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    Why don't future IGP/GMA's...

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by caveman017, Aug 25, 2007.

  1. caveman017

    caveman017 Notebook Consultant

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    Include a small portion of dedicated video memory? I know the 360 has only 10MB of dedicated RAM for its video card (and 512MB of unified, which I think means shared) and look what it can do.

    Would 8MB or 16MB of DDR2 or even GDDR3 on the motherboard really raise costs that much, in favor of having much better performance?
     
    caveman017, Aug 25, 2007
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  2. saunders73

    saunders73 Notebook Guru

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    that 10mb of ram on the 360 is very very fast, much faster gddr3 even...and whats the point, i mean if you want better performance you get a dedicated card, IGPs are for people who dont use there computer for gaming..
     
    saunders73, Aug 25, 2007
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  3. tangent

    tangent Notebook Evangelist

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    who cares? IGP's aren't meant for gaming, and even with some dedicated memory your only looking at a small increase (the x200 with dedicated memory only ran about 30% faster then the one without, still not enough for much) They are perfect for what they are meant to do, 2d screens and not to creat much heat. also, the xbox 360's gpu is much more powerful then any igp, the ammount of memory has nothing to do with it. IGP's aren't performance parts. even with dedicated memory they are overshadowed by the least powerful dedicated part. The increase isn't that much.

    EDIT: in case i wasn't clear, some x200's do have dedicated video memory, most HP's with x200's have this. Its probably true for the next gen version but i dont know for sure.
     
    tangent, Aug 25, 2007
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  4. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    First, yes, it would raise costs noticeably, and second, it wouldn't provide much of a benefit. As usual, the thing about consoles (the 360 in this case) is that developers know the hardware setup in advance, and they can program their games to take advantage of this 10MB buffer on the GPU.

    On a PC, if an IGP tried the same thing.... well, there'd be no way for developers to take advantage of it. They wouldn't be able to choose what should go there, and what should go in regular memory. So it'd be up to the GPU itself, or maybe DirectX, to decide, which would be a lot less efficient. And on the whole, not really worth it.
     
    Jalf, Aug 25, 2007
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