pipe lines vs core speed

which one is more important in a video card?

 

Both are very important. The more pipelines a core has, the better it can run at higher resolutions, and this is very important in the high end cards, because they have to perform well at very high resolutions. Core clockspeed is also something that greatly affects performance. If you look at the high end cards sold today, you will notice that they all have high clockspeeds. Building a core with more and more pipelines, and then clocking it to a high speed is difficult. It is the same thing as building a very complex core and then trying to give it a high clockspeed.

 

The more pixel pipelines a card has, the more pixels it can render per pass so I'd say they are more important, but as Zero said, you also need reasonably high clockspeeds to get the best performance.

Higher-end mobile video cards have 8 or more pixel pipelines, like the Go7600 or X1600. Midrange cards like the Go7400/X1400 have 4 pipelines. If you want to run games at higher resolutions, then having a lot of pipelines is a must to render all those pixels.

 

What's most important in a car? Being able to accelerate or brake?

What you're asking makes about as much sense. The number of pipelines in a card just determines how many pixels or vertices it can handle simultaneously. The clock speed determines how fast it can handle them. So if you double the clock speed, you can (if we disregard other factors) halve the number of pipelines, and end up with the same performance.

Grossly simplified, you can say that performance = # of pipelines * core clock speed. So neither is "more important" than the other. The only thing that matters is the combination.

 

I say pipelines are more important.

Core speed can vary, and doesn't always determine the better performer.

For example the 7600 was clocked lower then the x1600 series but was a better performer. The 7900 series was clocked lower then the 7600 series but was a better performer. etc.

And the more pipelines you have the image quality greatly increases and that is something core speed can't accomplish.

 

pipelines and memory interface is important too. the 7900 is 256bit while the 7600 is only 128. in general clock speed is only important when comparing two graphics cards of the same class, in the end you cant compare the 7600 and 7900 on clock speed alone cuz pipelines, memory interface and a bunch of other crap make the 7900 superior.

 

Yes. Number of pipelines can also vary and doesn't always determine the better performer. That's because the clock speed may vary as well, and the implementation details of the pipelines vary too.

Buh? Yes, and it also cooks dinner for you.

Number of pipelines have nothing to do with image quality.

As I said, the only relevant measure is number of pipelines multiplied by core speed. (Technically, you should add in the individual pipelines' IPC (instructions per cycle) as well. And of course, this doesn't touch on memory bottlenecks at all.

Bottom line? Neither is "more important" than the other. Both are part of the exact same equation, and if one factor goes down, one of the others can compensate by going up.

 

Lets just all agree that everything that makes up a graphics card is important and each part has an effect on the performance and image quality

 

Not VRAM though. At the present, some cards have way more VRAM than they utilise and the consumer is being charged for it.