Seems no need for 512MB Video cards !

[garikfox]

WooHoooo !!!!!!


http://www.pureoverclock.com/article33-1.html

 

[deadseasquirrel]

I got a MUCH different impression from the article. When the reviewer moved away from simply running the FEAR benchmark test and actually played a level at 1600x1200, max, 4xAA 16xAF, he said:

With 256Mb it was absolutely unplayable with stuttering at every turn, sometimes the screen would not refresh for half a second. This was blatant cache thrashing in action. In comparison the 512Mb card was behaving as it should, no stuttering at all. The average frame rate was low and it wasn?t very enjoyable, but it was a thousand times better than with the 256Mb card.

 

[moonboy403]

huh?....it seems to me that the stuttering came from a lack of system memory

i remember my system stuttered a lot when i only had 1 gb of memory with the texture on high
upon turning the texture to medium, however, the stutters gone away

after upgrading to 2gb of mem, i was able to play at high texture

so it makes me wonder where exactly the stuttering the reviewer mentioned came from

 

[Nextman916]

YAh ........exactly wat i got out of it.....garifox did you even bother to read the entire article? I dont see where you draw your conclusion from.

 

[Corporate Thug]

In every game under different testing methods we saw that 512MB does make a difference, and in some cases a large one. Quake 4?s performance increases in Ultra mode were the most impressive here, but HL2: Lost Coast also showed some credible boosts. F.E.A.R was not so impressive but in real world testing 512Mb showed its worth, especially on a system with 1GB RAM.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: moonboy403
huh?....it seems to me that the stuttering came from a lack of system memory

While I agree with you that system memory can make a huge difference in stuttering (I saw it myself with BF2 and it cleared up with 2GB ram), the reviewer didn't change any other system component except the video card and the stuttering went away.

 

[kylebisme]

Eaxacty, I've left task manager up on my second monitor to watch and Fear tops out at just under 900mb of system ram with all the options cranked. So 1gb of system ram is plety for Fear on a clean running Windows install, but more than 256mb of video ram is needed to aviod swapping with all the options turned up.

 

[BFG10K]

Seems no need for 512MB Video cards

Did you somehow miss the benchmarks, especially the Quake 4 ones?

It's one thing to post nonsense but another to post nonsense while your own results contradict your statements.

it seems to me that the stuttering came from a lack of system memory

Uh, no. It was from a lack of VRAM as is evident from the fact that the problem vanished when he dropped a 512 MB GPU into his system but left the system memory the same.

The Fear result is actually quite good because it shows that benchmarks are usually useless for showing the differences which are easily observed in actual gameplay; this is blatantly evident from the graphed level playthrough.

 

[shabby]

Originally posted by: moonboy403
huh?....it seems to me that the stuttering came from a lack of system memory

i remember my system stuttered a lot when i only had 1 gb of memory with the texture on high
upon turning the texture to medium, however, the stutters gone away

after upgrading to 2gb of mem, i was able to play at high texture

so it makes me wonder where exactly the stuttering the reviewer mentioned came from

I noticed this in fear too, my system has 1 gig of memory and a 7900gt. Memory usage is at 99% during gameplay and it stutters badly. If i reduce some detail it goes down to 80%, more system memory will fix this "issue".

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
The Fear result is actually quite good because it shows that benchmarks are usually useless for showing the differences which are easily observed in actual gameplay; this is blatantly evident from the graphed level playthrough.

Very true. What would have been even better was if he would have shown one of the fastest 256mb cards vs a somewhat slower 512mb that winds up getting equal or less than the same average framerate in games that suffer from a lot of swaping with 256mb cards. That would have shown exactly where many people go wrong picking a video card; a faster card will get higher highs making the average framerate in benchmarks higher; but average framerate doesn't necessarly have anything to do with smooth gameplay.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: shabby

Originally posted by: moonboy403
huh?....it seems to me that the stuttering came from a lack of system memory

i remember my system stuttered a lot when i only had 1 gb of memory with the texture on high
upon turning the texture to medium, however, the stutters gone away

after upgrading to 2gb of mem, i was able to play at high texture

so it makes me wonder where exactly the stuttering the reviewer mentioned came from

I noticed this in fear too, my system has 1 gig of memory and a 7900gt. Memory usage is at 99% during gameplay and it stutters badly. If i reduce some detail it goes down to 80%, more system memory will fix this "issue".

Nah, more system ram will help keep from having to swap all the way from the drive, but it can never fix the fact that Fear with everything cranked uses well more than the 256mb of ram avalable on your card.