7850 1gig or 2

[Slavo04]

I am looking at graphics cards that are in my price range and also have decent performance. Right now i am on a single gtx 260 because one of them died recently. I think i decided on getting the Radeon 7850 but now i got a decision to make. 1 gig or 2?? I only have 1 23" monitor 1080p. I do not plan on going dual monitors. So after reading bunch of different forums i still dont know if getting the more expensive 2gig card would even be beneficial or not. Can someone help?

I am running a pretty old rig that use to be pretty bad ass WAY BACK IN THE DAY.

Core 2 Duo
8gig of DDR2 ram
Stripe 0 hard drives.
1000 watt OCZ power supply (I updated recently)

Let me out.

 

[loops]

2 gigs if you like to use AA.
1 gig if you dont care about AA.
New games coming will eat up more ram due to AA used.

 

[Robert Pankiw]

Hey, sticking with that rig, 1GB version would be enough, because you aren't likely to be using ultra-settings in game (though nothing stops that).

2GB+ of VRAM is only needed for high texture levels with some AA. There are a number of games whose performance drops heavily if the card runs out of VRAM, but usually turning off AA can fix that. If AA is not on, reducing textures from their highest to next highest would allow you to avoid that bottleneck.

In my opinion, get the 2GB version. It isn't a lot more, and can reduce any headaches at high resolutions (though the rest of your would hold you back.)

Do you know which brand you are getting?

 

[iceclock]

2gbs as games are already using more than 1gig of vram. and will be future proof.

 

[Slavo04]

First of all.... thanks so much for the quick response.

I had 2 cards in mind....

One is the SAPPHIRE

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102998

The other is the asus

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121651


I was just about to flip a coin and then i noticed the 1gigs are about 20-30$ cheaper. For some reason i thought the ram was only good for multiple monitors. Good thing i asked because i had no idea.

Again... thanks a bunch but i guess i will flip a coin between these two unless you highly recommend a different brand.

 

[Slavo04]

Best answer selected by Slavo04.