{"id":713,"date":"2014-10-01T18:41:19","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T18:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.velocitymicro.com\/blog\/?p=713"},"modified":"2018-06-27T20:05:32","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T20:05:32","slug":"video-card-ram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.velocitymicro.com\/blog\/video-card-ram\/","title":{"rendered":"What does Video Card RAM Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The amount of RAM featured on a certain GPU is typically the first spec listed when naming the card \u2013 <strong>4GB<\/strong> GeForce GTX 970, <strong>2GB<\/strong> GeForce GTX 750Ti for example \u2013 but what does video RAM (or vRAM) actually do? Is a card with 4GB of vRAM twice as powerful as one with 2GB? Does vRAM have real world applications to gaming? Workstation renderings?<\/p>\n<p>Basically, the more vRAM a card has, the more complex textures or 3D meshes it can load. The higher the resolution of the image you\u2019re attempting to render, the more vRAM required. If the texture and images you\u2019re attempting to run overload your GPU\u2019s vRAM, the overflow goes to system RAM, significantly impacting performance in a negative way. Basically, the video will still render, but frame rates will take a plunge. For this reason, higher vRAM is ESSENTIAL to <a title=\"4K Gaming \u2013 The Next Frontier\" href=\"\/blog\/4k-gaming-next-frontier\/\">high-level 4K gaming<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So twice the vRAM means twice the performance, right? Not exactly. While more vRAM is better than less, you will not see a direct performance boost from the additional spec unless you are already maxing out the vRAM that\u2019s available, usually from gaming at high resolutions with the visual options like anti-aliasing, FXAA, and texture quality turned up. If you game at moderate resolutions without the eye candy anyway, more vRAM will most likely not translate to better frame rates for you.<\/p>\n<p>In a similar way that vRAM positively impacts gaming performance, so it also does with workstation applications. More vRAM means the GPU can hold and ultimately render more complex images and textures on the graphics chip, resulting in faster performance. Again though, if you\u2019re not working with highly sophisticated 3D objects at extreme resolutions, you won\u2019t max out your GPU\u2019s vRAM and therefore won\u2019t see the performance benefits.<\/p>\n<p>So while vRAM is an important GPU spec, it\u2019s one of many. Make sure when you choose a new video card that you\u2019re taking all relevant specs into consideration in relation to your specific needs. As always, if you need assistance or advice, our <a href=\"\/contact-page.php\">sales and tech support teams<\/a> are here to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The amount of RAM featured on a certain GPU is typically the first spec listed when naming the card \u2013&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>What does Video Card RAM Do? | Velocity Micro Blog<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The amount of RAM featured on a certain GPU is typically the first spec listed when naming the card but what does video RAM (or vRAM) actually do?\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.velocitymicro.com\/blog\/video-card-ram\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What does Video Card RAM Do? 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