Video cards with > 256MB

[snyderm]

I have just ordered a Sapphire Radeon 1950Xt 256MB version, and I was looking online at some reviews for the 256 MB version, and I see some surprising results that I did not intuitively expect.

In particular, looking at the Hardwarezone.com's review of the Powercolor Radeon 1950XT, its performance mirrors almost exactly the 1900XT 512 MB version.

What doesn't make sense to me is that with all of the games listed, the 256MB 1950XT kept pace with the 512MB 1900XT even with the resolution upped to 1600 X 1200 and even higher at ~1900 X 1600. There was no difference, and usually the newer 256 MB 1950XT even performed BETTER than the 512 1900GT at the highest resolutions. Given that the 1950XT should be slightly faster than the 1900XT, I expected the 1950XT to be slightly better at low resolutions and slowly lose its edge as the resolution is increased.

This seems to indicate to me that memory above 256 is meaningless. I mean, the games in the benchmark are about the most demanding available, aren't they? (Fear, the new Splinter cell, etc.)

I guess the shaders are all that really matters in this card.

 

[a123456]

There's a review somewhere out there that compared 2 Nvidia cards, 7800GTs, with both 256 and 512 at the same clocks. I don't know it off the top of my head but it was linked the last time someone asked the same question. Maybe a search will help.

Depending on the game, sometimes there was no difference. Other times, there was quite a bit of difference depending on the amount of memory that the textures required. Having to swap out to main memory obviously causes a performance downgrade.

The thing about the X1950XT is that it's clocked much higher than the X1900XT, so it makes up for the lack of memory in that respect. The above review showed that it really depends on the game. Some games, even at 1600x1200, don't use up 256M of memory, so the X1950XT is going to pull ahead. Others, even at lower resolutions, use up way more than 256M or even 512M (Oblivion modded textures come to mind). The X1950XT would still be competitive. 1450 v. 1800 is pretty significant.
It is possible to get the X1950XT to run a bit slower, but the X1900XT 512 (~310ish last I checked or the 290 with 150 MIR) costs so much more that it's probably not worth it anymore.