generic which is better?

[JWade]

so i was wondering, which is better, a 512mb card with 256bit bus or a 2gb card with a 64bit bus? one has higher speeds while the other has more memory. not talking any specific cards, but just something in general.

 

[Ken g6]

You can't just look at the bus width. You have to look at the bus clock speed too and multiply them for bus bandwidth.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, you want to look at the total memory bandwidth, keeping in mind that GDDR5 is faster than DDR3, often by a wide margin. (Meaning, 64-bit GDDR5 cards often have more memory bandwidth than 128-bit DDR3 cards. What makes that hard, is that some lower-end cards like the GT 730 that can still be used for low-end gaming, may come in a 2GB DDR3, or 1GB GDDR5 version. Which can make it hard to choose, because some games really require a 2GB card at minimum these days.) Better would be 128-bit 2GB GDDR5, but that config oftentimes means a different card model, such as a GTX650ti or something.

Low-end cards for gaming, are really a minefield that you don't want to be stepping in. Sure, they are "cheap", but for a reason. I mostly bought several of those Zotac 1GB GDDR5 GT730 cards mentioned recently in the Hot Deals cheap video cards thread, because for $40 they can do 4K60 output. Gaming was of a secondary concern, but according to a YT video I found, they can play GTA V, at some lowered settings, with a quad-core CPU. Which is a nice bonus feature.

 

[Guru]

The 512mb card will be useless, since most games tend to store stuff in memory and if its filled up, it doesn't matter how fast it is or what bus width it has. Also the bigger the textures, the more memory space at once is used, so it can easily overwhelm the 512mb ram.

This is why we don't see some extreme configuration on the market, like say 512mb with 512bit bus and 20k mhz, or 20GB vram on a 64bit bus interface, last time we had such extreme product was the rambus memory, I think they came in 256mb configuration with like absurd MHz and stuff, it didn't work out really well.

 

[2is]

You can't just look at the bus width. You have to look at the bus clock speed too and multiply them for bus bandwidth.

While this is true, I don't think there's ever been a 64bit card with fast enough memory to be anything but crap. With that said, both cards would be total crap, one due to lack of memory, the other due to lack of bandwidth.

 

[whm1974]

The Cheapest GPU I would get for for a low end gaming is the 1030, which comes with 2GB of memory. However for a proper gaming rig I wouldn't go with less then 1050Ti and that's for a budget box.

 

[JWade]

thanks for all the replies