Graphics New 512MB Graphics card

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by MrWillyWonka, 13 Aug 2004.

  1. MrWillyWonka

    MrWillyWonka Chocolate computers galore!

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    I'm plannning to buy an ATI Raedon 9800 pro graphics card, 256MB. But will the new 512MB graphics card from Nvidia and ATI coming out this autumn reduce the price of these cards? Should I wait until the 512MB ones come out before I buy the Raedon 9800?

    PS. I'm not gonna buy the 512MB's, I'm sure they are gonna be waaaaaay too expensive.
     
  2. Liquid K9

    Liquid K9 Human programmer.. heh

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    AS far as I know, anything above 128mb does very little performance-wise and is more of a novelty than anything else. It'll be a very long time before it'll make nya difference.
     
  3. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    The 9800 PRO will most probably disappear when the RV410 is released.


    Higher video ram helps to improve anti-aliasing performance at higher resolutions. At 4xAA you need to store four times the number of subsamples or pixels than you would at 0xAA. Dependant on the game, you will need video ram to allow you to play the game at high detail levels in conjunction with a high resolution and high AA depths.
     
  4. Liquid K9

    Liquid K9 Human programmer.. heh

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    I havent seen a single image, screenshot or other that suggested that higher memory than 128 actually shows either any performance or image improvement. at all. Maybe your right, I just havent seen anything that 'proves' it.

    EDIT:
    it makes sense that more memory would benifit an image in that way, however perhaps the current games dont do enough to utilize that memory?
     
  5. Austin

    Austin Minimodder

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    :dremel: AFAIK in terms of actual games only Doom III can really take advantage of gfx cards with > 128MB and even then it's by disabling compression which only carries minor quality improvements (much of the High Quality mode is derived from AF). Even in Doom III having 'just' 128MB gfx RAM in High Quality mode doesn't hurt so long as you have > 512MB system RAM. 256MB started to become common simply because the Average Joe thinks gfx RAM is of critical importance, which it certainly isn't. The cost that tends to come with 256MB cards over 128MB is not worth it and is unlikely to be until around 2006. If you plan to keep your card for over a year then 256MB can be worth it, but I doubt the cost will drop much when 512MB cards enter because much of the cost comes directly from the added cost of the extra RAM itself. Rem it's what's inside the cards that really counts, a 9700Pro with 128MB is likely to be a lot faster than a 9600Pro with 256MB in all cases.
     
  6. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Far Cry runs faster with more video memory.... you can run with higher AA/AF at higher resolution. DOOM 3 will be the same.

    There's no point in having lots of memory without memory bandwidth, though. In other words, there's no point putting 256Mb on a 9600 series card, because it's crippled by memory bandwidth and fillrate; thus it will never be able to run high AA/high res together. In order to run high AA/high resolution you need a conjunction of fill-rate, memory bandwidth and memory footprint (i.e. space to store the textures). You can run high AA in some games, but in games that are graphics intense, like Far Cry... you will struggle to run higher than 1024x768 2xAA 8xAF on a 9800 PRO simply because it lacks a combination of fill-rate, memory bandwidth and memory foot print.

    With Multisampling AA that is used on the r3x0, you require space to store 1024x768x2 subpixels for every scene that is rendered. Once the scene is rendered, an averaging process takes place. This combines all of the subpixels to create a single pixel colour value. With compression, a lot of the subpixels colour values will be the same as each other, so the averaging process does not need to take place, which ultimately means less memory bandwidth is required. Once the averaging process is complete, the GPU then has to render the scene on to the screen, which is where the fill rate comes in.
     
    Last edited: 15 Aug 2004
  7. Austin

    Austin Minimodder

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    ;) So you're saying that in the latest games (eg Farcry, Doom III) it's well worth having 256MB on a top-end card to run high res with AA+AF but surely also that 512MB is going to be hard to justify. 512MB gfx RAM will be very unlikely to show any real perf gain and the cost of adding another 256MB of the best gfx memory is likely to be phenomenal too, right?
     
  8. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Providing you've got the memory bandwidth there, 256Mb is worth it. Remember when the 9800 PRO came about with both 128Mb and 256Mb variants? The prices differences will be similar to that when the 512Mb cards evidently come to retail. However, I don't think the initial introductions will show an awful lot of worth because the cards will lack memory bandwidth. Right now, the X800 XT and 6800Ultra are well-balanced cards - in the most graphic intense games, at 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF, the card copes well enough for the game to be playable. Only DOOM 3 requires more memory in order to be able to enable ultra quality and experience no lag whatsoever. Far Cry will run happily at around 40fps at 1600x1200 on both the X800 XT and 6800Ultra. Of course, this is dependant on the CPU to a certain extent.

    I see that when the 512Mb cards come about, they won't have a great deal of use in the majority of titles simply because not every game has such complex pixel/texture patterns as what we see in DOOM 3/Far Cry. These cards are already capable of running at high AA/AF with high-resolution so the extra footprint isn't required in that respect. Naturally, games are heading towards the larger textures as we've seen in DOOM 3 - that's natural progression of technology. In 2 years time, I would say that the minimum required video memory will be 256Mb if you want to play a game with any kind of detail. I don't see the need for more than 6xAA at the moment, so improvements are to be made to the in-game textures, to make them more complex and give the cards a real work out. I play most games with 4xAA these days as I don't see great differences between 6xAA and 4xAA
     
  9. DanMcr

    DanMcr What's a Dremel?

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    I run Doom 3 just fine on the highest settings at 1280x1024 with no AA on a rad 9800 pro.
    1280x1024 looks better than 1024x768 with AA. (Probably due to my tft looking amazing in native res, but not so great at anything lower)

    512mb might not give much performance increase now, but it will do. How many people said that 128mb was more than what you needed a year or 2 back.

    With the advent of PCIe, more memory will be used aswell, as thanks to the high speed bus, the GPU of a graphics card can be used to off load alot more work from the CPU, doing its own real time calculations. The more memory the better.

    But i tend to wait for stuff to come down in price before i buy it anyway. Ive only just got my 9800pro about 2months ago. And ill make sure its on its last legs before i buy a new one. But when that time comes, ill get the best i can afford, coz it will have to last me. :D
     
  10. hilmana

    hilmana What's a Dremel?

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    well if u dont have a price limit i suggest the 512mb but i suggest waiting coz every time a better card comes out the others go down after a short wile.
     
  11. MikeTitan

    MikeTitan Ling Ling: 273 Battle Points

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    ok from what I gathered from the previous posts.

    the X800+6800 work well with 256mb since mem bandwidth, gpu and other random variable run well together?

    Having 512 wouldn't really benefit much unless you have the mem bandwidth and etc. to go with it so as not to bottleneck? :confused:
     
  12. Austin

    Austin Minimodder

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    :thumb: Yep. Having a 6800/X800 with 512MB is likely to be pointless just as having an FX5200/9600SE or even FX5700/9600XT with 256MB is. By the time 512MB is useful in much (if anything) the card will surely be way behind the times anyway, you'd probably pick up an 6800/X800 with 512MB for chump change. Memory certainly isn't everything though, if it came between a 9800XT_256MB and 6800GT_128MB the GT would easily be the better option even into next year (when presumably 256MB will be utilised more). At the mo a 6800_128MB (std nonGT) would be preferable to 9800XT_256MB. PCIe would surely be the only option in the days of 512MB being worth it, and that combined with faster system memory should really help to minimise any hits when a card runs out of it's own memory (and starts sharing the system RAM). So the capabilities of the card can easily outweigh the amount of RAM it has.
     
  13. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    I wouldn't say quite that pointless.. but certainly not worth the premium that they're likely to be charging for them.
     
  14. BvBart

    BvBart What's a Dremel?

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    Well, my school of thought is, if you're willing to pay the more-than-likely ludicrious price for the 512 megs of video memory when your 256 is just fine, you're probably the same sort of person that has his board's DDR slots filled with Dual Channel gig-sticks, and other vastly expensive bits of work. You'd probably be able to make something out of it.
     
  15. tmod

    tmod What's a Dremel?

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    Of course you'll have those that do SLI - 256*2(6800GT/U)...or 128*2 (6600GT). Then again, I suppose in that case we could be seeing 512*2. :eyebrow:

    EDIT: I just saw a thread at XS , in which one of the posters received clarification on SLI (from Dave Baumann), that the cards don't use their memory individually, but both will have the same information in their memory at any given time, but only render their portion of it (or at least that is how I understood it). Anyone want to clear this up? I doubt I'm interpreting this accurately...
     
    Last edited: 26 Aug 2004
  16. Austin

    Austin Minimodder

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    :thumb: Just to clarify something, the workload is divided across the cards but this will very rarely translate top half for one and bottom half for the other card. How the screen is divided between the cards will vary each frame, the idea being to give an equal load to each card.

    :rock: My interpretation is that each card has to hold the whole scene's data in its own memory, meaning substantial if not complete duplication. That makes total sense when you think that the matter each card has to render changes constantly, it would be very hard to sync the cards if one was given the bottom half and the other top, or if each was given certain textures for example. So two 256MB cards in SLI would still be effective 256MB. Doom III's Ultra Quality mode would test this very well, with > 256MB gfx RAM it should take a MUCH lower perf hit.

    :D To touch on what one person posted, a 256MB card and a 128MB card in SLI would not both be limited to 128MB, the 128MB one would simply slow down as it uses AGP Aperture to access system RAM as extra gfx RAM. AFAIK the cards need to be matched though, so that may not even be doable even with 2 6800's from the same manu with only the RAM size varying.

    :cooldude: In terms of speed boost from SLI it seems the technical maximum will be around 85% faster over a single card due to overheads. However as often happends this technical maximum is likely to be very rarely reached, but still even an average boost of 50% is not to be sniffed at. The main problem is going to be how limited the CPU is going to be, as even the 6800GT (if not 6800 std) is somewhat stifled by even the fastest current CPUs. On top of that the next card up would be preferable because it would probably be cheaper, cooler, less power hungry and probably as fast too. I guess we'll have to wait and see, it will certainly be interesting.
     
  17. AMDFX53

    AMDFX53 What's a Dremel?

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    Systems running with a 64MB video card are acceptable for running DOOM 3 at Low-Quality Settings. 128MB sustains Medium Quality Settings. 256MB sustains High Quality Settings. 512MB sustains Ultra High Quality Settings.

    RAM itself isn't going to make the Video Card faster in a huge difference. Core and Mem clock speeds are going to make the difference. But, the more RAM you have on your Video Card gives you the capability of running a game without compressions on for Maps or Lighting. For more Information with screen shots relating to this go to.. http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

    They talk about the differences in Low-End Computers vs High-End Computers running DOOM 3.
     
    Last edited: 14 Sep 2004
  18. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    As has been mentioned previously in this thread, larger frame buffer/memory footprint on a graphics board enables you to run with higher texture detail, or indeed Anti-Aliasing enabled. The problem lies where you've got a large memory footprint, but no memory bandwidth; this is especially true when you look at the 256MB version of the Radeon 9600 series, which is not only crippled by a 128-bit memory interface, but also by the relatively low memory clocks.

    I understand what you're saying, but I have to disagree with some of your statements. When FSAA is enabled, the larger the frame buffer, the better performance you're likely to get, providing the memory bandwidth required to output the subsamples after the averaging process has taken place (i.e. when Anti-Aliasing is applied). With a relatively small frame buffer, Anti-Aliasing performance is going to suffer because of high probability that texture thrashing is going to occur. Texture thrashing is where textures are "thrashed" up and down the AGP bus to system memory because there is not a large enough local memory footprint on the graphics board. Remember the AGP bus is only 2.1GB/s either up or down, not both ways, simultaneously - this is a major reason why you see huge lags at "Ultra" mode in Doom 3, even on a fast 256MB graphics board, such as the GeForce 6800Ultra.
     
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