What do you look for in a graphics card?

Arkadrel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2010
3,681
2
0
say a dual gpu card like a 590:

Its 1 card (3gb total memory), but it has 2 x GPUs on it, so its 1.5gb pr card (1.5gb dedicated memory pr GPU).



"what do you look for in a graphics card"

performance/$ + features + good cooling solution/low noise.

So it starts with you looking at your wallet, how much do you want to use?
then you look up benchmarks for the games you want to play, and buy the card that gives you the best performance/$.
 

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
6,298
23
81
what's the difference between dedicated memory and total memory?

To answer this question:

Dedicated memory is memory that is physically on the video card, only used by the card for processing what goes on your screen.

Total memory refers to lower-end cards (Geforce 6200, etc) that will have some amount of dedicated memory and then also share a portion of the system memory.

Dedicated memory is considerably faster than shared memory.

Of course, if you're looking at cards in this range, it's almost a moot point...
 

HeXen

Diamond Member
Dec 13, 2009
7,835
37
91
i think video memory amount results in better looking textures at higher resolutions where dedicated ddr ram would be similar but less performance? but i may be wrong.