What component really matters when choosing a card?

[phait]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5830.html

Checkout the chart there at the bottom.

When it comes to card performance, whats the first thing or top 3 things to consider?

GPU frequency, memory size, memory bus bit-width, rasterization units (are those "pipelines" as I've seen in specs?).

 

[Sylvanas]

None. ATI and Nvidia have vastly different architectures and you cannot compare between the two based on execution units or any other variable. That's why we have benchmarks and that's what you should look at when buying a new card. Look how the cards compare in the games you play.

 

[Ben90]

I wouldn't compare different architectures of cards based on specs, there just isn't enough information there. It is however okay to compare different cards of the same architecture using the basic info in those charts e.g. a 1120 SP Cypress will be slower than a 1400SP Cypress.

However nothing beats just looking at various benchmarks. You can see how each card handles different situations and get a better overall feel for each card.

I compare using the following in no particular order:
Price
Performance
Power Usage
Fan Noise/Performance
Overclocking Headroom (with a grain of salt)
Physical Dimensions
Features

 

[Scali]

I think the memory bus, or more importantly the memory bandwidth rating is the best indication of performance.
Namely, they are generally not going to put a wide bus on a slow GPU, because it makes the card considerably more expensive.
Neither are they going to put high-bandwidth memory on there if the GPU cannot use it.

In general the bandwidth of the memory is a good indication of the performance level of a videocard (but there are exceptions, as newer architectures or alternative rendering techniques can yield better performance by being more efficient).

If you REALLY want to know, look at reviews, compare benchmarks etc.

 

[TemjinGold]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5830.html

Checkout the chart there at the bottom.

When it comes to card performance, whats the first thing or top 3 things to consider?

GPU frequency, memory size, memory bus bit-width, rasterization units (are those "pipelines" as I've seen in specs?).

For me, that's the three Ps--price, performance, and power consumption.

 

[MrK6]

Man, Xbit Labs puts out some great articles. Anyway, everything in the card has to be balanced if you want to net the greatest overall performance from it. From the results shown in the review here, it looks like halving the ROP's severely cripples AMD's 5xxx architecture more so than cutting shaders or anything else. Clearly, memory bandwidth is not an issue.

 

[Zap]

I believe that the most important thing to consider is how you want other people to judge you in forums, because judge you they will.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Only one thing is needed: benchmarks.

 

[sandorski]

Memory size might be important for some things. Other than that, Benchmarks in Apps/Games you will be using is the best thing to use to judge different Vidcards.

 

[Cogman]

Manufacturing process can be a good ballpark guestimation of how well something should do against something else. A cpu built on a 32nm fab is going to be vastly different from one built on a 130nm fab, and most likely faster.

Other then that, architectures vary so much that it is impossible to give any hard physical capability (IE ram bandwidth) and expect a solid comparison. Those numbers play more of an after the fact "that's why it is faster" or "Its amazing that its faster. Despite the fact..."

 

[Borealis7]

i'd add cooling to the list.

 

[A_Dying_Wren]

Oh and never ever look at the memory of the video card when you buy one. The only time video memory matters is when you start getting to 2560*1600 resolutions. Its a common marketing scam to market your GT210 (for example) with a whopping 1GB of memory which mostly goes to waste.

Sometimes less memory is more too. I remember there being a 512MB or even 1GB (i think) 8600m GT which used slow DDR2 ram. The rarer 256MB GDDR3 8600m GT was significantly faster.

If the cards you're looking at have two versions with different memory technologies (not very common), go with the one with the higher number after the "DDR" or "GDDR"