Texture memory and SLI

[Pants]

Hi,

I have a 7600 GT with 256MB of memory.

You could argue that this is not ideal for games that use over 256MB for texture memory. I was wondering, if I had another card in SLI I would physically have 512MB, but would application see it this way.

So would applications / games see 256MB (but twice the bandwidth) or the full 512MB?

Cheers.

 

[HangTime]

256 AFAIK

 

[Doppleganger]

The application would only see the texture memory available on one card.

 

[Pants]

Thats a shame. It would have been nice to double my memory and have a tinker with SLI. Don't know if I will bother now!

(edit: Fingers crossed that SLI 2 will address this - if possible)

 

[luismenendez]

That's bad news for me; I bought a 8800GTS 320m which clearly is not much memory thinking to get another in a few months time to double to 640M in SLI but if the game is going to see only 320M, I am now already regreting not paying £45 more!!!

 

[Jokester]

Yeah the same textures have to be loaded into the RAM on each card so it isn't additive.

Jokester

 

[luismenendez]

Yeah the same textures have to be loaded into the RAM on each card so it isn't additive.

Jokester

So SLi is a waste of memory them

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Yeah in Crossfire/SLi you always lose one cards memory, SLi/Crossfire is justa gimmick, you dont even get double the peformance, you only get something like 1x and a half cards, if i was adding 2x cards together id want double.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

So SLi is a waste of memory them

this was know well before sli was implemented and when it was still on paper.
but there are those out there that like to think that the memory is additive.

 

[pastymuncher]

It does'nt help though when some retailers list the likes of the 7950gx2 as having "1GB" of ram. I had to try to explain this to somebody the other day. He bought one of these and was wondering why only 512mb was showing. Just remember that not everybody understands how it works.

 

[Magic Man]

Yeah in Crossfire/SLi you always lose one cards memory, SLi/Crossfire is justa gimmick

It's a bit more than a 'gimmick' - it's a method to get more than the power of one card alone by using two. No, you don't get twice the power, but you do get more than a single card alone. I.e. the function works therefore is not a gimmick.