looking at buying a new graphics card to go on my 20" widescreen monitor.
whats best to go with, 256mb ram or 512mb??
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looking at buying a new graphics card to go on my 20" widescreen monitor.
whats best to go with, 256mb ram or 512mb??
What sort or applications do you run?
Do you play games, and if so what sort?
These days I would err on the side of 512MB if it doesn't add too much cost, but for general computing (ie not playing games) 256MB should be fine.
Totally depends. If you're looking at budget cards, then the amount of ram won't matter. If you're looking at higher end cards, then it can make a difference, depending on the res you run at.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrP
1680*1050 wouldbe the resolution.
mainly playing wow at the moment, but i would like to turn some of the AA or AF on and from memory that tends to eat extra memory, hence the question
As a WoW player I am sure 256MB would be enough. My wife runs all options on max at 1280x1024 on a 128MB 6600GT. A friend runs 1680 widescreen on a 7600GS card with 256MB, and it sounds like he is happy with the performance.
I have a 7900GT with 512MB and was running 1600x1200 for a while, though 1280x1024 is faster and I can't really tell much difference in image quality so I now stick to 1280x1024.
Are you on PCIe or AGP?
PCI-e
was toying with the idea of buying an x1950, so was wondering if the 256 or 512mb version would be better for me
Well you won't miss out by going 512, but you only need 256 so if there's a cost saving then 256 is enough :)
Looking on Ebuyer they have
Powercolor 1950pro with 512MB is £13.24 more than the 256MB version. I paid a bit more of a premium than that, so I would vote in that case for the extra ram.
Mind you, for less money you can get the 2600XT which should also be more than enough for WoW though it is about 20% slower than the 1950pro at the resolutions you are interested in.
512mb may be needed for the new UT game, the Doom3 engine also uses 512mb with ultra settings.
But oddly Doom 3 runs great on ultra even with the 256mb card..
Doom3 is now rather old, I am not surprised if driver writers can page the textures around fast enough that 512MB is no longer required for that game.
However, I am starting to see benchmarks where 320MB 8800 is being beaten by the 640MB version so memory pressure has started and will only get worse as time goes on. (disclaimer: I put almost zero effort into finding that particular benchmark, it was literally the first video card benchmark I opened so I used it as the numbers followed what I seem to be observing).
According to id's Robert Duffy, the Ultra Quality setting requires a 512MB graphics card to run without a hitch since this setting uses uncompressed data that can take up a lot of memory space. Shuffling all this data around can cause some slowdown.
Wow does not really HIGH 3d modelling...(coz it is a pretty old game) 256mb will be fine unless you have more money and 512 is always good...it needs more standard ram though
Can, yes. But doesn't on a fast card.Quote:
Originally Posted by jay_oasis
Either way, my point is still the same - if the 512 is roughly the same price you might as well get it.
how's you buget?
if those 512 price is almost the same, of course get a 512 :)