64MB vs 128MB

[JuneBug17]

Is there much of a performance jump of a 64mb to a 128mb video card?

 

[nick1985]

gawd....this could be a long night.

 

[JuneBug17]

?

 

[Jeff7181]

Yes... unless you're on a budget and don't play many games.

 

[mindless1]

Yes, if running a modern/semi-modern game that has more than 60-odd MB worth of textures.

Only buy a 64MB card if it's REALLY cheap compared to the 128MB version, so it's easier to swallow having to replace it if/when you need more memory. As a very rough guide, I'd get at least 128MB of memory on anything faster than a GF4TI4200. Sometimes the 64MB cards are slightly faster due to having better spec'd memory, but that's a minor difference compared to lack of memory someday with (some) game... I suppose it depends on the price of the card and how long it'll be used for gaming.

 

[Pete]

If you play first-person shooters, especially online, yes. The difference is in certain scenes where a lot of textures are visible at once, the 128MB card will be able to store them all in onboard memory and maintain its framerate, whereas the 64MB card will stutter while swapping in textures from system memory into onboard memory via AGP.

Otherwise, you could just lower texture quality and probably get away with 64MB. But the big kick now is on high image quality, meaning both highest-res textures AND anisotropic filtering, which further improves texture quality compared to normal non-AF rendering.

 

[BFG10K]

Unless you only do very light gaming 64 MB cards should not even exist in your vocabulary. 128 MB cards are the standard these days.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Good way to look at it so far is that as soon as there is a new xxxMB gaming card available under two different brands, which really only is ATI and nVidia these days, then chances are you should go for a card with half that if you absolutely need a new card. Now that there are 256MB cards you only really need 128, back when 128MB first came out on cards like the 8500s, you only really needed 64.

Although, need is based on whether or not your gaming with new games, if you're a dedicated gamer to one or few specific games and you're still playing an old game like CS and are just looking for increased performance there, then no, 128 isn't needed at all and won't help really one bit other than that all of the fastest boards today have at least 128MB of ram so unless you want to play an old game with like 6X FSAA and 16X AF then maybe you might want to look into a 9800 Pro with 128MB+ of ram but I'm just babbling now so...whatever.

 

[Jeff7181]

Just 1 year ago, people were debating whether 64 MB cards were any slower than 128 MB cards... AnandTech even showed in their benchmarks, that only certain games benefited from it. Now more obviously do... but if you're playing games that are a year or more old, you don't need a 128MB card.

 

[McArra]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Just 1 year ago, people were debating whether 64 MB cards were any slower than 128 MB cards... AnandTech even showed in their benchmarks, that only certain games benefited from it. Now more obviously do... but if you're playing games that are a year or more old, you don't need a 128MB card.

 

[Pete]

Unless you're playing those "certain games" that benefit from 128MB in certain situations, like RtCW or JKII.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Pete
Unless you're playing those "certain games" that benefit from 128MB in certain situations, like RtCW or JKII.

Right, but if you're playing Quake 3 and Counter-Strike, there's no need for a 128 MB card if your trying to save money.