256MB or 320MB

Q

Quantum

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Messages
215
I was just going to order a new Shuttle SN27P2 for my friend but noticed that the Asus Extreme 8800GTS 320MB he had in mind would not fit in there. So I'm just wondering if there would be any noticeable difference between 256MB and 320MB, because the closest I can get to the Asus Extreme 8800GTS 320MB and fit it in the Shuttle is a BFG 8600GTS OC 256MB.

PS
What happened to the search function? Can't find it...
 
No search.

And with regards to just the RAM, you probably wouldn't find an amazing amount of difference.... although the difference between the video cards is going to be a lot... the 8800GTS 320mb is much better than the 8600GTS ;)

It's not exactly a question of RAM on the video card but the video cards themselves
 
Search isn't working right now. They are working on it. In any case, ram has little to do with the performance of the actual card. The 8800GTS 320MB is a shit load faster than an 8600GTS OC 256MB card but not due to having more memory. The GPU itself is far more capable in the 8800GTS and that's why it's faster. The 8800GTS has more streaming processors and a wider memory bus. The problem is that with many SFF PCs you can't easily use some of the larger cards and the 8800GTS and GTX models are just simply huge. They require dual slot cooling unless you are water cooling them. As far as I know there aren't any single slot air cooling solutions for them.

You may need to make changes to your system (different case or something) if you want to go up to the 8800GTS. Otherwise I'd look into an X1950Pro/XT, or 7950GT, or something along those lines. Sure they don't do Direct X 10, but they are a shit load faster than the 8600GTS.
 
Performance doesn't exactly scale with the amount of RAM, although it just happens that in this case the card with more RAM is significantly faster.

RAM can be a limiter on how high you can set your texture resolution, what kind of screen resolution you use and also the amount of Anti-Aliasing you can use, these all require a decent amount of vRAM
 
Frosteh said:
Performance doesn't exactly scale with the amount of RAM, although it just happens that in this case the card with more RAM is significantly faster.

RAM can be a limiter on how high you can set your texture resolution, what kind of screen resolution you use and also the amount of Anti-Aliasing you can use, these all require a decent amount of vRAM
Click to expand...

Right and that's why the 8800GTS 320MB can sometimes be significantly slower than the 8800GTS 640MB card when higher resolutions and AA/AF are applied. The difference between an 8600GTS and any 8800GTS is going to be huge, but not because of ram. The ram would be a limiting factor if all other things about the cards were equal, which is not the case.
 
Millions :D

Any DECENT 450-500W power supplies would be good for it. I think the guideline is at least 400W PSU with 26A on the 12V rail. That's not what it takes, but it's the minimum you should have.
 
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