what does a card like the ati x1800 xt actually store in its memory, and why isnt the cards bus speed given ?

[xMax]

i heard from somebody that the memory of the card is actually only used to store all those 3d textures and maps and materials. is this true

 

[EightySix Four]

Yeah, it's only used by video textures...

 

[nts]

Well the framebuffer, the geometry that is drawn (can be streamed in aswell), the textures (loaded and generated) and the shader programs...

May also contain other data, the above is what games use.

 

[xMax]

if i played a full screen uncompressed avi animation, then would it go through the cards memory or not?

im actually going to use a ramdisk to run the numerous avi clips, since it seriously speeds things up. but the thing that i cant seem to realize is that the entire size of the animation is not loaded into the computers RAM, which makes me wonder where it actually ends up going.

i goto post this message somewhere else.

Max