Radeon 8500 64MB vs Radeon 8500 128MB

[jonmcc33]

Hey, I'm wanting to know if anyone has seen benchmark comparisons between these two cards. I know that Tom's Hardware Guide did a review on the GeForce3 Ti 200 cards with 128MB RAM and benchmarks showed that there wasn't any difference at all because the GeForce3 architecture wasn't designed to benefit from the extra RAM.

Over at another forum some clown is trying to say that his friend's Radeon 8500 128MB is significantly more powerful than the 64MB version. He has lied through his teeth by saying that on MoHAA the 64MB version averages "15-20fps give or take" and the Radeon 8500 128MB averages "25-30fps give or take". He claims this is at 1280x1024x32, details maxed, and with 2XAA.

I ran MoHAA at that resolution and AA setting on my 1.4GHz AMD Thunderbird with a GeForce3 Ti 200 and got an average of 35-40FPS on the snow level during MP on an OC-3 server. He then said that he didn't know the FPS command and was speaking from an "educated guess". It was obvious he was lying because there's no way my system could have beaten a system with the same CPU yet with DDR RAM (I have PC133) and a Radeon 8500. He then claimed that he called his friends up the night before and they told him that the average was "between 38-46fps". He didn't say this until after I gave him the framerate command for MoHAA today.

I'm just wanting some proof that the Radeon 8500's architecture is much like the GeForce3 in that the extra RAM doesn't help at all and is just a number to try to keep sales since the GeForce4 Ti's are out with 128MB RAM. I can't find any comparisons like there was on Tom's Hardware Guide about the 64MB and 128MB versions of the GeForce3 Ti 200s.

If anyone can help me out I'd be grateful.

 

[Rand]

Well, the R8500 does most definitely gain a larger performance boost from the extra DRAM relative to the GF3 core. That said, the relative performance gain still isnt very large at all.


nVidia's MultisampledSAA does not tend to dramatically increase the amount of texture storage needed, and there are also certain texture formats such as alpha textures that nVidia's implementation cannot utilize AA on.
Whereas ATi's R8500 implementation can fully AA any texturing type, and hence ATi's model often has a larger workload.
The SuperSampling utilized by ATi uses far more texture memory then nVidia's implementation at any given color/texture depth, and resolution.

It's all a trade-off, SS produces a crisper image, and ATi's specific implemetation is not limited in any way be texture types.
MS used by nVidia tends to do better with edge anti-aliasing then does SS and lessens the memory load, but introduces a somewhat blurred image though this can be off-set at an added performance penalty by enabling anisotropic filtering.

I'd imagine that the fact that the R8500 has two vertex shaders, compared to the GF3's one vertex shader could also tend to make the Radeon more dependent on DRAM capacity.

There is little doubt that ATi's Radeon 8XXX does most definitely see a larger gain that nVidia.
Without AA the gain is still virtually nothing however, and I'm dubious that one would see a gain beyond a few FPS using 2X AA at anything lower then 1600x1200. Running 4X AA, or 2X at 1600x1200 I wouldnt be at all urprised if the extra memory did help a fair amount though.

 

[BFG10K]

In general the performance difference between 64 and 128 MB cards is not clearly visible in most benchmarks but there is difference during gameplay with regards to smoothness and more consistent framerates.

Having said that, there is no way that the performance delta could be as large as the guy in the other forum is claiming unless the 128 MB card is overclocked and he/she neglected to mention this fact.

 

[jonmcc33]

Thanks guys. Anyone else have input?

 

[zed88]

I have seen Jedi knight outcast played on the two different cards. All settings were maxed except aa was at x2. We saw no difference in framerate.

If you save 50 bucks dont get it. But if its cheap for you then get the 128mb version. Maybe in future games it will help.

Eric