This is absolutely not a blanket recommendation to turn off HAGS. In fact, far from it. If you're using frame generation, for starters, you simply must have it enabled. Plus, on newer GPUs with ample VRAM, the trade-off simply doesn't exist in any meaningful way. But if you're using a 6GB or 8GB graphics card, and you're constantly brushing up against VRAM limits, it's worth questioning the default advice, because for you, HAGS isn't quite "free." With HAGS disabled on my 8GB VRAM GPU-powered PC, the system still felt good. Sure, the frame counter dipped slightly in certain scenes and areas, b
I turned off HAGS and gained back a gigabyte of VRAM with almost no FPS loss… When HAGS is enabled, the GPU reserves a chunk of its memory for scheduling tasks. Now, on higher-end cards with plenty of VRAM , this overhead proves to be rather negligible. On older cards, however, it can quietly eat into your available memory in a very real way. …
… Nvidia has fared significantly worse than AMD in terms of updating VRAM capacities over the years, but the graph has still gone upward for Team Green. If your old GPU has 8GB or 6GB of VRAM, you'll easily run out of GPU memory when raising graphics settings or increasing the resolution. …
… That's the most VRAM Nvidia has put on a consumer card, and the fastest memory bus they've ever shipped to gamers. On the small stuff, it's incredibly fast, and quantized 7B and 13B models run faster than I can read the output. Even a 30B model in 4-bit quantization sits in VRAM with room to spare. …
… GPU buyers often fixate on VRAM because it is one of the easiest specs to understand, but memory capacity alone does not tell you how powerful a card is. …
… Even at the reduced price since launch, it's still over twice the cost of a RTX 5090, but then again if you absolutely need the VRAM, it has no equal.
… If you're building from scratch, it's worth noting that you can pair one of these processors with a cheap X99 motherboard from a reputable recycler to gain quad-channel memory support too. …