Sapphire Ati R7 250 1GB DDR5 OR VGA XFX R7 240 2GB DDR3

[Spectralware]

Hi! I am a programmer. So, i am making a game and i need at least 2 pc's to do the "system requiriments" with the best precision. BUT first i need to solve a little problem!

What's the difference between a 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card and a 2GB DDR3?? I know that's the speed but i want details. Pls, this would help me SO MUCH to build the test pc! Tnks =)

 

[voltoid27]

Kudos to you on actually caring about system requirements 😛 GDDR5 is inherently twice as fast as DDR3 just by nature of its "quad pumped" design, ie you multiply the base clock of GDDR5 by 4 to get the effective clock, and multiply DDR3 by only 2. DDR3 proves to be a bottleneck in most cards simply because of its lower bandwidth, but the fact that there's double the amount doesn't matter much. Essentially, more RAM is good for gaming at higher resolution with better quality textures, but the problem is the processing power of the GPU itself; the core will run out of steam long before it runs out of RAM. Since you're trying to find system requirements, I actually think the R7 240 would be more useful. This would mimic the many, many integrated graphics cores out there that use system DDR3 as their source of memory, and would give you a more realistic picture of what users, especially those on laptops, have. Most IGPs these days can utilize ~1.7GB of system RAM if necessary, so you can use something like MSI Afterburner to monitor VRAM usage while you're testing and make sure you establish a realistic target, whether it be 1, 1.2, 1.5, 2GB, etc.

 

[Spectralware]

Thank you! =)
I've been working in my game since february of last year and it's almost done. It will not require an expensive pc so... almost all gamers will be able to play it. I really want to be sure that everything is fine before i launch it, so the requirements need to be done and with the most precision possible. Again, thank you.

 

[voltoid27]

Cool, I'm glad you're taking the time to be accurate. If you need a tester, I have a bunch of single-core computers with varying graphical capabilities that I'd be happy to put to use, as well as an APU-based PC with or without a dGPU helping it out. PM me if you're interested!