Pushing The 512MB Barrier On Video Cards

Hack Jandy writes "Remeber your ancient TNT graphics card that had 16MB of memory? ATI is pushing the texture barrier by incorporating 512MB in their newest X850 video card lineup. The catch? Even ATI acknowledges there will probably be no performance benefits to bumping the memory support from 256MB to 512MB as the cards are 'intended to demonstrate the next-generation capability to gamers." An anonymous reader points out that Gainward (which sells NVidia-based graphics cards), will shortly introduce its own 512MB card, according to Hexus.net.

Comments

Different things pushing memory increases

[suso]

"Remeber your ancient TNT graphics card that had 16MB of memory?

Man you were lucky. I had to deal with a 1MB video card in my job workstation.

Honestly, its not all that impressive to see these high numbers for video card ram. Different needs pushes the limit nowadays. It used to be pushed to deal with higher color palettes at higher resolutions. Now its all about texture mapping.

translation

[British]

Even ATI acknowledges there will probably be no performance benefits to bumping the memory support from 256MB to 512MB as the cards are 'intended to demonstrate the next-generation capability to gamers."

Translation: Even though it's not practical, we'll sell it since gamers will buy it.

Re:translation

[CyberKnet]

For as long as I can remember, people have been touting the "There aren't games to fully utilize it right now, but just wait till [6,9,12] months from now!" line when trying to justify either a sale or a purchase.

I dont get it.

Historically, the price of video cards has dropped by around 50% over the course of 12 months. Why are people paying todays prices so they can play tomorrow's [or more!] games?

The only reason I can think of is penis waving. So they can say "mine is bigger than yours!".

If it were otherwise then they would have waited until the game that needed it came out.

Re:translation

[Chandon Seldon]

Don't complain. It's the people making that call who are driving the price decrease that lets you buy the card cheap 6 months later.

Re:512 is better

[NanoGator]

"If my email tells me anything, size DOES matter."

Seeing as how most of the 'realism' of a 3D game comes from detailed textures, yes, size of texture ram does matter.

Re:512 is better

[maglor_83]

I find most of the realism comes from the physics engine. The texture just makes it look a bit prettier, but by no means makes the game any better.

This is why sound cards are no big deal!

[Anita Coney]

Ever wonder why GPUs are such a big deal and sound cards are such an after thought? It's all about numbers. ATI and nVidia can increase clock speed and double memory and make it look really impressive. Sound cards can't really do that.

If I were Creative I'd start including massive amounts of RAM on my cards. Plus, I'd throw a CPU in there too, if there isn't one already, and start hyping the clock speed. I'd even have a program to overclock both.

That way all the ignorant fanboys would start buying them simply for bragging rights.

Re:Fast and Big mem

[Ironsides]

Kinda sad when your video card has more ram than first/second/third computer had disk space (combined). Your processor has more cache than your first comp had ram. And I'm waiting for the day that a processor has more cache than my first comp had disk space.

Boy gamers

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Are we seeing a generation of "boy gamers" equivalent to the "boy racers" that add big tail-pipes, chrome and LEDs to their cars. 512MB sounds good, but basically you're buying features - not performance.