• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Video card memory utilization?

U

upriverpaddler

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 11, 2004
Messages
1,701
How does a game use the memory on a videocard? Is 256mb of memory worth it? How does it function different than the system memory?
 
its texture memory. it stores the game textures in the cards memory. along with other stuff but thats primarily what it is used for. and yes 256 is worth it, especially with newer games and the ever increasin size of textures it helps.
 
I hear that 256Mb of video memory isn't necessarily worth it on lower-end cards.

The 128Mb 6600GT and 6800nu both delivery a thrashing of monumental proportions to (e.g.) an FX5200 with 256Mb. To the poster: why do you ask? If you are looking to buy something, give us more details and we can suggest how best to proceed. (Or give you our opinion on how best to proceed anyway ;) )
 
well, not quite. Its only worth it if the card can handle it (ie a 256mb 9600xt will only do about 2% better than a 128mb version in most games) but anything like a 9800 or better should utilize it
mulpsmebeauty said:
I hear that 256Mb of video memory isn't necessarily worth it on lower-end cards.

The 128Mb 6600GT and 6800nu both delivery a thrashing of monumental proportions to (e.g.) an FX5200 with 256Mb. To the poster: why do you ask? If you are looking to buy something, give us more details and we can suggest how best to proceed. (Or give you our opinion on how best to proceed anyway ;) )
Click to expand...
damn beat me to it
 
plus if you start enabling stuff like AA and AF more memory helps as well.
 
I am planning on a purchase soon and just wanted to understand why pay more for the extra card memory. Also, a co-worker swears that even new games can't utilize the extra memory?

So if I have 128mb on the card and the map requires more, does it spill over to the system memory? Dosen't the system RAM hold the texture memory.

Price really isn't the issue, just knowing the value for the price.
 
Top-end stuff seems to be able to use 256Mb. Running at 1600x1200 with lots of antialiasing and anisotropic filtering needs plenty of memory, I believe.

Mid range cards can get by with 128Mb as they don't have the horsepower needed to run at high resolution with aa and af where the extra headroom is useful.

Doom 3 needs 512Mb on the video card in Ultra quality in order to store all the textures uncompressed!
 
Mulp is right and your co-worker is wrong. Unless by a new game your co-worker means Battlefield:1942 and Unreal Tournament 2003.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top