X1600 256MB Faster than X1600 512MB - Due To The Extra 256MB Hypermemory

3DMark05 benchmarks have the 256MB version at 4100 and the 512MB version at 3700. This is consistent with what you'd expect from a technical viewpoint. I think it's insane to add Hypermemory to a card with 256MB, but I don't know if it is possible to disable it.

Look at W3J and W2J scores and then look at S96J scores. Clocks are the same. This would also explain why people have been fairly unsuccessful getting decent memory overclock on their 512MB X1600's.

I'd like an honest discussion trying to come up with cnsensus or alternative explanations for this and potentially a petition to Asus for a BIOS update to disable Hypermemory.

 

? Which model has 512mb x1600? I think alll of them only had 256mb X1600

 

Same here, I don't recall any x1600 w/ 512mb. Maybe there are for the desktop but on a laptop?

 

I think you smoked some bad weed.

 

LoL !!!

 

Some stores claim that the x1600 is 512, that's just a marketing hype. When you make up your mind, it's a different story. That's what happend to me anyway. A very smart salesman once explained to me that the intel 915 was better than an ATI graphic card that had only 64 dedicated.

 

Guys why dont you read? He has in his topic title hypermemory X1600...

This is because the X1600 cant make use of all the 512 MB, but it lowers the bandwith of the X1600 256 MB....

Charlie-Peru

 

i think the main problem at hypermemory is that graph card use the main ram so it reduces the performance. if the ram of the computer is high there will be no problem..

 

*shrugs* i get 4500+ with my X1600 without any OC'ing.

 

there is only one kind of x1600 card in laptops

its 256 mb/ called 512 hypermemory

if one version of it in a laptop got a lower score than another version of it, its because one version has ddr2 and another had ddr3.

they are all the same amount of ram but their are versions with different speed of ram.

 

3917 3Dmark's
3921 3Dmark's

 

Good job with the acer, I got a 3900 on my LG then a 4200 after installing Omega Drivers.

 

Hypermemory's only purpose is marketing - making something look like it has more than it actually does. Don't expect a lot out of it; shared memory solutions have always been weak.

It doesn't matter if you get the 256MB dedicated X1600 or the "512MB HyperMemory" version. They're both the same and any PCI-express ATI card can be made to use Hypermemory through a newer driver set.

Chaz

 

I don't think that this comes in a "bad" variety.

I've actually read that before though on other cards - that the lesser memory can sometimes be faster overall. I don't really know the reasoning for that, or if real world performance "shows" that.

 

Definitely don't use Hypermemory if you only have 512MB's of RAM. I most likely wouldn't use it even with 1GB. 1GB+ Use hypermemory and it should be slightly faster than just with the 256MB's of onboard memory.

 

probably comparing ati's 256mb x1600 to Nvidia's 512mb (256mb hypermemory) 7600.

i'd hope at least

 

On powernotebooks.com, they have several of the Asus notebooks listed with an x1600. However, all of the Asus ones list 512MB x1600, while the PowerPro versions only list 256MB. I'm assuming the 512MB in the Asus models are hypermemory versions of the x1600, but it just confuses me a little. Am I right to assume that the Asus models have a 512MB x1600 with 256 of hypermemory and they downgraded to just the standard 256MB for the PowerPro versions?

And as a footnote, how big of a difference is there between the two cards?

 

yup, notice the asus ones say "up to 512MB"... I believe everything on their site is an x1600 256MB dedicated card with optional 256MB hypermemory. The powerpro ones are just being more honest... they are 256MB dedicated (not downgraded, since they are using an asus s/z96j barebones). I would assume they have hypermemory. check this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=55328

with that card, you'd probably disable hypermemory anyway. the bandwidth/transfer speed between the vid card and vid card memory is *way* faster than the bandwidth/transfer speed to your RAM, even with x16 PCI express. enabling it would slow down overall processing on the card.
with the extra 256MB from RAM, you'd be able to keep more in memory and spend less time loading/unloading things from memory, but you'd increase the time it takes to get those things by a lot. its probably as fast to load/unload things from 256MB on the card alone.

 

woudl it be faster if the ram was 2gb, 667 ram

 

Perhaps slightly, but you wouldn't notice a difference in terms of performance.

 

I agree, there wouldn't be any difference in performance.

 

notebook_ftw, I merged your thread into this one, it deals with the same topic. Please try to do a thread search before completing a new one.

 

Yeah, thanks. I was just looking late last night at the W3J and got a little confused. Sorrry for the double post.

 

Are there any X1600s with only 128MB dedicated? I could have sworn there are some that are claimed to be 512MB hypermemory but only 128 dedicated...

 

The Acer 5670 has recently been updated with the X1600, it has only 128MB of dedicated memory. The 17" Sager NP5750 also has 128MB dedicated. I haven't seen benchmarks, so I'm not sure how much it impacts performance.

 

there have been some benchmarks in the acer forum. the one with 128 mb gets around 2800 3dmarks with stock settings, which is quite disappointing.

 

So it seems like it's only a bit better than the X1400? A difference of about ~600 or so 3DMarks?

 

The X1600 would still carry a vast performance advantage over X1400, regardless of whether it had 128MB or 256MB. Of course, the difference is lessened with the 128MB version, but still much faster.

That is disappointing. My X700 gets more than 2800 points on stock, and well over 3000 if overclocked. Even people with overclocked 128MB X700's can surpass 2800 points.
Do you have any idea of the stock speeds? It sounds as if it is horribly underclocked and probably does not use GDDR3 memory as the 256MB X1600 does.

If anyone happens to run across 3DMark03 scores for the 128MB X1600, be sure to post them - that benchmark does not use 256MB of video memory and thus would be a good benchmark to use to compare against the 256MB X1600.

 

here's the thread with the info on the x1600 with 128 mb in the acer 5672:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=52492&page=4