Graphics card RAM question...

[miked79]

Whats the purpose of the RAM on a graphics card?

My friend is gonna buy a new graphics card and theres alot of them out there that have like 768mb and 1.5gb ram.
His computer has 16 gigs of ram already... and the graphics cards that have the lower ram are alot cheaper...

Or do the graphics ram and the normal computer ram not like work together or mesh?

Thanks

 

[gnomio]

Ram on the graphics card is used by the gpu soley. The higher the resolution the more you need. 1Gb is enough these days but with computing where the gpus get used in acceleration more would be better.

 

[miked79]

sOO ur computer ram cant be used? its just the video cards ram that gets used?

 

[gnomio]

the gpus has dma schedulers which fetch the stuff from the systems ram and put it on the gpus vram where the gpu will start processing it.
Your cpu uses the ram as storage where the data thats going to be used are placed in it caches. More ram on the system side means you dont have to wait for the data to be loaded from your hdd the whole time. More ram on the gpu side means the gpu scheduler can take less trips to your system ram for data and less gpu cycles gets wasted meaning in a better performing gpu

 

[miked79]

Ooo excellent I understand now .

Thanks alot for the replies...very informative!

 

[gnomio]

Read this
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/55

And this
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/53

This is how a game works

Just remember processing power in the end counts more.