How Much RAM Does Your Graphics Card Really Need?

[EzyStvy]

Nice Article:


How Much RAM Does Your Graphics Card Really Need?
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/review_print.php?p1=31693

The biggest misconception out there is that more graphics RAM will increase gaming performance. But, for the most part, this is untrue. While the bandwidth of the graphics RAM might have a direct effect on gaming performance, the quantity of RAM doesn't have a direct impact on how fast a graphics card performs. The quantity of RAM does have an indirect impact on performance sometimes, and we'll talk about this in a little bit.

[David M]

Having greater memory bandwidth is helpful only when running at high resolutions. This is not news. The articles premise that the amount of memory does not matter much is not exactly true. There is a correlation in that the amount of memory times the number of bits equates to bandwidth, which does indeed matter for high resolution gaming. You can see it right in their performance charts.

I think that what they are trying to do is warn people not to piss their money away on cards with high amounts of memory if their gaming consists of running the game at no more than a 1280x768 resolution.

[Cleeve]

Originally Posted by David M There is a correlation in that the amount of memory times the number of bits equates to bandwidth, which does indeed matter for high resolution gaming. You can see it right in their performance charts.

You aren't quite right. Bandwidth is measured by memory SPEED times interface (bits), not AMOUNT times interface.

The amount of memory has no bearing on bandwidth. 1 GB or 1 KB of RAM through a 128-bit interface at 800 MHz offer the exact same amount of bandwidth.

Give the article a read, it talks about this stuff.

[Masaki 7-11]

How much ram your graphics card really needs is difficult to determine by looking at specs (reviews are still the best way), especially considering the various variables such a the game/program being used, the GPU (the memory controller and the clock speed for the core and shaders), the ram (type, interface, latency, and frequency/clock). Over time, the amount of video ram needed for applications and games will increase and as long as the GPU doesn't bottleneck the video ram, more ram is better.