If you want to throw alot of money at a good upgrade for a computer, I'm talking top of the line, 4gb these days is a no brainer.
There are several boards, if you google, of people reporting Skyrim and BF3 breaking 2gb running on ultra with 1920 x 1200 monitors +.

I'm throwing alot of money down on my build and I dont plan on upgrading a card for a good 4 years or so. I had my radeon for 4 years, it's having trouble running things now, but i bought the top of the line version at the time, and it's still paying off because i didnt have to upgrade. I plan on doing the same here, getting my monies worth, or 100% Future proofing. I "know" 4gb will last me. Games in 4 years i pray don't break 4gb til I get there, but a 4gb card has a better chance of surviving the years than 2gb.

I can also tell that the same individuals get it beat in their head that 2gb, or the lowest standard vram at the time, is ok. 1gb was the norm when I bought my going on 4 years ago... look at the reqs now, alot of games break 1gb if you want the full experience. Thats what gaming is about enjoying the full experience, immerse yourself, attention to detail.

Appreciate the biased position, but lets get an Asus Rep in here to answer our question!

Sonofol wrote:
There are several boards, if you google, of people reporting Skyrim and BF3 breaking 2gb running on ultra with 1920 x 1200 monitors +.
[...]
Appreciate the biased position, but lets get an Asus Rep in here to answer our question!

I _did_ do a search on Google; that's how I found comparison of real world performance between the two memory sizes and no practical difference. Did those same people you found actually try both a 2 & 4GB card and see a significant performance difference?

What I'm saying isn't due to an ASUS bias. Buy a 2GB card from another brand if you like. I seriously question the need for 4GB on any brand except for cases when a larger than average number of pixels needs to be pushed with a lot of AA (as I mentioned before).

And I will add that planning a 4 year refresh cycle is doing yourself a disservice. You would be better off spending half the money on mid-range solutions and refreshing twice as often. Too much changes in 4 years. Sure you might have the memory to buffer the big titles 4 years from now but you won't have the rendering power. 4 years ago the equivalent of the 680 was the 280. Do you know anyone who is still running today's games on high settings on a 280?

Also, I was trying to give you some kind of answer that might help a buying decision. After being here for several years I can tell you that ASUS is not in the habit of commenting on unreleased hardware. If you are waiting for someone to pop in here and confirm or deny a 4GB version before the rest of the world knows then I think you'll be waiting a long time.

I will go buy another brand. I was just wondering if the TOP version was going to have a 4gb variant; too bad it won't. I do have a buddy running two gtx 280 2gb's and he's currently doing fine on games; actually much better than my 3870 x2's setup. VRAM has a huge role in this (nvidia drivers too prob). I understand the rendering power issue, but in my case VRAM is the main limiting factor in my ability to play games at this time. Thanks a ton for your replies.

On another note: I understand we forum goers aren't as significant as a tech news site; It is marketing after all. I'm simply asking a question about a variant of a product. Not asking to be "first in the world" to know. Just if the "idea" of production is on the table. At the very least it would spark interest. Product questions, like the one on this board, need to be asked to create demand so that ASUS gets the motivation to make the product, right? I'm simply throwing my penny in the jar.

Sonofol wrote:
Product questions, like the one on this board, need to be asked to create demand so that ASUS gets the motivation to make the product, right? I'm simply throwing my penny in the jar.

Absolutely! I think people should definitely speak their minds and a lot of requests for something might very well get attention. It would be really cool if ASUS found the next great idea right here.

I just see too often that other forum members attempt to help someone and are brushed off (sometimes rudely, sometimes not) because they don't work for ASUS. This isn't a conduit to the ASUS master brain so not everyone is going to get a reply from an ASUS employee, and those that do can consider themselves lucky. We do have some ASUS people around when they have time but given that this is a user-to-user forum people need to realize that most likely it's other users who will be reading posts and replying to them.

I agree, I'm currently an owner of dual 680 DC2Top cards, and the primary issue I currently have with them is the VRAM, I run at 2560x1440 and on several games I see the VRAM usage capping out with full AA settings on. If there were 4GB cards release, even if they were $100-200 more, I think it would have been worth the price and I would have definitely gotten those instead for the future proofing, as well as the possibilty of a super high resolution, 12 megapixel surround setup. If I do end up upgrading to that surround monitor setup I would have to switch to EVGA cards for the option of 4Gig cards now, which I didn't want to do because I've been a long time asus user.