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Having a chat at work,,, want to here over views

cooljimy84

cooljimy84

cooljimy84

Associate
Joined
28 Dec 2006
Posts
587
Location
Epsom Downs
Ok, we where talking at work about extra RAM on a Graphics card, is there any tool i can use to see how much of my video ram is being used ???

as it seems that we (at work) can't figure out if extra ram really makes that much diffrence..

i mean if i got the same card (same clock speed/memory speed) but one with 1 gb and the other with 512, would i really see that much diffrence ?!?!?

Thanks
James
 
Reviews show the HD4870 with 512mb and 1GB.. the 1GB comes into its own at higher resolutions, so yes it does make a difference.
 
The 1GB memory helps more with higher resolutions and with intensive AA/AF settings on.Whilst a 512MB can can handle it on certain occasions, the extra memory gives it better performance. So yes, extra memory does help.
 
For a tool to see how much vidmem is being used have a look at rivatuner. It is under plugins if I remember. Gta 4 maxed out my 512mb card but css for example only used around 280mb. New games will use the extra mem more and more.
 
It totall depends on resolution as has been said, or the texture quality of a game. For 1680x1050 and below it wont make much difference, but on newer games, ultra high texture settings with AA would perform better with 1gb. As the resolution increases then the cards with more memory pull away.
 
TaKeN said:
Reviews show the HD4870 with 512mb and 1GB.. the 1GB comes into its own at higher resolutions, so yes it does make a difference.
Click to expand...

Yer, and then try one of PCS cards with 2GB, and they run slower than the 512mb ones, go figure (talking about their 4850 here I think)
 
The strange thing I found is that the more memory a videocard has the more memory is used, I have just gone from a 640MB 8800GTS to a 1024MB 280GTX, before I found that ~600MB was the max memory use I got in games but now I have seen it spike to >800MB used :confused:
 
rypt said:
Yer, and then try one of PCS cards with 2GB, and they run slower than the 512mb ones, go figure (talking about their 4850 here I think)
Click to expand...

eh? The only 2gb cards are the X2's i.e crossfired GPU's on a single PCB. Only Sapphire make a 4850X2, so can't be a PCS card. The only time that runs slower than a single card. is when the crossfire driver profile is screwed up.
 
Last edited:
cooljimy84 said:
i mean if i got the same card (same clock speed/memory speed) but one with 1 gb and the other with 512, would i really see that much diffrence ?!?!?
Click to expand...
No difference if less than 512MB is used by the game, if the usage is more than 512MB the difference is huge.

But if it is a slowish card by the time you will see a difference the framerate is already too low to be playable so for a slow midrange card a lot of memory is only done to sell it to n00bs thinking more memory = faster.
 
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