How Much RAM Does Your Graphics Card Really Need?

[Wildside]

How Much RAM Does Your Graphics Card Really Need? : Introduction - Review Tom's Hardware

An interesting analysis about whether the extra RAM is really needed. Benchmarks are done to show evidence that the extra RAM isnt really needed unless ur going to be using the highest quality settings like AA and AF. Read about it and let me know what you guys think.

 

[gurusan]

Who doesn't use AA and AF though? I can't stand playing without AA, and 16xAF is always a given!

Also 1 thing that those benchmarks don't show is VRAM swapping. When playing CoD4 at 2048x1152 with 2xAA on my 4850 512mb I would get occasional stutters when the buffer was used up, very few and tolerable, but annoying to me.

Interesting article though, and I do believe 2gb is pointless when gaming below 2560x1600

 

[Wildside]

I dont n cant use AA because my card cannot handle it well. Left 4 Dead is different because it's using MSAA. The Source engine is the most friendliest graphics engine to my graphics card. That is the only game i can do AF n AA n still get 60 fps .

 

[gurusan]

ah yes the 38xx series didn't do so well with AA...time for you to upgrade to a 58xx

The 4890 is loaaads faster than when I had 3870 CF so going to a 5850 or 5870 will be a massive jump. Or you could do 5770 CF

 

[Wildside]

ah yes the 38xx series didn't do so well with AA...time for you to upgrade to a 58xx

The 4890 is loaaads faster than when I had 3870 CF so going to a 5850 or 5870 will be a massive jump. Or you could do 5770 CF

i plan on upgrading next summer when prices drop. Cant buy expensive stuff like right now.

EDIT:

HD 5870 x2 or an HD 5890 if there is going to be one.

 

[yzmxer608]

Was a pretty good read. I have a gpu with 512MB vram, I only know for sure one game that it is limited by (Mx Simulator, you can change the ground texture resolution, which also is a bigger factor depending on how large of a base texture the track uses, some tracks go as high as 4096x4096 for the "base").

Other than that I don't know if the vram is holding me back for other games. If only it was as simple as adding a stick of ddrx to your gpu...

 

[gurusan]

Well 1GB is basically standard now so I think the VRAM issue is a thing of the past.

 

[aaronkupen]

Well 1GB is basically standard now so I think the VRAM issue is a thing of the past.

I would hardly call 1 GB of ram the standard on all video cards nowadays...

 

[gurusan]

It is now...even the midrange/lowend cards have 1GB (5770, 5750)

 

[aaronkupen]

So you are using two cards that don't exist on the market yet to say that 1GB is standard... Also, you are using a 57xx card to try to prove a point that if this has 1GB of ram and is low end (that's wrong statement anyway) that 1 GB means its a standard?

My question to you is, do you live on earth sir?