Graphics Memory Sizes Compared: How Much Is Enough?

EconolineCrush writes "Trying to decide between whether or not to get a 64MB graphics card, or spring for that 128MB version? Hit up this article, which explores the performance of ATI and NVIDIA-based cards with 64 and 128MB of memory, before swiping your credit card. Not so long ago 32MB was the top end for graphics memory on consumer video cards, but now even budget cards are available with 128MB. 128MB might seem excessive now, but a year from now 64MB cards might just be obsolete."

Comments

What are you doing with it?

[Valiss]

I have a Radeon 64 MB card and I have had no problems with it. In another box, I have a Voodoo3 3000 and it still runs Counter-Strike and Quake 3 just fine. It all depends on what you want to do with it.

Memory for texures, etc.

[Noose For A Neck]

All that graphics memory is going to continue to be important as ever more complex and detailed games such as Doom III continue to be developed. With the kind of high resolution textures presented in such applications, a large amount of high-bandwidth memory is advantageous for rendering them in real time, high polygon count models worlds.

For those of you planning to never buy another game, well, why ask in the first place?

64Meg Card obsolete?

[gurnb]

How can you say that a 64Meg Video card may be obsolete in a year!?

If a piece of hardware is doing what you need it to do, then it is not obsolete. Not every plays/needs/wants the latest UT2003/Doom3 game.

Re:64Meg Card obsolete?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the discussion assumes that by "obsolete," it is implied that the hardware is insufficient to run newer software with higher requirements..I'll assume you ignored that obvious fact to make your point. By your argument a Tandy Model 200 laptop is not "obsolete," as long as the 4 AA batteries it requires allows you to create miniscule BASIC programs and type up documents. In this case you're referring to usefullness rather than obsolescence. A piece of hardware might never live out it's -usefulness-, but it'll almost certainly become obsolete..much more rapidly in the computer industry, in fact. So yes, the nameless 64MB video card may very well be obsolete within a year, six to nine months..maybe even less. Its usefulness might survive on for as long as the hardware itself survives. I think you've mixed these two concepts up somewhere along the line.

UT2003 / Doom 3

[PhilipChapman]

Well, I dont know if you tried the UT2003 demo, but if you want to run the game smoothly at a decent framerate, your going to need a good video card. I'm imagining that when UT2003 comes out on oct 1st, with the full textures(the demo uses low quality textures to cut down on the download side, iirc), im willing to bet that 128mb of memory on the card is going to help out quite a bit.

Obsolete? So what?

[iiioxx]

"...but a year from now 64MB cards might just be obsolete."

So? A year from now, 128MB might be a low-end card, too. So in a year, buy a new card. Don't invest in tomorrow's technology today at a premium, when you can get it tomorrow at a discount. That's why smart buyers invest in modular components. When your hardware gets outdated, pluck and chuck.

I never invest in the top-end. I buy in the middle ground. Why? Because components drop from high-end to mid-range very quickly, but then stay there a long time before obsolescing to the low-end (or dead-end). And when a product drops from the high-end to the middle ground, the pricetag typically gets cut in half.

Re:removable RAM?

[Erpo]

I'm sure that graphics card manufacturers want to provide us with as few upgrade options as possible for the simple reason that it would mean more money for them. However, I don't think memory slots on cards would be all that useful. Usually, the bottleneck that triggers an upgrade for most consumers is a killer app that pushes more polygons and requires a faster GPU with more rendering pipelines and faster graphics memory. More sticks of DDR SGRAM isn't going to do you any good there.

texture memory

[phorm]

AGP will let you run the textures from your video card off of system RAM, but there is still a speed loss involved in this. More RAM is of course nicer for newer games. Older games, it doesn't mean squat. No games, squat. Games without 3d, squat. (no I'm not counting those who use the video card for system memory).

However, if you intend to play Q3 or whatever enough at superhighres, ultracolordepth, whateverwhatever, then you may want more Video RAM. Crank down the texture detail a little bit and you don't need as much, I'm sure the game is just as fun.

AGP, fast video cards and video RAM are all about games. But when you can buy a whole PS2 for the cost of an expensive video card, it makes you think a bit.

With my old 15" 1024x1024maxres monitor it doesn't matter much anyhow - phorm

Re:RADEON 9700

[tarth]

Why would you want to buy a 9700 for $400 now when any other Radeon or GeForce4 will give you awesome performance? No, you can't tell the difference between 200fps and 210fps.

And when the games that come out that will emphasize the difference between the two (which is when you'll really want one anyway), the price of a 9700 or similar card will be half what it is today.

Textures are more important than poly count

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I didn't realize how clueless most people on slashdot were about hardware.

First, using FSAA you can see graphical improvements with newer cards on older games. Graphics card memory can make a big different in FSAA performence.

Second, AGP is still a fairly slow interface. The more textures you can get into your graphics ram the better -- 128MB may be an overkill for some games but in 6-12 months it won't be.

Third, I don't see much reason to skimp $10-$20 when you're already investing $150+ on a graphics card. You might as well plan ahead.

Fourth, if you can't handle the upgrade cycle of PC gaming buy yourself a console. PC gamers demand better graphics, game makers demand we use newer hardware to do it. Very simple.

i don't think so.

[hahnar]

seems as though all this is for show and tell sake. 'dude, i got a 128 meg card!' seriously whats the point of going top end right now? My desktop's 32meg ddr worrk fine. i can play pretty mmuch all the new games. For the average gamer 64 wil probably be great for quiite a while. When the need arises for 128 or higher, then it should be bought, not now when there is such a premium on such technology. If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Re:Tired of the rat race

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I'm tired of this rat race. I'm tired of every six months some hardware company telling me I'm obsolete. I'm sick of companies telling me to buy, buy, buy. Buy until it hurts! Buy until your wallet implodes!

Well don't listen to them then! But I think you will find alot of people will want, or require the latest stuff, regardless of if the companies are trying to push it ir not.

Are KDE and GNOME suddenly going to decide to render everything in OpenGL?

...Mac OS X :)

Why you want 128MB.

[Tokerat]

Quartz Extreme.

Ok Ok, so it's a Mac OS X thing, so what? How long before M$ innovates this feature into Windows? How long before it's patched into XFree86?

Think of all the cool things you can do, both for visual pleasure and UI functionality by operating in an accelerated, 3D enviroment, while the main CPU is free to crunch away at whatever it is you have your CPU doing, thus improving overall speed. Yes, I realize the CPU still has to intruct the card of what to do, but at least we're not blitting as we're trying to host web pages, for example.

For that you're going to need texture memory. Lots of texture memory. When you run out of memory on the card, the framebuffers must be stored in RAM. When those framebuffers are needed, you'll need to swap them into the card's RAM. This will cause the main CPU to stutter as it pumps a couple 8-9MB buffers through the system & PCI bus, which, needless to say, will get old fast, especially if the framebuffers get paged out to a swap file. Yuck!

Of course, maybe you should wait until the other 2 of the Big Three implement this in some form (I know some work as been done on a 3D window manager for X, no idea if it's meant to take advantage of acceleration, though). I've heard rumor that M$ is working on it for Windows XP(ensive) 2005 or 6 or whatever it is, and I'm sure some Linux hacker has it working on his overclocked Athlon box already. Either way, you probably want to be ready for this. Or wait and buy a card when it finally happens, when 128MB will be standard.

Since color depths will probably never exceed 48-bit (32-bit + alpha), screen resolutions are fine at 2???X???? or whatever the current highest is, it'd take quite a few windows open at once to framebuffer all that memory up. Assuming about 8 megs per window, which is admittedly above average for most windows (sans Photoshop or web browsers), you'd get about 14 or 15 windows open at once.

Oh well, someday, you'll be sorry your card doesn't have 512MB on-board :-D