512 or 1 gig?

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GMcDougal

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I searched the forum and couldnt find a good answer. I will be gaming at 1680x1050 res with aa and af enabled. I play cod 4 and 5, americas army 3. Im looking at 4850/4870/4770 cards. will i see a performance boost with 1 gig over 512?
 
Not sure about COD, but generally speaking 1GB doesn't give you much performance boost in most cases. In one or two benchmarks I've actually seen a 1 or 2 frame drop. The only game from what I remember which in fact did benefit from the extra 512MB of VRAM was Crysis; 15%+ in performance. These are based on 1920 x 1200 resolution which generally benefits from more VRAM.
 
Also, if you currently have an nVidia card you can download the latest version of GPU-Z which tells you how much VRAM is used Unfortunately it doesn't work with ATI cards. I know, I tried.
 
JaguarSKX said:
Not sure about COD, but generally speaking 1GB doesn't give you much performance boost in most cases. In one or two benchmarks I've actually seen a 1 or 2 frame drop. The only game from what I remember which in fact did benefit from the extra 512MB of VRAM was Crysis; 15%+ in performance. These are based on 1920 x 1200 resolution which generally benefits from more VRAM.
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1gb isnt about giving you a framerate boost. its about being able to run higher settings and not stuttering or hitching. of course your card has have the horsepower to push those settings in the first place. at 1680 a card like the 4870 easily has the power to run settings that will exceed 512mb in a couple games like GTA 4 and Far Cry 2. there might be others too but those I am positive of. I say if you are getting something like a 4850 or slower then a 512mb model is sufficient especially if the 1gb model is more than a few bucks more.


btw there was no need to make 2 separate posts.
 
IMO 1920x1200 or so is about when you start to feel the pain of only having 512m vram, especially if you use AA. I notice some performance dips with my 4850's in Crossfire (512m cards).
 
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cannondale06 said:
1gb isnt about giving you a framerate boost. its about being able to run higher settings and not stuttering or hitching. of course your card has have the horsepower to push those settings in the first place. at 1680 a card like the 4870 easily has the power to run settings that will exceed 512mb in a couple games like GTA 4 and Far Cry 2. there might be others too but those I am positive of. I say if you are getting something like a 4850 or slower then a 512mb model is sufficient especially if the 1gb model is more than a few bucks more.


btw there was no need to make 2 separate posts.
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i made two post because the first one delayed in posting. sorry
 
nevermind. i posted this post before and it didnt post. thought maybe there was a delay. Also, is $134.99 a bad price for a sapphire 4850 512 dual slot card?
 
GMcDougal said:
nevermind. i posted this post before and it didnt post. thought maybe there was a delay. Also, is $134.99 a bad price for a sapphire 4850 512 dual slot card?
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thats certainly not a good price. a couple weeks ago, the 4850 was around 100 bucks for some brands but I think prices went up a bit.
 
It all depends on what games you'll be playing, but I'd go for the 1gig if you plan on playing anything like gta4.
 
GotNoRice said:
IMO 1920x1200 or so is about when you start to feel the pain of only having 512m vram, especially if you use AA. I notice some performance dips with my 4850's in Crossfire (512m cards).
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^this.
 
Get the 1gb version.

With CoD:MW2, I can't play at 1920x1080 with everything set to max with AA. The test level ran fine, but that's because there's almost nothing to the level. Once the action started, which it starts fast in MW2, the framerate plummeted to unplayable levels (like 1 frame every 5-6 seconds). I had to turn few settings down in order for it to play correctly, which sucked.

So yeah, even though you're going 1680x1050, if this is a trend that's already starting at 1920x, then you might as well get a 1gb card now.
 
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