indika_sam said:
be frank with you all, i have no much knowledge on the computer items. specially with those terms and tech words.
but as you know i can speak, read and write (of coz) understand english. but till today, till i see this thread, i thought the same way as anusha bro was telling. (VGA is another item in a cpu, but not as a another small cpu in cpu.) but still i wonder what are the facts that we got to consider when buying a vga out of ram ?
can somebody pls explain.....?
thanx in advance.
tc
OK, first of all, I'm not saying RAM is not important. Video RAM is very important, but choosing the VGA ONLY by the amount of installed Video RAM is wrong.
Like in PCs, where you match the amount of RAM with the other parts of the PC, you need to match the video RAM with the processor in the VGA. For example, you don't buy a quad core CPU with just 1GB RAM, right? Doesn't sound right, because you buy the Quad Core CPU to do a lot of multitasking, but as you don't have enough RAM to load a lot of programs into RAM at the same time, you are losing the advantage of the CPU.
Likewise, the Video RAM has to be matched to the graphics processors as not to lose the advantage of one component by the other component.
Why do you need RAM on VGA? Two things mainly.
1. To hold the already processed frames (hence it is also called the frame buffer)
2. To hold the data that is to be processed.
3. To hold the high resolution textures instead of keeping them in the system RAM, as Video RAM is much faster than system RAM.
The 1st and the 3rd points are critical as they require a lot of RAM. The amount of RAM used for holding the currently processed frames depends pretty much only on the resolution.
Let's take three video card types.
1. Low end (such as 8500GT/HD3650)
Low end cards are characterized by less powerful processor + slower RAM, not amount of RAM on the card. Less powerful processor means you can't process large resolutions or complex calculations that are required in HIGH graphics settings, to give a playable frame rate. This means, you need to lower the resolution and graphics settings, THEN having lots of RAM is a waste. Basically 256MB of RAM is MORE THAN ENOUGH FOR THESE CARDS.
2. Mid range cards (eg: 9600GT/8800GT/HD3870/HD4850)
These cards can play games at 1280x1024 with no problem, and some work well at 1600x1200 as well. This means they need a lot of RAM to hold the frames, and as you can enable pretty much the highest graphics settings at those resolution, you need a lot of RAM to hold the textures and frames. But by a lot, I don't say A LOT! 512MB is pretty much enough for the processing power of these cards.
Note: Texture storage is very important in some games, and not very important in some. In Crysis, if you enable high settings without having 512MB, because of these amount of textures it requires, the performance goes down A LOT! This is why 8800GT 256MB is VERY VERY VERY slow in Crysis, even at 1024x768. (See that the resolution DOESN'T need most of the Video RAM)
3. Highend Video Cards (GTX260/280/HD4870/HD4870X2)
These cards are capable of handling 1920x1200 or even 2560x1600 and with AA too!!! This is where you really really need video RAM. 512MB is not enough to match the capabilities of the graphics processor in these cards. You need 1GB or sometimes, even 2GB is not a waste at least on the HD4870X2.
This is just a small guide, and there can be exceptions where more video RAM improves performance with low power CPUs too.
If they never spend we wont get 512's for lower prices...
