mazmac24 Posted June 3, 2006 Share Posted June 3, 2006 What do the sizes on graphics cards mean. (I.E. 32mb, 64mb, 128mn, 256mb, and 512mb) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForsetiAvatar Posted June 3, 2006 Share Posted June 3, 2006 The 256MB etc. is the amount of memory on the graphics card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 3, 2006 Share Posted June 3, 2006 The sizes is the amount of Graphics Memory that they have onboard. Graphics Memory is used to hold all the information that the GPU is going to need very quickly so it doesn't have to request it from the system memory, which is slower. So obviously the more the better. Many people feel that 512MB of Memory on a GFX card is overkill at the moment, but the way I see it is if you get a good price on a 512MB card then go for it because you will be future-proofing yourself for when more games come out requiring it. Be warned some low end GFX cards used "TurboCache" in nVidias and "HyperMemory" in ATi chips, this means the card comes with a very small amount of memory on the GFX card (typically 64MB) and then uses a protion of your system memory. This really hurts performance because your reducing the amount of memory your CPU can use and as I said earlier it is slower to use that memory. Hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForsetiAvatar Posted June 3, 2006 Share Posted June 3, 2006 Be warned some low end GFX cards used "TurboCache" in nVidias and "HyperMemory" in ATi chips, this means the card comes with a very small amount of memory on the GFX card (typically 64MB) and then uses a protion of your system memory. This really hurts performance because your reducing the amount of memory your CPU can use and as I said earlier it is slower to use that memory.Hope this helps. They do this in actual cards??? I have only ever seen this w/ "on-board" video chipsets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 3, 2006 Share Posted June 3, 2006 http://www.nvidia.com/page/turbocache.html Key features of the TurboCache architecture: * Patented hardware and software technologies that render directly to system memory * A TurboCache Manager (TCM), which dynamically allocates memory for maximum system performance * Intelligent software algorithms that maximize application performance * Bidirectional PCI Express® bandwidth, in conjunction with TurboCache architecture, which improves graphics price/performance nVidia won't admit that it saves money and reduces performance but there is their page about it. You just have to remember if it was so great then all the GFX cards would support it, it don't see any 7900GTX with only 64MB of onboard RAM and 512MB of TurboCache. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForsetiAvatar Posted June 3, 2006 Share Posted June 3, 2006 Wow, I did not know about that. Most of the systems I build for ppl are either ultra-cheap on-board video types, or killer gaming machines. I rarely look at middle of the road type stuff. Thanks for the info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheZ Posted June 4, 2006 Share Posted June 4, 2006 all my systems only have 128MB of video ram ......i should get a new card :oops: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 4, 2006 Share Posted June 4, 2006 128MB is fine, 80% of people have that or less. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted June 4, 2006 Share Posted June 4, 2006 I would add though, that the RAM does not equal performance... one card carrying 128MB RAM might perform better that a card carrying 256MB so check out the other specs too if you're going for real-world performance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rFayjW98ciLoNQLDZmFRKD Posted June 5, 2006 Share Posted June 5, 2006 It seams the the majority of gamers have 128 to 256: http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html It also says that people are still using windows ME!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NZ Guy :D Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 i have on bored which varries so meh could be 100gigs lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rFayjW98ciLoNQLDZmFRKD Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 i have on bored which varries so meh could be 100gigs lol Do you game!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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