GTX260 with 1792mb of VRAM

[mhouck]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Tits on a bull.

lol :disgust:

 

[darXoul]

I'd rather see a 2 x 1 GB 295 (preferably with quieter air cooling) than a 1.8 GB 260.

 

[chizow]

I wouldn't discount the additional VRAM so quickly on a upper mid-range part like the GTX 260. There's already quite a few games where it seems the 260 and especially the GTX 295 seem to fall behind the 1GB 4870 and GTX 280 even at playable resolutions and frame rates, especially with higher AA modes enabled requiring more VRAM.

As someone already mentioned, GTA4 should certainly see a tangible improvement as the game is CPU and VRAM limited before its bottlenecked by GPU performance. Fallout, Crysis, few others with huge textures should benefit, especially with AA. Although its not quite the same jump from 512MB to 1GB as 896MB to 1.7GB, here's a good example showing how a "slow and unworthy" GPU suddenly leapfrogs a part that most considered faster in every aspect depending on title and resolution:

9800GTX+ 1GB

Notice the difference in VRAM allows the 9800GTX+ to leapfrog the 512MB 4870 in many instances. I don't think many would've thought that 6 months ago, before a 1GB 9800GTX+ was actually released, just as many didn't think a 1GB 4870 was worth it over a 512MB 4870.

 

[jiro]

still.. look at the difference between 9800GTX+ 1GB vs 9800GTX+ 512 - (none) at that site.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/...sisWarhead_1680_1x.png

it's better than nothing. has better resale value anyway.

there's actually performance increase - just 1-2fps in some games.

 

[happy medium]

I see theres a gtx 275 -1796 vram comming too. (quick google) .

I see theres a 2gb gtx 285 comming too.

http://hothardware.com/News/Sp...IDIA-GeForce-GTX-GPUs/

They make a 4870 with 2gb ram. Worthless?

http://www.tomshardware.com/ne...-GeForce-GTX,7090.html

Are these cards with extra ram also worthless ?

 

[MrK6]

Originally posted by: happy medium
I see theres a gtx 275 -1796 vram comming too. (quick google) .

I see theres a 2gb gtx 285 comming too.

http://hothardware.com/News/Sp...IDIA-GeForce-GTX-GPUs/

They make a 4870 with 2gb ram. Worthless?

http://www.tomshardware.com/ne...-GeForce-GTX,7090.html

Are these cards with extra ram also worthless ?

Worthless? No. Overkill? Yes. I can think of a very few number of consumer applications that would use this much vRAM. You might see a slight increase in some games, but I believe that's more from shoddy memory management in the drivers than from absolute need. By the time you really NEED 2GB on a card, none of those GPUs will really be fast enough to put it to good use.

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: MrK6

Originally posted by: happy medium
I see theres a gtx 275 -1796 vram comming too. (quick google) .

I see theres a 2gb gtx 285 comming too.

http://hothardware.com/News/Sp...IDIA-GeForce-GTX-GPUs/

They make a 4870 with 2gb ram. Worthless?

http://www.tomshardware.com/ne...-GeForce-GTX,7090.html

Are these cards with extra ram also worthless ?

Worthless? No. Overkill? Yes. I can think of a very few number of consumer applications that would use this much vRAM. You might see a slight increase in some games, but I believe that's more from shoddy memory management in the drivers than from absolute need. By the time you really NEED 2GB on a card, none of those GPUs will really be fast enough to put it to good use.

I assume we are all talking about gaming applications?

We have quad core cpu's running @ 4.3, 8 gigs system ram, running games @ 100fps. overkill?

We love overkill😀:thumbsup:

I for one would buy a card with twice the memory (if it could utilize it) for an extra 20/30 bucks, especially if I had a big monitor and played the latest games.

 

[MrK6]

Originally posted by: happy medium

Originally posted by: MrK6

Originally posted by: happy medium
I see theres a gtx 275 -1796 vram comming too. (quick google) .

I see theres a 2gb gtx 285 comming too.

http://hothardware.com/News/Sp...IDIA-GeForce-GTX-GPUs/

They make a 4870 with 2gb ram. Worthless?

http://www.tomshardware.com/ne...-GeForce-GTX,7090.html

Are these cards with extra ram also worthless ?

Worthless? No. Overkill? Yes. I can think of a very few number of consumer applications that would use this much vRAM. You might see a slight increase in some games, but I believe that's more from shoddy memory management in the drivers than from absolute need. By the time you really NEED 2GB on a card, none of those GPUs will really be fast enough to put it to good use.

I assume we are all talking about gaming applications?

We have quad core cpu's running @ 4.3, 8 gigs system ram, running games @ 100fps. overkill?

We love overkill😀:thumbsup:

I for one would buy a card with twice the memory (if it could utilize it) for an extra 20/30 bucks, especially if I had a big monitor and played the latest games.

I think you're mixing two concepts (or generalizing). If it was only $20-30 to get a 2GB GTX 285 over a GTX 285 1GB, hell, you'd be foolish not to (after all, it'd only be ~10% increase in price). However, it's not, it's ~$100 more for the 2GB version, so ~33% increase in price. You don't see nearly a 33% increase in performance, nevermind 10%, hence why I say it's not worth it.

Overkill is great when it's sensible (generally, cost effective). I bought a Q6600 that runs at 2.4GHz. For a slight voltage boost, I can run it at 3.6GHz, i.e. a 50% overclock that still makes it a kick-ass processor almost two years after release. To me that's the same as buying a GTX 285 and then overclocking the hell out of it as well - you're just making the most out of your hard-earned cash. Buying a 2GB GTX 285 would be akin to getting a Skulltrail setup - yah, it's faster, but seriously? 😛

Also, note that if we restrict the discussion to gaming applications, I think more video RAM becomes less of a necessity. Generally, at least in my experience, games benefit much more from RAM BANDWIDTH rather than capacity (up to a point). Currently, games are developed pretty much for a 512MB budget. Higher resolutions and larger textures will push that, but only seldom would one get to a point where you've overstepped that allocation. Even at that point, insane memory bandwidth (like the GTX 285 has, especially when overclocked) can compensate very well. I'd be most interested in seeing a stock GTX 285 1GB vs. stock GTX 285 2GB vs. overclocked GTX 285 (we're talking 2.8GHz range on the RAM) vs. overclocked GTX 285 2GB in memory intensive games like the Crysises and GTA IV. My guess is that you'll see the gap close between the 1GB and 2GB versions (although overall frames for both will go up).

 

[PCTC2]

Unless you run everything at 2560x1600 w/ AA. Then you'd probably need the extra VRAM.

 

[Shmee]

if it is still true that SLI can only use the ram of one card, than It would make sense for multi card setups. 2 Gb might be very useful for a 3x285 setup, especially when playing demanding games at high settings. As a single card, not so much. but add one or 2 more, then it should help.

This is assuming SLI only uses the amount of ram on one card. you wouldnt want a tri SLI 275 setup limited to only 896 MB, or so I would think. not if you wanted to get the advantages of enough memory to "keep up" with the near 3x processing power that would be useful at very high res/settings.

It would be interesting to see benchmarks of crysis and other games at max settings, at 1920x1200 or higher, with different 3x SLI configs, where one set used the standard ram, the other set used cards with double ram.

 

[jiro]

http://www.pcgameshardware.com...X-275/Reviews/?page=11
gtx 260 (896mb) vs gtx 275 (896mb) - gtx 275 gained avg of 3-5fps
then look at the 512mb vs 1gb
4870 512mb vs 4870 1gb - 1gb gained 5-10fps+


this site http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539&p=17
1gb version vs 512mb also gained 1-5fps

http://en.expreview.com/2009/0...-memory.html#more-2693
on this site, they compare 896mb and 1796mb.
crisis - no notable gains
war in conflict gained 5-10fps
company of heroes - gained 4fps.

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buy gtx 275 896mb and expect 2-5 more fps than the gtx 260216.
or
gtx 260 sp216 - 1792mb and expect "some" noticable performance on some games and future games.

 

[MrK6]

Originally posted by: jirobuy gtx 275 896mb and expect 2-5 more fps than the gtx 260216.
or
gtx 260 sp216 - 1792mb and expect "some" noticable performance on some games and future games.

I like that logic and I'll take it a step further: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814127433

GTX 260 clocked past GTX 275 speeds, with the 1796MB of RAM, for only $25 over MSRP. It's better, but still too expensive for me though, considering if you grab a GTX 260 for ~$160 deal you can have SLI for only $50 more. But RAM prices will continually fall.

 

[angry hampster]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Tits on a bull.

Tits on a Boar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZPKZcCYjqg