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    Turbocache and how to use it if it worth to use it

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by Kertesz, Sep 3, 2007.

  1. Kertesz

    Kertesz Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi I have an msi gx700x and wondered if turbocache can help me improve gaming performance and if yes how? My spec is core2duo 2GHZ 4MB L2 (santa rosa), 2GB 667Mhz ddr2, 120GB 5400rpm HDD, 8600GT 512MB gdr2. PLS HELP or any other idea how to incrase gaming power
     
    Kertesz, Sep 3, 2007
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  2. wolfraider

    wolfraider Grand Viezir of Chaos

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    turbocache is an automatic system build up in your gpu to increase video memory. if you have 256 dedicated ram than turbocache is uselles since gpu is not powerfull enough to use it. i give you ex.

    i have ati x1600 with 128 ram +384 hypermemory=512 video ram

    when i had only 512 system ram hypermemory was using max 256 ram at least that was what direct x showed
    when i added adittional 512 ram so the system got 1GB overall

    than direct x showed that maximum video memory availible was 512 ram.

    So yes it depends on how much ram you got and what you are running.
    turbocache is similiar but better(means it uses ram more efficiently than hypermemory).
    And more video ram whether its dedicated or shared doesn't neccesarly mean better.
     
    wolfraider, Sep 3, 2007
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  3. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    Put simply, would NVidia put the Turbocache feature on the card if it only lowered performance? ;)

    it's a feature designed to make the performance of *really* low end cards reach somewhat tolerable levels. It's far from an ideal solution (reliance on system memory becomes a bottleneck), but it's still better than not having that extra memory in the first place.

    So yeah, unless you run into specific cases where it doesn't work properly or something, keep it enabled.
     
    Jalf, Sep 3, 2007
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  4. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

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    This actually highlights the two parts of turbocache, firstly, it can speed things up somewhat. However, it is very advantageous for Nvidia or a notebook retailer to show the memory of a card as higher than it actually is. For example if I had a:

    8600m GT with 256 Mb
    v.s.
    8600m GS with 512 Mb turbocache

    to a normal customer, the GS would seem like the more powerful card.
     
    Lithus, Sep 3, 2007
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  5. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    Well, true... :p
    But still, Turbocache generally does improve performance (on low-end cards. It'd be useless on faster cards, which is why it isn't used on those)
     
    Jalf, Sep 3, 2007
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