256mb vs 512mb Impact on Gaming

I found this article that benchmarked two video cards:

7950GT Comparison:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gigabyte-foxconn-gf7950gt.html

Gigabyte GV-NX795T512H-RH with 512MB (GDDR3)
"The chips are rated to work at 700 (1400) MHz and this is indeed the frequency they are clocked at on the Gigabyte GeForce 7950 GT, in full compliance with Nvidia’s specifications. The GPU frequency is exactly as specified by Nvidia, i.e. 570MHz for the vertex processors and 550MHz for the rest of the GPU subunits. So although the Gigabyte GeForce 7950 GT has a unique PCB design, its technical characteristics match precisely those of the reference card from Nvidia..."

Foxconn FV-N79GM2D2-HPOC with 256MB (GDDR3)
"Just like the Gigabyte GeForce 7950 GT, the Foxconn GeForce 7950 GT 256MB uses GDDR3 memory from Qimonda, but its HYB18H256321AF-14 chips have a capacity of only 256Mb each, providing a total of 256 megabytes of graphics memory. The rest of the parameters of the memory chips coincide. The memory is rated to work at 700 (1400) MHz, but is clocked at a somewhat higher frequency of 780 (1560) MHz. There’s little reserve left for overclocking left..."

Conclusion:
"...With the results of practical tests on our hands, we can claim that the GeForce 7950 GT doesn’t have an overwhelming advantage if equipped with 512 megabytes of graphics memory instead of 256 megabytes..."

"...Of course, there are many more games available than what we use in our tests, yet we think 19 games is enough to reveal a trend. It is obvious here: 512 megabytes of graphics memory does not provide much benefit for a performance-mainstream graphics card like GeForce 7950 GT. Most of today’s games don’t really need more than 256MB. Or they need more memory in extreme display modes only when the GPU performance and the memory bandwidth are too low for comfortable play. You will really need 512MB of memory if you are going to play such games as Call of Duty 2 or Company of Heroes with enabled full-screen antialiasing..."

The 7950GT is high end desktop GPU. If you read through the benchmarks you'll find that 256mb is more than enough for every game on the market currently. The improvements seen by the 512mb is only in very specific situations and special cases.

Compared to laptop GPUs, desktop GPUs are much more powerful and faster. So if a high-end desktop GPU can't put all that memory to good use why do we see laptop GPUs equipped with 512mb? Obviously the laptop GPUs won't be able to use all of the extra memory. I hear a lot of gamers say that you can never have too much memory. But in this situation it seems that additional memory has no benefit toward performance.

In addition these benchmarks and comparison tests suggest that performance of GPUs are much more dependent on the core clock and memory frequencies. With all the new video cards coming out today that have up to 728mb of RAM I would be very skeptical as to how much of a difference it makes in games.

 

Marketing - a consumer sees two laptops - brand A's has a 512MB card, and Brand B's has a 256MB. Which one is he/she inclined to think is better?

They're probably talking about system memory - and I agree with that statement to an extent. There's no harm having a lot of RAM.

We emphasize that having 256MB of 512MB of video memory doesn't make a difference unless you have the top-end cards around here all the time. Thanks for posting this article, we can link back to this thread if there are any questions "Why doesn't it make a difference?"

 

It makes a big difference on a major component of every game: Textures. The Ultra setting on Doom 3 uses 512mb of textures, try fitting that on a 256 card. Extra Textures in call of duty also use 512mb. In most games nowadays the highest textures use 512. Not sure about flight simultor X but on the higher settings it uses up to 1GB, thats why even the 8800gtx struggles with. The most basic eyecandy is the textures.

 

For the record I can't tell the difference between the 'High' (256MB VRAM) and 'Ultra' (512MB VRAM) in Doom 3/Quake 4. I also can't tell the difference between High and Extra in CoD 2.

 

They even mentioned Doom3 in the article saying:

"..The highly popular 3D shooter Doom 3 was the first game to declare that it needed 512 megabytes of graphics memory. The developer recommended using a graphics card with that much of memory to enable the Ultra High Quality mode. We did not, however, see any difference in performance between the High Quality and Ultra High Quality modes even in the resolution of 1600x1200 pixels with enabled 4x full-screen antialiasing (for details see our article called Doom III: Performance and Image Quality in Different Gaming Modes)..."

 

Well the GPU is the most important bottleneck for all games.

For example: A Nvidia 7600 (512MB) cannot beat a Nvidia 7900GTX (256MB).

Its pretty misleading and a huge misconception for the general public.

As for the 512MB for game requirements... there is no huge difference for the Ultra High settings/textures... rather some games will lock you out of some options if it does not detect at least 512MB..

Like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter... which did not allow me to switch to native 1920x1200 resolution because it detected that I only had a 256MB 7800GTX.

Needless to say.. I did not like that one bit and went to www.tweakguides.com and modded the config files for the game and forced it to my resolution. And yup I still play on High settings at 1920x1200 and always 30+ FPS.

 

I've got a question here ...
Would be better if u have a nvidia 7600 (512MB) than nvidia 7900gtx (256MB) for the long term ?
What about in the next few years (maybe 5 years from now ?) there will be a game that required minimum 512MB memory from a GPU to play ?
Wont be better to have a not so good but still meet the minimum requirement 512MB memory ?
Thnx for the help people ...

 

I'd take the 7900gtx because of the better frame rates. The 7600 won't make it very far into the future anyway...

 

The processing core on the card and its memory speed and bandwidth are more important than the size of the actual memory.

THOUGH, I heard that AA puts its samples into the VRAM in order to do its magic... So... idk...

 

5 years down the line, the 7950GTX would be junk.. In terms of Gaming hardware, 5 years is a long time.. It's already about a year old.. I say it has about a couple of years of gaming left into it. After that, you would be playing at low settings in any new game released.. The 7600 is already showing its age.. And a 256MB 7950 is anyday better than a 512MB 7600.. The most important thing is te core. The VRAM is secondary.. There's no point in having more memory, if the card is unable to use it effectively.

 

Concept is very old and understood, these high end cards having it kind of surprising, actually I am shocked. Marketing is King!

 

Yeah i know 5 years is a long time ..
But five years from now, when all the games demands a minimum 512MB VRAM for the GPU (correct me if im wrong, but they never demand GPU core clock isnt it ?) is it better to able to play the game even at low settings, and even the card cant use it effectively than unable to play the game at all ?
Im not a hardcore gamers, not even a needy one, just like to play games, with the cheapest way ...

 

5 yrs from now, the 7600 might not even be supported by games. plus, i bet games 5 yrs from now will be completely dx10, so u won't be able to play it with your dx9 card. while games don't specifically demand GPU core clocks, they have requirements on minimum core types (ie: 7400, 7600, etc), so they really do

 

Hypothetically speaking,

If a card like the Go 79xx was unable to play a game then a card like the X1700/Go 7600 would not be even supported by that game let alone to run the game even if you equipped it with 1 GB memory.

If a game required a card with a minimum 512MB VRAM then the same game would also require a card that can make use of that memory.

It's not like the memory play the game at the end.

And, you can keep asking the same question, try other forums as well and tell me if you get a different answer.

 

wow, dreamer is back

i thought you quit the forum or something

 

LOL, I was bored from.... erm... my own posts I guess....

Don't worry, when I get bored again I will write another lame good-bye thread.

 

hahaha

i left this account for half a year

i'm amazed it isn't auto deleted

 

Yeah sorry for the repeat question, becoz in the game requirement, they always demmand the GPU memory, so i thought for the long term, its better to buy GPU with most memory ...
but now i understand ..
a little ..
Stupid question again if u mind ..
why they make it with 512MB if the GPU cant use it ?
is the rest 256MB really 100% useless ?

 

It's called marketing, when the average person see a 512MB card, he thinks woow such a great card my notebook will fly with that memory.... it's a dirty game, they do many other thing in order to confuse people, like the name of the cards, the amount of shared vs dedicated memory and so on...

It's not 100% useless but it doesn't make performance difference in games...probably 99%... lol.

Here is another link for you.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/How-much-graphic-memory-makes-sense.2558.0.html

 

Many of my classmates always use memory as a basis for which video card is better. I hate it... I remember one time my classmate bought a Geforce 7300GT with 512 MB of DDR2 RAM and he was wondering why my other classmate's Geforce 7300GT with 256 MB of DDR3 RAM was still way faster than his 7300GT. I already told them a hundred times it's not all about the memory. Or he should have just used his common sense and asked why the 7300GT with "only" 256 MB of DDR3 was more expensive than the 7300GT with 512 MB of DDR2. Then again... those freaking store clerks probably tricked him into buying the crappy 7300GT.

And oh, one of my classmates bought a laptop with a Radeon X2300 a few weeks ago and he kept on bragging it can have up to 896 MB of memory. ROFL. So he asked me to compare our laptops (well, since I'm the only guy in the batch that has a decent video card on a laptop). We tested NFS Carbon (I lent him my copy) and set everything to high, but only medium shaders, 2x AA and 1280x1024 (1280x800 for my friend since his laptop is only WXGA. XD) resolution. He was shocked when he saw his laptop barely pushing something like 5 FPS and my GF Go 6600 with "only" 256 MB was pushing over 30 FPS. XD I saw the look on his face and he didn't like it. Ahahahahaha!!! BTW, we used FRAPS to check the FPS.

5 years from now we'll probably already have DX11 or even DX12.

 

My Radeon 1150 can report 512MB (I know sys mem) what a joke! I turn down the memory why waste sys mem I can't even use? But someone made this card, what were they thinking? NOT, apllies across the board. They do it to sell it!

 

again, its not like a 512 meg 7600 and a 256 meg 7900 are even close.

already, you can see minimum system requirements for new games are "x700 or nvidia 6600 or higher" - but its not going to be "512 megs of vram"

trust me. the 7600 with more ram will be unsupported faster than the 7900 with less.

 

Ow ok, thnx guys ...
Another stupid question though ..
if a GPU have the same exact specs except the memory ..
Which one is faster ? the one have more memory ? or the one that have less ?

 

Depends on the resolution and textures size..

If the game uses up to 256mb then the performance will be the same with the 512mb card.

 

So if the resolution and texture size need the memory, the GPU with more memory have the advantage ?
What if not ? The extra memory wont be a burden rite ?
Thnx for the education btw

 

Very good question! If a game or games only require 256MB but you actually have 512MB, and remember this is every time it goes to memory so there is a performance hit, it has to search twice the memory. we can argue about how much it matters, but we all already agree not needed! And with older cards with pumped up memory even more of a hit.


So the one with less!

 

Yes..If not the performance would be the same.

But don't forget..This happens only with powerful chips.

Because in order to game at high resolutions and/or high quality settings that will make the textures larger,you will also need a powerful gpu to handle it.

 

OK explain how the 256MB perform as well as 512MB? Please, I'm begging cause we just did a 180?

 

wait a second. hold everything.

if all else was literally equal and the only variable was the amount of memory, extra memory would only help.

baddogboxer is sort of implying that it might take longer to search through 512 megs of memory than 256 to find a specific piece of data. possible, possible. the overhead is so low that you wouldn't even see that in benchmarking, though.

you may or may not be able to find a situation where you actually get better framerates, but extra memory alone would certainly NOT be a burden to your gpu

 

Yes I am calling it out, yes I know what does it matter? But you gamers (I love you all) get so caught up in numbers I had to mention. If it ain't being used what good is it doing. the test that started the thread, seems like some of you forgot? Like drug addicts. Give me 512, please give me 512! If it ain't being used it ain't being used! End done! Over! say somthing new that matters!

 

The caveaty is it does depend on how the extra RAM is implemented. If the RAM is increased through higher density modules, and as long as the latency doesn't change (which is more expensive), then there shouldn't be performance drops. However, if the added capacity is implemented through additional modules, which have to be broken into more ranks, then there could be a performance decrease. This is because the memory controller can only access one rank at a time, so having to switch between them adds overhead.

 

but how much overhead could there seriously be from adding more memory modules?

my guess is that it has to be near nothing, and would barely reveal itself even through benchmarking.

 

That is true. A memory controller with a good caching system should be able to hid the effect. These details won't show through in actual gaming. The bigger concern with more modules is probably power consumption, but even then it's probably only a handful of minutes.

 

So what about if the game needed the 512MB memory, the GPU have the 512MB and the chip isnt powerfull enough ?
Will the the rest, say 256MB will go unused ? useless ?

 

Yes! Yes! Yes!!!

 

An underpowered GPU won't mean that half your memory goes unused. It just means the memory capacity isn't the bottleneck. It's like trying to go through a big pool of information with a tiny straw. If the straw is only so big, sooner or later the benefit of having a bigger and bigger pool isn't relevent anymore since you no longer have to worry about being able to drain it before it can refill.

 

so how long will my GeForce Go 7950 GTX512ddr3 be able to use high settings on the new games ignoring the direct x 10 parts

 

Didn't mean exactly this..

The extra mb will be used,BUT if the gpu does not have juice,then the frames will be too low,and you won't be able to game,so you 'll have to drop details,res,etc.

No point in real gaming,when you 're under 25-30fps and the game gets choppy..

 

Haha im used to get choppy, rite now i only got GeForce 5200 32MB ..
So im gonna name my computer choppy ..
But with all your guys explanation..
I got a conclusion, that no matter what the GPU's is, its better for the GPU's for have more memory, even the bottleneck is no longer the memory, but the core clock, but extra memory means no harm in the GPU ..
Because lets say right now my GPU's in my laptop is 64MB, rather than 32MB, even with the same core clock and memory clock, i still would able to play C&C or many more games that demands 64MB, even the games get choppy ..
IMHO choppy game is better than no games at all
So maybe there is no point in real gaming, but at least im playing the game

 

You missed the point.
The core is MUCH more important than the memory size.
AND, games now are NOT saying memory requirements; the game developers realized it was stupid. They are now switching increasingly to MODELS of the CORES.

Hypothetical:
You have a 7300gs with 1GB of memory.
You have a 7950GTX with 128MB of memory.
Neither EXIST, BUT, the 7950GTX will kick the 73's ass from here to next week. The 79, even though the almighty box the game came in said it could not do it, will out perform the 73.

With the same clocks, and cores, the memory difference is irrelevant when gaming. The biggest impact of memory is from the speed and bus speed of said memory. NOT the capacity. If you have insanely fast ram on it, it'll play pretty nice stuff. Look at the 360 & PS3. The 360 uses dram on its GPU, a tiny amount of it. The PS3 uses xram. Both are lightning quick.

Trust us more than the sticker on the side of the game box, man.

 

yeah only very old games list vram amounts as gpu requirements.

now its like "geforce 6600 / ati x700 or higher"

 

In "high" the textures are compressed. in ultra they aren't compressed. either way they are the same textures, but the compression algarithem might make a tiny difference between the two.