How Much RAM Does Your Graphics Card Really Need?

[cleeve]

Anyone who’s ever shopped for graphics cards has considered the amount of on-board RAM and the slight price premium each bump brings. But what actual impact does it have on game performance? We test 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB graphics cards to find out.

How Much RAM Does Your Graphics Card Really Need? : Read more

 

[radiowars]

Great article guys. I've debated this many times with friends- good to see a definite result. Heh, GTX 275 w/ 896 works well @ 1680x1050 for me. I doubt I'd need anything higher than that for my resolution.

 

[burnley14]

I really like the alternating images you use in these articles, they are very helpful and make it much easier to compare the various detail settings.

Also, great article overall. Keep up the good work!

 

[cleeve]

Thanks burnley, animated GIFs are a bit of a pain to make, but it's nice to know they're appreciated.

 

[blueer03]

This was very interesting. But I would like to see the performance difference from a mid-stream (say a 4850) as compared to a high end video card. Would it have made sense to spring for the 1GB 4850, or would there be no difference because of the cards inherent limitations? And the same thing with the lower level cards. At what point in the hierarchy of video cards does springing for more than the reference memory levels make sense?

 

[cleeve]

With lower end cards you'd see the same effect, but with the lower frame-rates that those cards would produce. The end result is the same: one they run out of RAM at a certain setting, the performance will suffer, but until then it's the same across the board.

 

[knutjb]

How much ram will the 5870 eyefinity version need?

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]knutjb[/nom]How much ram will the 5870 eyefinity version need?[/citation]

Depends on the resolution and settings just like everything else. but it's a good question, if there's enough interest in this article I'll look into that in the future.

 

[liquidsnake718]

Im surprised that Crysis doesnt utilize all the RAM(even for an older title) for distance similarly to titles like GTA. Im sure the new Crytek engine will make use of Ram so we can see even buildings and huge alien robots further in the distance with vivid details.

We can only look forward to a more intense and visually stunning Crysis 2 as I can only imagine how the story would progress and end up being in space. I can imagine huge asteroids looking as real coming at the player using nvidias 3d vision and utilizing AA in order to make it apparent from a distance.

Think Halo style world but with unrivaled graphics and a more realistic feel with DX11.

 

[Guest]

How about doing this same comparison with crossfire setups?

 

[Arkz]

il tell ya whats a bitch, i have a 1920x1080 monitor, nice? yes. I have an 8800GT too.. nice? kinda.. its the 256MB version.. so.. if i wanna turn up the sexiness i get baaaad fps

 

[HibyPrime]

Would have been nice to see more of the GTA4 benches, as it's pretty safe to say it requires the most video ram of current gen games.

Slowly increase the ram from the 500mb point to see where the 512 cuts out. Maxing out all of the sliders to see if the 2GB is ever able to make a win over the 1GB as well as showing the visual difference from the 1GB up to whatever the max is.

 

[tjf311]

What if I wanted to run in crossfire? What would be the optimal configuration then? 2x? 3x? 4x?

 

[Shnur]

Great article!
I am actually looking forward a 5870 (or nVidia next-gen if it comes in this year) after prices are settled and early drivers are out of the way so I can really see an improvement over my 4870 1gb. This is the kind of article I wanted to see for a while and I give you guys a big heads up for it! It would be nice at a later time to see with the new cards how does 2gb vs 1gb performs when paired in CF/SLI so we can eliminate the card speed factor that we have here, because even if the game would like to use more ram, the card is not fast enough to process the information, when you get two cards, there's more power as for processing but same storage, that would be a great thing to check
And I'm looking forward an eyefinity review with a game running on 3 HD screens or something similar because as of today an HD screens costs about 200$ so buying two or three is expensive but still on the level of "affordable" when a single 30" is more expensive than this...

 

[Supertrek32]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Thanks burnley, animated GIFs are a bit of a pain to make, but it's nice to know they're appreciated.[/citation]
It's a very nice thing to have. I wish more benchmarks on Tom's had these, since I'm reading to find out what I want to buy. It's great for figuring out if the next card is worth it for that next step up.

It answers the "Yeah, I could use very-high instead of regular-high with this card instead of that, but will I even be able to tell the difference?" question.

 

[megamanx00]

Indeed 2GB is rather frivolous right now. Given current prices I'd really recommend a 1GB 4870 over a 512MB 4870. GRID and FarCry2 are games that currently favor 1GB, and I'm sure we'll see more this fall.

 

[eddieroolz]

Great article, very well written and informational.

 

[WINTERLORD]

great article. and good to know. all this graphics stuff latly makes me wanna upgrade lol. that and i have a new favorite game. intersting to say the least, and from looking at this, i would definatly get atleast a 1gb card in the future. since games are always changing like the editor said, i believe that when directx 11 comes out and 2 years down the road, that you would definatly want 1gb of ram on your card. but seems like 512 would be good for a good long time as well

 

[IzzyCraft]

The more the better as long as the gpu and setup can use all of it. Seems like 1 gig is a norm now and a good apart for those who are cranking up the AA and AF and resolution esp if that AA is super-sampling.

 

[porksmuggler]

excellent article, nice overview of a frequently debated issue.

 

[intelx]

very good article, saving money with the same speed.

 

[Proximon]

This was good as far as it went, but I still have questions. For instance, what about dual monitors? Will RAM have more impact if a second monitor is displaying, say a webpage?

 

[bin1127]

Very good article. Will there be one that compares SLI or Crossfire configurations?

 

[zinabas]

Good article but I'd like to see a followup.
I want to see 4870's with 512, 1024, and 2048 by themselves and then in crossfire (x2) and see a percent advantage at different resolutions for the higher memory cards.
Then people can decide on whats the best value based on what resolution they're gaming at. At higher details but low resolutions 2 low memory cards might be a better value.

 

[Guest]

I have a 512MB 4870, but i only have a 32" 1360 x 768 LCD tv, I haven't got to really test this bad Larry on any games expect on the Crysis demo and with that I play very high settings but with only 2x AA with an avg. of 40 FPS. Dose more vram make the video card harder to get stable overclocks? I have mine at 800 MHz core and 1000 MHz vram with a max temp of 70c and am wondering if the 1 GHz can do the same.

(Im using a Saphire Radeon 4870 with stock heatsink)