Crossfire newbie; 2gb vram capable?

[dredsilver]

I'm looking at Sapphire's line of new Vapor-X cards, particularly the 4890s, either the 1gb or 2gb memory.

I'm buying a single card for now due to a shortage of clams, however, i have the intention of purchasing a second in a month or two for my first attempt at crossfire.

my question is whether it is capable of achieving 2gb of video memory through crossfire or if only a certain percentage increases as with the core clock of the gpu (from what i understand the mhz doesn't DOUBLE like I'm hoping the memory might... correct?).

i'm looking for an answer that will clear up whether i should buy the 4890 with 2gb or the 4890 with 1 gb. With the end result I want to have 2gb of available memory.

i play games like CoD, Crysis, WoW (ram is good for distance), and GTAiv... the latter being a big concern because it requires a lot of video memory.

my current build is listed in my profile. i'm running at 1920x1200 for reference.

thanks

 

[Twoboxer]

AFAIK, video ram is not cumulative under SLI or Crossfire.

 

[jlear3]

the cards dont really combine power, the 2nd and 3rd just make up slack from the first one from what i understand, lol, but i got xfire 4890's and love them!~!

 

[belial2k]

you only get the video memory from the control card...also, if you have the memory running at different speeds on each card it will default to the slower memory.

 

[dredsilver]

so with a 1920x1200 resolution, everyone recommends 4890 w/2gb vid mem?

 

[mactronix]

If you want to have 2GB of Vram available then you need two 2GB cards.
Each card has to hold a copy of the same data so in effect you only get as much Vram as is on a single card.

Mactronix

 

[cjl]

Actually, at 1920x1200, 1GB is more than sufficient for most games. If you CF a pair of 4890 1GB cards, you will get close to double the performance in many cases, but you will still only have 1GB of VRAM available (since each card's memory is identical in content to every other card's memory in a CF/SLI setup). Honestly, unless there is a pretty small price difference, I'd go with the 1GB.

 

[masterjaw]

IMO, there's no imminent need to go 2gb vram right now. Even 512mb cards is on par with 1gb counterparts without aa/af so basically, there's no huge performance boost.

 

[belial2k]

I like the 4890, I just can't recommend it based on price right now...two 4850s are about the same price, and way outperform a 4890...and for 19x12 anything more than 2 4870s is overkill. A single 4870 will work in most games at that res., and can be overclocked to 4890 speeds for $70 cheaper.

 

[Twoboxer]

You started your post by saying ". . . I want to have 2G memory". We try not to immediately argue with someone who is already convinced of a want or need. So it took a while for folks to tell you 2G isn't necessary; in fact, since that memory needs addresses, it can restrict your system's use of main memory.

As for which video card . . . frankly, I try to satisfy my own video requirements with a single video card because (a) MMOs haven't responded well to SLI/Crossfire, and (b) neither do some FPS games. So I would look to 4870, maybe even 4890 . . . or 260-216, 275 . . . and run with it, adding a second later if I needed it and if no new cards had been released by then.

 

[dredsilver]

I'll definitely be getting a 4870 or 4890 with 1gb vram.

In retrospect, my view distance in all my games is already good enough with 512mb.

Great responses. Thank you all for input.