How Much RAM Does Your Graphics Card Really Need?

[timetravelingtrevor]

Very well written article. I was actually just debating this very fact last night lol. But I agree with some of the other posters; how does the RAM situation scale in a crossfire setting? Say, for example, you wanted to crossfire 2 cards with 512 mb a piece...

 

[anamaniac]

What about 16xAA and 16xAF at 2560x1600.
If that don't destroy memory, I don't know what will.

 

[Guest]

Seeing a comparison screenshot is nice, but gif...seriously? Seeing the game in 256 colors and low resolution tells very little about the actual differences. If you need animation, please use e.g. apng. Just two jpg images sould do the trick, though.

 

[Guest]

would have been nice to see a mid-range card in the on the tests. even if only for a smaller set of tests. say a 4770/9800GT with 512/1024.

 

[Guest]

Excellent article; but missing one other factor: many people are now running two (or even three) monitors. Perhaps you could do a follow-up article using single and multiple graphics cards with pairs of 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 monitors? Enquiring minds want to know . . . .

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Great article that sheds some light on graphics memory issues.

 

[crazymech]

I'm very curious about Crossfire/SLI tests on this.

How is 2x1gb compared to 2gb? Or rather 2x512gb compared to 1gb is maybe more interesting. And what does adding seperate ammounts of RAM in a crossfire configuration do? 1gb+1gb+512mb ?

 

[osse]

Good and informative article, and would u kindaly include min framerate in all off ur reviews, espially builds off, couse it is more than just videomemory that inflicts the min frame rate.

 

[Bloodblender]

Great article, just the stuff I love to read about.

 

[climber]

In today's GPU landscape, the more likely scenario where the amount of onboard RAM available on a GPU will have a real impact in GPGPU computing. There are likely scenarios where having up to 4GB of RAM onboard (nvidia quadro FX 5800 or tesla, or possibly a future ATI 5870 X2 or workstation Firestream variant) will have really serious implications. For example in SLI, the system only sees 896MB of RAM on 1, 2, 3 or 4 nvidia 295GTX cards, not 1792MB or them sum of all the cards (7168MB). Unless the CUDA or Open CL developer can modify their code or design it in the first place to break down their tasks to run more efficiently with less RAM and higher parallelism then having the extra RAM will probably be better if the application requires as much RAM as it can get it's hands on, e.g. scientific computing.

 

[evongugg]

Great article and very innovative!
I like how you expained how much RAM is needed depending on the resolution. My mind is clear on what to look for in terms of RAM on a video card.

 

[grimjester]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]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.[/citation]
I assume you will do testing at 5760x1200 for systems that can handle it anyway? It would seem natural to do a followup on this article when the first 58xx cards with 2G memory show up.

On the animated gifs; I think small close-up jpgs or pngs showing some relevant detail would be better for this. They could be linked to full screenshots. It's good to have image quality comparisons, but the gif format 8-bit colors degrade quality pretty significantly.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]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.[/citation]
There's always interest in stuff that is different from a simple product review
[citation][nom]bin1127[/nom]Very good article. Will there be one that compares SLI or Crossfire configurations?[/citation]
Exactly what he sais! I'd have been very interested in seeing the effect of having 2 512mb cards in cf. I know I mentioned that earlier, where you said you might look into it in the future.
I expect a lot of people are sitting with 4870 512mb cards (1gb weren't available at launch), and would by now have noticed limitations that they consider to remove by crossfire - if just they weren't nervous about the 512mb memory limitation of their board.


ps. Generally - can you cf two cards with different memory ? like a 4870-512 and a 4870-1024? and what about 4870-1024 & 4890-1024 ?

 

[saint19]

Good article, I suppose that it's the same for nVidia GPU. right?

 

[nforce4max]

Sure 512 might be enough but its the 256 of today while 1gb is standard and will hold up well for a few years compared to 512. 2gb cards will hold up longer so long the gpu is not to slow from the start.

 

[philbee]

I'm not a gamer but a software developer. I run dual monitors in 1920x1200 resolution with a couple virtual desktops. I really like my windows and virtual desktops to snap in place and not draw slowly from top to bottom. Would a graphics card with 1 GB of memory remedy that situation?

 

[origosis]

There will always be alot of nuances that will be hard to pinpoint. There is a chance a more powerful card would have had larger differences in the RAM size, since it can process more at a time, or vice versa a slower card benefiting from more RAM since things might stack up since it can't get through them as quickly.

I found a HUGE difference in my system I had a 4850 512 and running Age of conan was Decent, but I had to keep everything on medium. I found a 1GB 4850 on sale and grabbed it (same clock speed). Now it can run Age of Conan to nearly max settings. in the case of Age of Conan the Video ram was a HUGE factor. Still non of my other games run any faster, Not EQ2, not WoW, and not Far Cry. So video ram is a case by case basis to some extent.

 

[warmon6]

Good article. This does show more rams isn't always better.

Now who ever "thumb down click happy" guy, stop giving everyone thumbs down. Had click thumbs up on most of them because they're decant/great posts.

 

[sublifer]

It also depends on how much ram the card was designed to run, a 4670 or 4850 is going to give much different results between 512 - 1GB and it won't be good. You'd be lucky to get an FPS with the extra 512mb

 

[origosis]

[citation][nom]philbee[/nom] Would a graphics card with 1 GB of memory remedy that situation?[/citation]

I do not have the expertise to answer that, but hit up your preferred Tech forum and post your situation. Anyways. I frequently switch out of MMO's and into other apps, and had a similiar situation. I posted on a forum about it. A Direct X programer came on to explaina few things to me. Basically the extra ram may not speed things up, but depending on the situation the system could use it.. In my case with Win7 the switch from 512 to 1GB made a world of difference. switching to Chrome and Aion is instant... I popped in my old 512 for a week while I has my new 512 in my travel system, and the switch from Aion to Chrome took a good 3-5 seconds. So in My situation the extra Video RAM made all the difference.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]nonamenow[/nom]Seeing a comparison screenshot is nice, but gif...seriously? Seeing the game in 256 colors and low resolution tells very little about the actual differences. If you need animation, please use e.g. apng. Just two jpg images sould do the trick, though.[/citation]

As far as 256 colors, I think you're letting the theoretical limitation get in the way of what is obviously a useful comparison.

We're not looking for ultra-subtle nuances here between Nvidia and ATI cards, these are huge image quality differences.
The GIFs highlight actual differences very well, as you can see in the screenies -- it's quite obvious, 256-color or not they do the job.

Resolution is a non-issue as these images are 1:1 pixel by pixel, not scaled except for the total screenshot in Crysis -- for which there is a second 1:1 pixel image.

Our CMS has some limitations unfortunately, I can look into other options but I don't think the animated GIFs are a problem at all.

 

[macadami]

I'm planning on building a new system this christmas and I found this article very helpful. I run at 1650x1080 and really wish something similar would've been written when i purchased my 320mb 8800gts a few years back.

Now i have a much better idea on which card to purchase for my upgrade to fit my needs.

 

[kraken18]

A much easier way would be to simply look at the hardware monitor in riva tuner to see how much RAM game uses. No need to do benchmarks.

 

[dreamer77dd]

well if everybody has a 1 gig or 2 gig gpu then i suspect the game developers would use this to their advantage. I would love to see more details come alive but how does this effect Adobe software or other creative software. Any news on any software company willing to use all the gigs on a gpu?

 

[beehew]

Great article, even though it's about 2 months too late for me. My 4890 is more than I need right now, but I'm hoping it will last me for a good long time.