more ram makes the gpu better???

From what ive been hearing, some people with "3gb ram + 8600gs" has a better performance than people with "2gb ram + 8600gt". And if you had like 3gb ram + 8600gt, thats would even produce a greater performance.

If this is true, is it true for all video cards? Like i plan on gettin a laptop with the go 7700 w/ 512mb, and it has 1gb ram. I will buy a 2gb ram and make it 3gb, will it raise the performance of my 7700?

 

Depending on how much RAM is being used by backround processes, more RAM will increase your GPU performance. This is because the GPU will share system memory when it runs out. However, there are several downsides to this:
1) Regular RAM isn't optimized for the kind of work the GPU does, so performance is not as good as the dedicated memory the card has
2) If you don't have enough system memory, this memory won't be shared.

Generally, it's much better to have more dedicated memory. I don't think an 8600 GS with 3 gigs would be able to outperform the GT with only 2 gigs. Even vista uses less than 1 gig of ram, so there is more than 1 gb available for shared memory+memory the game itself uses. Also, the GT has a big advantage over the GS in the form of double the stream processors. So, to answer your questions:
I think it's unlikely that the GS would outperform the GT in that situation (2gb vs 3gb), but any card that shares memory will perform better (up to a point) with more memory, because more of it will be available to be shared.

 

You don't raise the performance of the gpu, you raise the performance of the overall machine. So the more ram you have, the more ram you will have available for the games you play. That's why it's better to have more ram.

Remember, ram is very important for games, not just the gpu and cpu. So if you don't have enough ram, then it doesn't matter if u have the most powerful gpu and cpu in the world, your games are still gonna run like crap. Thus you need to have enough ram to put the gpu to full use. But ram does not make the gpu better, it makes the whole system better. And it takes an efficient running system to play games, not just a gpu.

 

how big of a performance difference is it? what are the full specs of the system? i really doubt that an 8600gs will outperform the 8600gt in that situation. 2-3GB of ram isnt that big of a difference. unless they are using vista.

 

if you have windows xp, you are set with 2 GB.

windows vista takes more ram for itself that xp. so, for some games, 2 GB is just a bit too low. Adding an extra gig resolves the problem.

thats all thats going on.

 

No. Quite simply, more RAM does not make the GPU better.

What it does do is a different story. In most modern GPU's, the GPU is capable of borrowing from the system RAM when it needs to. However, the onboard RAM will always be faster, with lower latencies and more effective communication. Past a certain point (generally 256 MB total VRam for most resolutions/quality settings) this caching will have a negligible affect on performance. You can give a 8400 GS 1GB of ram (128 + 872 from the system) but you probably won't see a noticable performance boost past 256 MB, and no boost whatsoever past 512. The GPU simply cannot use that much RAM, especially RAM that is that slow.

One way to think about this is the way that your computer caches things that don't fit into RAM on your hard disk. This is known as a disk cache or a swap file. It is ridiculous to assume that buying a 1TB hdd and increasing your disk cache to 500 GB is like having an additional 500GB of RAM. All told, you system probably will use only 2-4 GB of that (generally page file size is double the RAM size) and the rest will have no affect whatsoever.

Now, the one exception to this is if your system is RAM bottlenecked. For example, if you try to play games on an 8600 GT with 512 MB of RAM on Vista, and compare it to an 8600 GS with 2GB on Vista, the 8600GS is going to win simply because it is no longer memory-limited.

In conclusion, there is no reason for you to dedicate more RAM to the video card than it needs. This becomes superflous, and it detracts from system RAM which does end up creating a negative impact on performance. The notion that 3GB + 8600GS is better than 2GB + 8600GT is frankly ridiculous; if that were true, people with 8600GTS's would be challanging 8800 GTX's with 4GB of RAM. More RAM won't make a graphics card better. It will help a graphics card patch up a lack, but it is little more than a band-aid solution that will not give you significant performance gain.

 

Even on Vista 2GB of RAM is enough for gaming right now, except maybe badly ram usage optimised games such as BF2