32mb or 64mb? Is the difference HUGE?

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I read on another site that there really isnt much of a difference between getting a 32mb video card and a 64mb card. From what i read it seemed like they were trying to say that the extra memory really isnt needed? Can anyone toss in some insight on this? Should I spend the extra bucks for 64mbs, or is 32 good? How signifigant is the difference?

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G

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I forogt to mention I was talking about the GeForce Pro card.

Pentium WHAT? It's not contagious is it?
 
I don't know if the difference is huge, but lokk at it this way.

Your running a 32MB card and 128MB of RAM. Your AGP aperture is 64MB.

This means 64MB of your main memory can be used for graphical texturing, allowing the 32MB for <b>rendering</b>.

With a 64MB card you get 64MB for rendering. This can mean quite a difference if the game or app needs a lot of rendering.

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bungee

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Some people say that as games will come out, there will be more and more textures so the 32 MB extra memory will be a must.
Other people say that if you don't go more than 1024x768x32, 32 MB is enough because extra memory is used for very high resolution.
I'm myself a bit confuse with that, but I didn't took any chance: I bought a RADEON 64MB.

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Gog

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It comes down to simple maths,
1024x768x32 = 25165824. You need enough memory on your vid card to handle this many bits of information and hopefully have some spare.
1600x1200x32 = 61440000 oops my 32M vid card is suddenly not looking so good on memory.

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Look at the size of that thing!
 

phsstpok

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32-bit color only needs 4 bytes per pixel, thus 1024x768x4=3145728 bytes and 1600x1200x4=7680000 bytes. This is required for the frame buffer (what you see on the screen). More memory is needed for other buffers and textures. Yes, you will run out of memory much faster at 1600x1200 but in undemanding games you can still use 32mb of video memory.

The advantage of having large amounts of video memory is to minimize the need of using memory across the AGP bus which is much slower than accessing local video memory (even at AGP 4x).

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 07/30/01 03:33 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

bungee

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Thanks for the point. But exactly when will the card go over AGP for extra memory?

:smile: <font color=red>Hail total victory of AMD versus Intel! :smile:
 

phsstpok

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I wish I could give you the answer that you are looking for but it depends on the game. If a game has enough textures and models it may demand more memory than 32mb. Until today I was not aware of any games that used this much memory (at least not at 1024x768) but then I was reading a <A HREF="http://www.voodooextreme.com/games/reviews/maxpayne/" target="_new">review of Max Payne</A> at <A HREF="http://www.voodooextreme.com" target="_new">www.voodooextreme.com</A> which hints at this requirement.
 

Gog

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32-bit color only needs 4 bytes per pixel, thus 1024x768x4=3145728 bytes and 1600x1200x4=7680000 bytes.

I did say 32 bits not bytes, 32/4 = 8 bits per byte.

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Look at the size of that thing!
 

phsstpok

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In reply to:
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32-bit color only needs 4 bytes per pixel, thus 1024x768x4=3145728 bytes and 1600x1200x4=7680000 bytes.



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I did say 32 bits not bytes, 32/4 = 8 bits per byte.

Yes but you also said,

"It comes down to simple maths, 1024x768x32 = 25165824 . . .

"1600x1200x32 = 61440000 oops my 32M vid card is suddenly not looking so good on memory".

However, the memory required is only
7680000 bytes, 1600x1200x4 not 1600x1200x32. 7680000 bytes is only 7.7mb and clearly a 32mb video card will be able to handle this resolution.

It is not "simple math" if your math is wrong.
 

Gog

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So 7.7M for the current frame, 7.7 M for the next frame, if heavy pre processing or filtering, 7.7 M for a pre process frame, the actual scene data lets say 1M, the textures lets say 3 big textures at 8M each, they'll be compressed at let's say 50% = 12M for textures thats
7+7+7+1+12 = 34M

That memory can disappear pretty quickly especially with big textures and bump maps.

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Look at the size of that thing!
 

phsstpok

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My apologies then.

You oversimplified your original argument making it look like you were comparing bits to bytes and you also made 1600x1200 resolution sound impossible with 32mb of RAM.

Your last argument is good one. One that even I can understand.

For those of us with 32mb Geforce cards the problem is even worse. Texture compression stinks on Geforce 2. For this reason 64mb would be very helpful. (Though, I don't think a Geforce 2 MX can generate good enough framerates at 1600x1200). Since no video cards are fast enough if too much AGP memory is used, memory across the AGP bus being very slow compared to local video memory, this is another good reason for more local video memory.

Thanks for clarifying your earlier post.



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 07/31/01 02:04 PM.</EM></FONT></P>