1GB 8800GT!

Looking forward for some game and benchmark testing. I would like to see if 1GB of GDDR3 ram will make a differance.
 
firas said:
oops, sorry
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1249353
anyway it’s not as I expected
it’ll be interesting for those who thinks that the performance of the graphic card is determined by the memory size
they will say…wow this should be twice as strong as a normal GT :D
Click to expand...

Well those who "think" this are correct in many cases.

Some games load up a lot of stuff and use too much memory to store everything they need per frame in their local memory (fastest access). As a result, they have to store some in RAM (slower access). The OS controls what's in there so some of that could even get pushed out to page memory on the hard drive (slowest access).

So in games which use a lot of memory, you can literally be bottlenecked the the lack of onboard memory, because no matter how fast the GPU wants to chew through data, the data isnt ready for it when it is, causing overall slower processing/framerates. Some games are already showing both bandwidth and memory to be limitations of the 8800GT, so this will address at least one of those issues.
 
umm, like what games? 8800gt is not powerful enough to push the textures that require more than 512 ram...
 
Sr7 said:
Well those who "think" this are correct in many cases.

Some games load up a lot of stuff and use too much memory to store everything they need per frame in their local memory (fastest access). As a result, they have to store some in RAM (slower access). The OS controls what's in there so some of that could even get pushed out to page memory on the hard drive (slowest access).

So in games which use a lot of memory, you can literally be bottlenecked the the lack of onboard memory, because no matter how fast the GPU wants to chew through data, the data isnt ready for it when it is, causing overall slower processing/framerates. Some games are already showing both bandwidth and memory to be limitations of the 8800GT, so this will address at least one of those issues.
Click to expand...

the only major things vram caches are textures and incomplete pixel info used by the ROPs. Thats pretty well all of the "stuff".

Vram doesn't work like that. You've got your stages screwed up. There is a GPU registrar in the front of the pipe, then you've got your on-board memory and your system memory.

You will not find, ever, even if you run crysis on a Geforce 6600GT 256mb and 128mb, the 2x memory part perform twice as fast, because there are hundreds of other variables. Not the least of which is the memory throughput.

A good example is the PS3's use of its tiny 256mb XRD (effective its Quad Data Rate, 4b/Hz). It has a tiny vram size, yet its graphics are pretty unreal at good fast fps.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
the only major things vram caches are textures and incomplete pixel info used by the ROPs. Thats pretty well all of the "stuff".

Vram doesn't work like that. You've got your stages screwed up. There is a GPU registrar in the front of the pipe, then you've got your on-board memory and your system memory.

You will not find, ever, even if you run crysis on a Geforce 6600GT 256mb and 128mb, the 2x memory part perform twice as fast, because there are hundreds of other variables. Not the least of which is the memory throughput.

A good example is the PS3's use of its tiny 256mb XRD (effective its Quad Data Rate, 4b/Hz). It has a tiny vram size, yet its graphics are pretty unreal at good fast fps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for teaching us something :)
 
MrWizard6600 said:
the only major things vram caches are textures and incomplete pixel info used by the ROPs. Thats pretty well all of the "stuff".

Vram doesn't work like that. You've got your stages screwed up. There is a GPU registrar in the front of the pipe, then you've got your on-board memory and your system memory.

You will not find, ever, even if you run crysis on a Geforce 6600GT 256mb and 128mb, the 2x memory part perform twice as fast, because there are hundreds of other variables. Not the least of which is the memory throughput.

A good example is the PS3's use of its tiny 256mb XRD (effective its Quad Data Rate, 4b/Hz). It has a tiny vram size, yet its graphics are pretty unreal at good fast fps.
Click to expand...
Size is certenly very important. it must be more then the runtime memory footprint of the Texture manager. It must be more then the peak of what scenes need on textures wich wil fit in the buffer. For most games the mainstream size will do.
In that case memory speed en bandwidth determine the performance wenn this factor is meet.
More mem is often slower in the budged and midrange cards. Because the bandwidth is slower due to slower mem. So more mem is often slower. By 15%
High-end cards more mem can be even fast or faster. Difference will be 0 to 5%
In midrange more is often slower mem.

But If memory runtime footprint of the texture memory is way bigger. like needs a 512MB card. Then 768MB or 1GB yields nothing exept the other differences Bandthwide and GPU. But a 8800GTS320 wil make a dive in performance in the order how system mem to Vram stands in bandwide. A amount of 128MB in textures size is called from system mem for each frame. This would be mostly the less needed textures in the scene if you have a smart memory manager coded in the game.

So it isn't twice as fast in texture haevy games but it's more the less memory can be 5 times slower. It can be from 50% to 700% difference.


But wen you need the extra mem. the small size card get a very large performance hit.

So I would go for the bigges mem size if the difference in memspeed isn't to much. 15 á 20% I would mind.

Often the need of bigger mem is wenn you run the lates hardware pushin game and want to play it in extreem settings on highreso a 30" monitor and heavy FSAA and AF settings HDR motion blur everything on.

So wenn those R700 and 9800GTX are out I would go for 1GB Card to play Crysis at max settings. At a 24" TFT and bigger.
 
The people I was talking about would get a 512 6series GeForce over a 256 8 series GeForce cuz of the memory thing (actually I’m talking about everyone where I came from) they just enter a computer shop and say: I want a 512MB video card, and the smart ones say: I want a 512MB MSI video card (they don’t know about the GPU manufacturer and the card manufacturer they just know that MSI cards are the best) actually I was 1 of them :D :D
 
firas said:
The people I was talking about would get a 512 6series GeForce over a 256 8 series GeForce cuz of the memory thing (actually I’m talking about everyone where I came from) they just enter a computer shop and say: I want a 512MB video card, and the smart ones say: I want a 512MB MSI video card (they don’t know about the GPU manufacturer and the card manufacturer they just know that MSI cards are the best) actually I was 1 of them :D :D
Click to expand...

You're lucky you didn't get sold a 512 MB 8500 GT if that's what you said when you walked in.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
You will not find, ever, even if you run crysis on a Geforce 6600GT 256mb and 128mb, the 2x memory part perform twice as fast, because there are hundreds of other variables. Not the least of which is the memory throughput.
Click to expand...
I bring you this:
http://en.expreview.com//?p=90&page=6
Showing upwards 80% improvement in framerates going from 256MB to 512MB (not quite 2x, but close still). Granted I don't give much for the credebility of the review, but I would still like to see the impact of more memory in a more thorough and credible review, now that we have 256MB, 512MB and 1GB 8800GTs aswell as differences in the dependancy on memory of AMD/nvidias hardware (comparing the HD3850 256MB and 512MB).
 
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