PCTech Forums

Hey guys.

Just wondering, what should I look for in a gfx card? Speed, or capacity?

eg) what would you take out of:

1GIG RAM, 600Mhz

or

512mb RAM, 700Mhz

etc.

Thanks in advance!


Also just to clarify.. speed is obviously the speed that the card runs, and capacity is just.. amount of graphical processes running at once?

Neither. you look at the model and the price. capacity is not amount of graphical processes running at once. its the on board RAM it has. its so the textures and fancy effects have storage local to the GPU.

Once you've decided on the model, then you might find there's a difference in regards to clocks or memory. eg the ATI 4850. theres a 512MB and a 1GB version. higher clock means higher frame rate, regardless. more RAM will only make a noticeable difference if you run the game at a high res (1920x1200+) or with high AA and AF (8x and 16x or more).

of course, a higher clock and more RAM will usually mean higher price. But, you can overclock the GPU yourself, easily. and if you don't have a big monitor or don't care for AA, you won't make use of that extra RAM. still, if the price difference between these different cards is only 10 to 20 $ or £ then you may as as well go for the better of the cards.

So, if in your example they were the same cards at same price with only said differences, I'd get the greater RAM with lower clock since you can overclock it yourself, but you can't add extra RAM to a GPU.

Great that makes sense.

Cheers for that =)