Difference Between 128-bit and 64-bit Cards

[garystan1952]

One more question........I'm still a little in the dark about the difference between 128-bit and 64-bit Video Cards. Is it like the analogy of two boxes of sand, each with a hole in the bottom. One box can dispense 128 grains of sand per minute, and the other one dispenses the sand at 64 grains a minute. Correct ?
The other thing I'm not sure of is.....that both 128-bit and 64-bit (part of the card) have nothing to do with the fact that your System is either a 32-bit OS, or a 64-bit OS. Correct ?

garystan1952

 

[rgd1101]

yes and yes.

 

[cl-scott]

That is one way of looking at it. Another might be to think of it like highways. One has 64 lanes, the other 128 lanes. So everything else being equal, you'd expect more cars to be able to travel on any given stretch of road on the 128 lane road.

And finally, yes, you could have a 256-bit or even 384-bit card on a 32-bit OS. All that number refers to is the number of pathways between the GPU and the RAM onboard the video card.

 

[geofelt]

The internal specifics of a card are not good metrics upon which to make a selection decision.
The card designers pick various specifications that they hope to produce a strong balanced card at a target price.

Use the heirarchy list at the end of this article to gauge the relative strengths of various cards.
Then buy the best one your budget will allow.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html

And... yes, it does not matter if your os is 32 bit or 64 bit.

 

[JamesSneed]

As said prior this is simply the bus width between the GPU(think CPU on the graphics card) and memory on the graphics card. Also bigger is not always better because faster memory on a skinnier bus can achieve better performance than slower memory on a wider bus(simplified version of it). Completely ignore 64bit, 128bit, 256bit, etc when you see it in spec for graphics cards. Judge only on performance of the cards tested by reputable sites.

It doesn't matter if you have a 32 bit or 64 bit OS, at least in your context of being able to use a graphics card. However a 64 bit OS will yield better performance on many new games primarily because you can have more than 4GB of system memory.

 

[garystan1952]

That is one way of looking at it. Another might be to think of it like highways. One has 64 lanes, the other 128 lanes. So everything else being equal, you'd expect more cars to be able to travel on any given stretch of road on the 128 lane road.

And finally, yes, you could have a 256-bit or even 384-bit card on a 32-bit OS. All that number refers to is the number of pathways between the GPU and the RAM onboard the video card.

d-scott :

I think I like your analogy better than mine. NOW I can see the connection between (if I've got it correct) the bandwidth of a card and the System CPU.

garystan1952