vRAM Requirements

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senor_jefe

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2002
Messages
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Forgive me for posting another "Help me pick a gpu" thread but a search didn't answer my questions...

I just recently left the world of 1024x768 with the purchase of my new 24" widescreen. Previously, I never worried about how much video ram my gpu had because I was at such a low resolution, and I had always understood that you didn't need the cards with loads of ram in this situation.

However, running at 1920x1200 is a pretty big jump, and thus I am stuck trying to figure out how much vram I need.

I am looking at the 8800GTS, based on pricepoint and reviews from Penstarsys, Guru3D, and of course [H]ard|OCP. The reviews look good to me, but I am concerned with how my specific setup and upgrade path fit in there.

Currently, I have an Athlon 64 3200+, 6600GT, and 2GB of ram. Yes I am still stuck in the socket 939 single core era. :-P

My questions are:
-If I try to run my current setup with the 320MB 8800GTS at 1920x1200, will it kill the gpu? Or will I be cpu-limited? Less importantly,
-Will I regret not having the 640MB version after I upgrade? I'm pretty sure that with my current setup it's overkill but when I upgrade in a few months to a Core 2 Duo and DDR2 I don't want my gpu being the gaming bottleneck.
 
With a resolution that high and the price gap between the 320mb and 640mb closing, it may be worth your while to get the 640mb. This will allow you to use higher quality textures in the games you play, and for future games which may have steeper texture requirements.

In the grand scheme of things, if you're already going to spend that much money on a video card, might as well chip in the extra 50 bux :) You wont regret it.
 
the 640 seems to be the way to go atm and more so at that res
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM1MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

In our first evaluation we tested up to 1920x1200 resolution. 1920x1200 is the sweet spot for video cards with 512 MB or greater, of RAM. The 320 MB GeForce 8800 GTS does become memory capacity bottlenecked at this resolution and beyond, unlike the Radeon HD 2900 XT and 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS. In our experiences we do have to lower in-game quality settings moving from 1600x1200 to 1920x1200 on the 320 MB GeForce 8800 GTS. However the impact is not that great in all cases.
Click to expand...
 
Does that mean if you never go above 1600x1200 the 320 will perform the same with all current/old games?
 
Yes, basically.

There are a few extreme cases such as HUGE (1000+ unit) battles in SupCom, Oblivion with texture mods, and some games, but even then its minor. The big difference will be is when games start capping out the 320mb version, while the 640mb version will be just fine. I know World in Conflict at max settings uses between 400-500mb of texture memory at 1280x1024.
 
actually, the performance of the 640mb looks like it ramps up a fair amount as the resolution goes up in about 1/2 the games. This will only increase as games require more and more gpu memory.
 
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