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sobe  |
  Posted 4th Oct 2005 2:33am |
Post 742 / 3194
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I want to put an end to people saying, "my Radeon 9200 has 256MB memory and is faster than your 6600GT with only 128MB memory"....
The determining factor - your graphics card is the one that actually processes all the things you see on the screen, all the detailed models, all the pretty reflections, realistic plants, and awesome explosions. If your CPU or RAM is not up to scratch, it may take excruciatingly long for your left-click to register, or it may take fifteen minutes to load into a game, but the game would probably run. If your graphics card isn't up to scratch, however, the frame rate would drop to below that of a powerpoint presentation, and if the graphics card is bad enough, it just crashes to the desktop.
One of the most misleading factors about graphics card is the amount of memory. Almost all game boxes put this for their minimum requirements, while companies release 256MB and even 512MB versions of their low-end graphics card, as though they were the flagship chips. "OMG my 512MB Geforce 6200A is going to PWN your puny 256MB X850XT PE lol" Sadly, the amount of memory has CENSORED to do with the performance of the card itself. While we can safely assume that a card with only 32MB of memory isn't going to have fast enough of a GPU (graphics processing unit) to run Doom 3, some graphics card show up with 64-128MB (Intel Extreme Graphics 2), or sometimes even 256MB (Geforce FX5200) of graphics memory, and yet they are going to run the game much poorer than a higher end 128MB graphics card like a 6600GT, and in the case of the Intel Extreme 2 and its fellow integrated graphics crap, it will again either run at less than 5fps with everything turned down to minimum, or just refuse to run altogether. I would rather have more capacitors on my graphics card than more memory.
So the first thing you must bear in mind is to ignore how much memory that graphics card has. Throw the concept of "more graphics RAM = better graphics card" out of the window. Even the rule that a graphics card with less memory than the minimum specs won't run the game is no longer true, since Nvidia has released graphics cards which contain only 16MB memory, but by borrowing system memory, it can run faster than some 128MB cards, although the performance won't be ideal.
I want everyone to remember this specific detail:
Throw the concept of "more graphics RAM = better graphics card" out of the window
I hope all you gloaters have learned something from this! lol |
| "Apparently, Plaintiff believes that he could sue an egg company for fraud for labeling a carton of 12 eggs a dozen, because some bakers would view a dozen as including 13 items." - Western Digital 2006 |
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| LordSeafood |
Posted 4th Oct 2005 4:03am |  |
L4Y Member
Post 283 / 1792
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K i actually already understood all this and upon reading the first bit i thought you would actually go into describing how a good gfx card works. As far as i understand the higher the bit the faster the information can be transferred and then the Core and Memory Mhz also determine how well it runs (similar to how a faster CPU Mhz/Ghz increases performance.) now this is my uneducated understanding of it ... please feel free to correct me as it will also benefit me  |
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| General_187 |
Posted 4th Oct 2005 5:27am |
L4Y Member
Post 308 / 496
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THats like telling me somebody that their 1 gig of RAM is weak! Well, Unless the latency's are different.. I think  Sobe. You've done it again... Now I'm thinking and I don't like to do that..... It hurts! |
| 3D Mark '01 My score is 25,472! BEAT IT PUNK! |
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| sobe |
Posted 4th Oct 2005 9:47pm |
Post 743 / 3194
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System Memory is different from gfx card memory. Basically, follow this example:
I just bought a 6800Ultra with 128MB ram, you bought a 6600GT with 256MB ram! Well, you will tell me, "my 6600GT has 256MB of ram and can pwn yours!" That tells me your an idiot! lol
System memory example:
I just bought a 512MB corsair stick of memory, you bought a 1GB ocz stick of memory! Well, you will tell me, "I have 1GB memory, your little 512MB can't touch this, it SUX!" That tells me........ I need more memory to compete with this nut! lol
Basically, the memory doesn't really affect the performance of your gfx card. Your gpu core speed and memory clock speed do. |
| "Apparently, Plaintiff believes that he could sue an egg company for fraud for labeling a carton of 12 eggs a dozen, because some bakers would view a dozen as including 13 items." - Western Digital 2006 |
Modified Oct 4th, 09:51pm by sobe |
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