Video Memory: Faster or more?

[Tullphan]

I'm looking at 2 different Gainward GF4 cards...one has 64mb of 3.3ns ram & the other has 128mb of 3.6ns ram. The one with less ram (Golden Sample) is $145 while the other, with more, albeit slower, ram (also a Golden Sample) is $174.
I'm not real thrilled with my 8500LE & will do some gaming on my soon to arrive 1800FP so i'll need the DVI.
Is it worth the extra $30 for the extra, slower ram? Is there a noticeable performance increase? I'm not a hardcore gamer. I'd just soon use the extra $30 to make a payment on the new monitor...LOL!!
Thanks for any input.

 

[touchmyichi]

....OR you can get a radeon 9500 pro for the same price..... And yes, the less ram and faster ram is better

 

[Tullphan]

ATI Radeon 9500 Pro 128mb DDR AGP 8X (OEM-POWERED BY ATI) @ $185 will provide a noticeable difference in image quality & performance for the extra $40?

 

[touchmyichi]

here's some for under 140 dollars. There's also the possiblity of modding these to a 9700.... radeon 9500's on newegg . Radeon 9500's are a lot more powerful than the geforce 4 ti's. They are about the same price too, so its worth it.

 

[Tullphan]

I can't find anything with that link, but thanks anyway.

 

[Tullphan]

I've seen the Sapphire's, but am concerned about their quality. Should I be?

 

[Tullphan]

Anyone?

 

[Fingolfin269]

As far as I know the Sapphire's should serve you well. Be more concerned about dropping $ on a card that doesn't support DirectX 9.
Remember that a $40 increase in spending might save you being out an additional $100-200 in 6 months.

 

[Keysplayr]

The difference between 3.3ns and 3.6 ns is .3ns. Not very much. Both are very fast. You probably wont notice it during gameplay. I would go with the 128 MB card. This way if games come out that utilize more mem, you will be able to play them to their fullest capacity.
For example. Doom3 is coming out and I heard that it uses over 128 MB of vid mem buffer. I think you would have a much better shot at playing it on the 128 card as opposed to the 64.

IMO
Keys

 

[bunnyfubbles]

more is usually better, the 128 will definately be far more "future-proof" than the 64

 

[Tullphan]

Is there really a noticeable difference with AA/AF turned on or off?

 

[WarSong]

Originally posted by: Tullphan
I've seen the Sapphire's, but am concerned about their quality. Should I be?

I have a sapphire and i have no probs. i have heard that sapphire actually makes a lot of the ati retail cards for ati... not sure on that one. maybe someone here can confirm or deny.

Is there really a noticeable difference with AA/AF turned on or off?

in terms of image quality? hell yeah it looks much nicer.

 

[Soulkeeper]

when i bought my GF4 i didn't want to sacrefice speed for more mem so i got a 128mb version with the 3.3ns bga mem
good cards
get the more mem if it's only 15 bucks or so more

 

[Goose77]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
The difference between 3.3ns and 3.6 ns is .3ns. Not very much. Both are very fast. You probably wont notice it during gameplay. I would go with the 128 MB card. This way if games come out that utilize more mem, you will be able to play them to their fullest capacity.
For example. Doom3 is coming out and I heard that it uses over 128 MB of vid mem buffer. I think you would have a much better shot at playing it on the 128 card as opposed to the 64.

IMO
Keys

^^ is what i was gonna say. Right now most games only use a 32-64 MB buffer, but games coming out this year will more then likely use 64-128MB buffer, as keysplayr2003 said, DOOM3 will be using the 128MB buffer. More is definitly better, especially for only .3ns.

The faster memory is only to overclock the memory farther, so if u dont plan on overclocking, the faster memory wont do you any good. Also, an overclocked 64MB mem still wont perform as the 128MB on a game that uses 128MB buffers. FUTURE PROOF!! GO 128!

Finally, go with an ATI card.. better image quality, much, much better. I have an gainward gf3 ti200 and an ATI AIW 8500DV, and the ATI is 100 times better in my opinion!

 

[AtomicDude512]

Originally posted by: Tullphan
I've seen the Sapphire's, but am concerned about their quality. Should I be?

Sapphire builds ATI's cards so you shouldnt have much to worry about...

 

[WarSong]

What's with everyone saying to "future proof" their purchase by purchasing a 128MB card? It would still be a 4200 and it will still be old by the time the "future" comes that's how i see it anyways...

 

[Goose77]

Warsong, you're right about how a 4200 will still be a 4200, but the point of future proof is, will the graphics card be able to play future games that will come out. New games constintly updata on how they use a cards resources.

example, doom3 will use a 128MB memory buffer. This means that a vid card will need 128MBs of memory to preform properly. cards with 64MB of memory will crawl, or have much difficultly in rendering this game for the fact that the card with 64MB will have to store and retrieve information from main memory. And using main memory is very slow. Remember, graphic cards are already limited by their memory, so the best idea is to get a card with as much memory as you can afford.

Anyone that has a 128MB card right now wont have to buy another card for another 12-18 months at least. this will give anyone enough time to save up for another card.

 

[BFG10K]

Generally speaking if you take two identical video cards the 128 MB will be better than the 64 MB one, even if the 64 MB is slightly faster. 128 MB VRAM is pretty much required for all of today's games to run well.