x1900xt 256mb or 512mb?

[dodgem]

I'm wondering whether the extra memory is worth it for this card.... Best prices i can find are £50 price difference between the two.

My system is based on the Asrock Dual-VSTA board atm with a C2D 6400 and 1 meg of DDR ram. I know that the PCI-e slot is only actually 4x not 16x, but once i have a PCI-e gfx card and DDR2 memory i'll be upgrading the motherboard probably to a DS3 or DS4.

So, ~£180 for x1900xt 256mb
or ~£230 for x1900xt 512mb?
or, would a x1950Pro be worth looking at?

Will i see much difference now, and will i still see the difference with a full speed PCI-e slot? Current card is a 9800Pro btw so i know i'll see a big difference from that

Games i'll be playing on it to start with will be BF2142, WoW, and NWN2...

Thanks for any advice

 

[Paul11]

i think it will depend on what res you will be running..

afaik, the 512 will be better suited to higher resolutions

 

[dodgem]

Resolution will be 1280 x 1024 for the foreseeable future - ie. until i feel rich enough to buy a shiny new tft, which won't be before i buy a DX10 card.

So - seems to me that 256mb is enough ram, now... Is an x1900xt 256 worth £40 more than an x1950Pro 256 for the games i'm playing?

 

[Paul11]

well i think that you need to run at higher res than that to get the benefit from 512.....

maybe someone else can confirm. . .

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Yeah 256mb will be fine for 1280x1024, and the x1900 XT is better than the x1950pro, as the x1950pro is about x1900 GT performance.

 

[achitophel]

Yeah 256mb will be fine for 1280x1024, and the x1900 XT is better than the x1950pro, as the x1950pro is about x1900 GT performance.

Agreed - check out Toms Hardware - the 256Mb is almost the same (within 3-5%) of the 512Mb until you start going above 1280 x 1024