Gaming performance question

[ta1588]

I have an AMD Athlon 64 x2 5600+ and 3GB of DDR2 RAM, I am currently using an Nvidia GeForce 8400GS with 512MB of onboard memory. I've been looking at a GeForce 8600GT with 512MB onboard that borrows 512MB from system memory to use as video memory for a total of 1GB. My question is will my gaming performance be better with the 8400GS 3GB of system memory and 512MB of video memory or with the 8600GT 2.5GB of system memory and 1GB of video memory?

[Psymon]

I've never heard of a GPU that uses 512MB of your RAM, especially one that has 512MB on it already. Quite simply, the 8600 will perform better than the 8400. but if you want to play the latest games, then you should get a better graphics card than the 8600.

[ta1588]

well i cant really afford something like the 8800 gtx. but youve never heard of shared video memory?

[Psymon]

Yeh, I've heard of it but only on cards that either have no memory of their own, or the crappy graphics accelerators that are built into the mobo. If there's a way of forcing a card to share RAM then I'm yet to learn about it.

[ta1588]

Well after talking with my co-worker about it I went ahead and got the 8600 and I'm actually pretty happy with it. It does perform noticeably better than the other one and I'm getting great frame-rates and pretty good quality. I can run Oblivion with very high textures 2x anti-aliasing, bloom, and all shadows and water details high as well with no lag. and my frame-rate never dropped below 25 with nearly maxed settings in FEAR.

[liljim]

i hate to be the bearer of bad news but you may think your happy with a 8600 but it wont take you long to see your really not. 25 frames in fear maxed out isnt saying much. Im on a 8800gt and never drop below 80 frames @1280X1024. Thats higher than 2 8600gt's in SLI mode. Theres a tremendous gpu difference in 8600 and 8800, hence the price difference. You will find yourself hunting a new vid card if you start playing recent releases.