when games developed from the ground up for next-gen consoles start coming out. Even then, I'm not convinced those things will be powerful enough to really take advantage of all that memory. Either way, that gives you at least a year and a half before you have to worry.

You would be buying the 670 for it's processing power, not for it's memory pool in this instance. 2 gigs is enough for any single screen at 1920 and bellow, things start to get a little more restrictive at 2560 but you can still get along fine for the most part (realistically you're going to run out of grunt before you run out of memory on a single gpu setup). Look at picking up the 2GB 670 instead of the 4GB.

The Radeon HD 7970 3GB seems like a great compromise.

Does anyone think getting the overclocked TOP version is worth £40? Or should just buy the ASUS standard and OC it myself?