The Magic Ratio

[Laminator]

Ever notice that the ratio of system memory to video memory is always 4:1 for the highest-end systems?

1999: 500MHz Pentium III, 128MB RAM, 32MB TNT2/GeForce 256

2000: 1GHz Athlon/Pentium III, 256MB RAM, 64MB GeForce2 GTS/Ultra

2001: ~1.7 Athlon XP/Pentium 4, 256MB RAM, 64MB GeForce3

2002: 2.4GHz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, 128MB GeForce4 Ti

2003: Athlon XP 2800+, 512MB RAM, 128MB Radeon 9700/9800

2004: Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB RAM, 256MB 6800/X800/X850

2006: Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2, 2GB RAM, 512MB 7900/X1900/X1950

Eh? Eh? Eh? Now nVidia has to come along and ruin in all with their 8800. Who wants to have 2.5GB or 3GB of RAM? What weird and foreign numbers...almost as strange as the guys that have 768MB of system RAM.

 

[Lonyo]

It was 256MB/32MB back in the early/mid P3 days.
Our super high end P3 600/32BM TNT2 had 384MB RAM .
And it was 1GB RAM for the Ti4400 and 9700/9800 too ^_^

 

[yacoub]

correction: 1GB of RAM in 2003

 

[apoppin]

so letsee ... natural progression ... especially with Vista ...

QuadCore - 4GB RAM - HD 2900XTX/1GB

 

[Laminator]

1GB of RAM in 2003? I think you guys are a little RAM-heavy...bottleneck! Bottleneck!

I got these figures from the test rigs of various review sites. Some of them are probably borderline in terms of when they should be upgraded.

4GB RAM with 1GB of VRAM sounds pretty good to me. Now system builders can push even more bloatware into their retail builds. My dad's Dell came loaded with tons of crap and amounted to a paging file usage of 400MB+ at startup...

 

[Schadenfroh]

2009 magic ratio:

8 core CPU to:
[*]Run Mcafee / norton Antivirus on one dedicated core
[*]Run Mcafee / norton Firewall on one dedicated core
[*]4 cores dedicated to various spyware and Digital Rights Management
[*]1 core to keep up with in game advertisements
[*]1 core to run your application

4gb of ram:
[*]1gb for Norton / Mcafee security suite 2009
[*]1gb for Spyware / DRM
[*]1gb for Vista SP1's pretty effects
[*]1gb for your application

Video Card:
[*]Integrated Digital Rights Management machine!
[*]Over priced
[*]Loud, taking up 4 slots with an external power supply
[*]Special frame buffer dedicated to DRM

 

[apoppin]

don't worry ... that 80 core cpu from intel will do wonders for Vista and DRM

 

[Borealis7]

I have 2 of my own: (my actuall systems at the time)

1996: 486 DX2 66MHz, 16MB RAM, S3 Virge 4MB VGA card

later: Pentium 166MHz, 32MB RAM, ATI Rage2 Pro PCI VGA card (dont remember if 4 or 8 MB) + Creative VooDoo2 AGP(8MB not shared 2D/3D)

I was King back then....good times.

 

[IlllI]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
2009 magic ratio:

8 core CPU to:
[*]Run Mcafee / norton Antivirus on one dedicated core
[*]Run Mcafee / norton Firewall on one dedicated core
[*]4 cores dedicated to various spyware and Digital Rights Management
[*]1 core to keep up with in game advertisements
[*]1 core to run your application

4gb of ram:
[*]1gb for Norton / Mcafee security suite 2009
[*]1gb for Spyware / DRM
[*]1gb for Vista SP1's pretty effects
[*]1gb for your application

Video Card:
[*]Integrated Digital Rights Management machine!
[*]Over priced
[*]Loud, taking up 4 slots with an external power supply
[*]Special frame buffer dedicated to DRM

cant wait !

 

[aka1nas]

I think that probably makes sense when you compare how many RAM ICs are on a video card vs the standard 2 DIMM/ 4 bank configuration on most PCs. While graphics RAM is usually specialized hand-picked, highly clocked stuff, it's often going to be produced on the same node as regular system RAM chips and will probably have similar densities.

 

[n7]

Already got my 4 GB of RAM; just waiting for the 1 GB cards

Actually won't likely be waiting for them, but i suspect 512 MB HD 2900 XTs will likely somewhat choke @ 2560x1600.

 

[bobsmith1492]

What's wrong with me... I have 2GB of RAM and a 256MB X1950XT...

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
What's wrong with me... I have 2GB of RAM and a 256MB X1950XT...

OMG, you're missing the magic 4:1 ratio!

Looks like you "must" upgrade your GPU now.

 

[Zardnok]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
What's wrong with me... I have 2GB of RAM and a 256MB X1950XT...

OMG, you're missing the magic 4:1 ratio!

Looks like you "must" upgrade your GPU now.

Or you could take out one of your RAM sticks and send it to a poor starving nerd child in Ethiopia...

 

[AmdInside]

Well, Vista's sweet spot is 4GB which you can fully utilize if you are running Windows Vista x64 so that should keep the ratio consistent when 1GB video cards come out. What about people who run SLI cards? Does that count towards your ratio?

 

[apoppin]

no ... not in sli or xfire

 

[aka1nas]

Not really as texture data has to be duplicated across both cards.

 

[manowar821]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
2009 magic ratio:

8 core CPU to:
[*]Run Mcafee / norton Antivirus on one dedicated core
[*]Run Mcafee / norton Firewall on one dedicated core
[*]4 cores dedicated to various spyware and Digital Rights Management
[*]1 core to keep up with in game advertisements
[*]1 core to run your application

4gb of ram:
[*]1gb for Norton / Mcafee security suite 2009
[*]1gb for Spyware / DRM
[*]1gb for Vista SP1's pretty effects
[*]1gb for your application

Video Card:
[*]Integrated Digital Rights Management machine!
[*]Over priced
[*]Loud, taking up 4 slots with an external power supply
[*]Special frame buffer dedicated to DRM

Oh god, I laughed hard. :laugh:

 

[ElFenix]

i had 2 GB in 2003 with my overclocked barton and 9800 pro...