Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Pongo on March 07, 2005, 04:55:45 PM
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Could you tell when running AH2 that you had a 256 meg card vs a 128 meg video card?
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I have a 128 MB card. Works fine. Not that 256 MB wouldnt be better. But I get by ok. :)
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I very recently bought an X800 Pro 256mb (VIVO). Flashed it to an X800XT 256.
Former card was a 9600XT 128mb
Biggest difference I would say is the flawless framerate. With animated water enabled it never drops below 50. Usually disable it because I cannot judge my position relative to the water when looking down.
I have 1gig of system ram, so I would precache everything in there. It isn't the best grade ram and has CAS of 3. The first thing I tried when running AH2 with the x800 was precache everything in video memory. I run textures at 1024 and I lose the option of precaching everything in vidmem. At 512 it is fine. I don't think that's a problem with the x800 though. I haven't seen it use more than 75mb at any point, even in heavily congested areas. If a texture isn't on hand, it loads so quick I can't really notice.
Dunno. I don't think many games are taking advantage of the 256mb at this time. I could be wrong.
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Something is making use of it, or they wouldnt be putting together those new 512MB video cards. Brrrrrr. I'm still getting used to the idea of 256MB on a video card. I've owned many a computer with less memory. And not that long ago.
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The amount of video ram being reported takes into account compression of the textures (video cards have hardware compression/decompression). They have to be uncompressed when in use, so multiple that figure by about 4 to get an idea of how much video ram will be used or can be used if all the textures loaded needed to be used in any given frame.
Add anti-aliasing to the equation and the amount of video ram needed escalates like crazy.
The video ram amount cannot be trusted too much as the video card companies report what they want, when they want.
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Of course, you need a system that can keep up with the video card. my system isn't to great and has a few processes I haven't bothered to look up in the background. I stay in the mid teens to high 50s on my 128.
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I've yet to hear anyone wish they had less video ram.
Im curious how the dual-video card setups fly along (SLI)
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The price of the video card neatly doubles when you get the 256 meg versions. I was just wondering if there is any real advantage to having it. The only reply here that really addresses the issue(except skuzzy whom may address it but Im not sure) is comparing a 9600 with 128 to an 800 series with 256. Hardly a reasonable comparison as to what difference the amount of RAM made to the upgrade.
Too bad I cant buy a 128 card and add another 128 if I think I could use it.
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Well think of it this way, Pongo...there used to be cards like that. I think some of the old Diamond cards had 4mb and you could upgrade them to 8mb. But the ram was unique, and if you did decide to upgrade it, the ram cost more than the inital purchase of the video card
Im looking to do a 256mb card in the near future. As more and more of them hit the market, Im sure more and more games will utilize them. Much as they were slow to use 128mb cards when they first came out :)
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Just make sure you research the card you buy thoroughly. Because the RAM is arguably the most expensive part of the card, especially when you start talking about 256 MB of it. Various manufacturers have done everything from using 64 bit bus sizes to using slower RAM in order to drop costs. Often so much so, that the 256MB versions become slower than their 128MB counterparts. The more these cards get into the mainstream, the less this will happen I'm sure, but just make sure you check it out first.
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thnks guys.
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When the 128 has substancially higher speed ram its better. Considering with the trerrain upgraids we get the 256 will get some use, but only worth it if its fast.
I think skuzzy posted a calculation of necessary video ram for certain settings of texture size and anti alialising, but it did not figure in texture compression.
My card driver lists something like 140 MB in use, with 512 texture size, so i would take a gues that does not fit in 128 MB cards, but only barely so the hit should not be to big.
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More ram does not equal better performance and can hurt performance. Like Schutt said, typically 256MB video cards use much slower ram. Now this is not so true with the latest generation of high end cards (and only the high end cards), but anything under the top of the line video cards with 256MB of ram will probably use much slower memory.
The lower memory speed will dramatically impact performance of a video card.
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Skuzzy..By top - o - the line you mean Radeon X800XT 256... Or Nvidia 6800 GT? (Thats the newest Gforce right?)
Those would have the faster 256 megs of ram correct?
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Assuming equal memory speeds, will the extra 128 be used by AH skuzzy?
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I went from an Abit Siluro 128MB Geforce4 Ti4400 card to a BFG 128MB Geforce 6800 OC. The difference isn't so much speed in this upgrade as it was image quality and clarity. In the tower I get 59 fps and when flying it stays in that same range sometimes dropping down to around 40-45 fps. I am running an Athlon64 3200+ with 1GB DDR400 RAM.
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Originally posted by Pongo
Assuming equal memory speeds, will the extra 128 be used by AH skuzzy?
If it needs it,, then yes.
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Originally posted by Octavius
I very recently bought an X800 Pro 256mb (VIVO). Flashed it to an X800XT 256.
Former card was a 9600XT 128mb
Biggest difference I would say is the flawless framerate. With animated water enabled it never drops below 50. Usually disable it because I cannot judge my position relative to the water when looking down.
I have 1gig of system ram, so I would precache everything in there. It isn't the best grade ram and has CAS of 3. The first thing I tried when running AH2 with the x800 was precache everything in video memory. I run textures at 1024 and I lose the option of precaching everything in vidmem. At 512 it is fine. I don't think that's a problem with the x800 though. I haven't seen it use more than 75mb at any point, even in heavily congested areas. If a texture isn't on hand, it loads so quick I can't really notice.
Dunno. I don't think many games are taking advantage of the 256mb at this time. I could be wrong.
How do you flash that card...I have a gigabyte X800pro and would love to at least explore the possibilities...
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When I was looking into cards recently Toms had a pretty good set of benchmarks (38 VC's or so)...they had some 128/256 of same model...was a 10-15% performance differance I think...from what I recall the speed of the pipe was more important than the amount of memory...a 64 bit pipe was less effective than a 128 with double memory and a 256 pipe more important than 256 meg....
your better of with a 128 meg memory and a 256 pipe than 256 meg and a 128 or 64 bit pipe....
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Humble it has to be the X800 Pro VIVO version to be flash capable.
Gigabytes have a very high success rate of getting the full X800XT PE speeds.
If thats what you have we can provide links etc.
Mine flashed and has run at X800 XT PE speeds for many months now.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
If it needs it,, then yes.
lol
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Originally posted by humble
When I was looking into cards recently Toms had a pretty good set of benchmarks (38 VC's or so)...they had some 128/256 of same model...was a 10-15% performance differance I think...from what I recall the speed of the pipe was more important than the amount of memory...a 64 bit pipe was less effective than a 128 with double memory and a 256 pipe more important than 256 meg....
your better of with a 128 meg memory and a 256 pipe than 256 meg and a 128 or 64 bit pipe....
Agree 100%. The memory bus width is by far the biggest restrictor of speed. Many companies use similar or identical chipsets on different cards and underclock the "value" ones, but they save more money keeping the bus width small. You can OC a card all you want, but you will never make a card with a 64 bit memory bus run like a card with a 256 bit memory bus. Speed of the memory itself would be right behind that as a limiting factor.
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If you run at 1600x1200x32 with x4 FSAA or higher, that chomps up some video memory... add in high resolution textures, and 128MB just won't do it. Given the fact that some of the sims I play allow very high resolution textures and that I love playing at 1600x1200x32, I could use as much video memory as I can afford.
I have been running on 1GB of system RAM and 128MB of Video RAM for a very long time and have enjoyed the benefits. But now I need a video card with that much RAM and 2 to 4 GB of system RAM to run my sims they way I want. Of course it would help if I had a CPU and motherboard that was designed this century :)
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Originally posted by 214thCavalier
Humble it has to be the X800 Pro VIVO version to be flash capable.
Gigabytes have a very high success rate of getting the full X800XT PE speeds.
If thats what you have we can provide links etc.
Mine flashed and has run at X800 XT PE speeds for many months now.
I have a GV-R80P256D....not sure if thats VIVO or not....
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Your out of luck, should have purchased the GV-R80P256V version.
That would be the version capable of video editing VIVO (video in, video out).
Your card the standard X800 Pro is not capable of being flashed to the 16 pipe version.
Standard pro's had some traces laser cut, whereas the X800Pro Vivo is to all intents an X800 XT vivo with an altered bios to reduce the working pipelines and clock speeds.