On 25 Sep 2008, at 09:14, Winterlight wrote:
now, low end cards with half a gig or more of ram are another matter,
but I can't say it's a bad idea on anything that's north of the
performance line of the 8800GT or so.
-JB
GB vs. 512MB on an 8800 GT
The big question was does having 1GB of video RAM really make a
difference on a GeForce 8800 GT GPU based video card? We tested this
by comparing the Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB to a reference
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of RAM, both of which had the
exact same clock frequencies. What we found was that there basically
wasn't any gameplay differences at all. In only one game did we even
detect a slight performance advantage, and that was UT3 in an SLI
configuration.
The simple reason is that in some instances the GeForce 8800 GT is
just not a fast enough GPU to realize the potential of 1GB of RAM.
It doesn't have the performance needed to push high settings in
today's games that will benefit with 1GB of RAM. Crysis is the new
kid on the block, the one by which all gamers are judging video card
performance. This game puts every video card to shame. The GeForce
8800 GT by no means is the fastest GPU out there, and in this game
it just can't push the game fast enough to utilize the full 1GB of
memory available. With SLI performance currently underperforming in
Crysis, the potential there is also not realized.
UT3 was the only game to really show us any raw performance
advantages with 1GB of RAM on an 8800 GT, and that was only in an
SLI configuration. Even then, it wasn't enough to allow a higher
gameplay experience. Call of Duty 4 also showed no advantages with
1GB of video RAM. We must remember that the GeForce 8800 GT utilizes
a 256-bit memory bus, and no matter how much RAM you stick on it,
that memory bus is not going to change. When you start running games
at the resolutions, settings and AA levels needed to push a 1GB
framebuffer, you really also need to have a high amount of memory
bandwidth available, and the 8800 GT just doesn't have it.
1GB of video RAM on the new 8800 GTS would even be iffy, even though
the GPU is much faster, it too utilizes a 256-bit memory bus and
might simply choke at those extreme settings in current games. 1GB
of video RAM seems appealing on paper, but if it doesn't have the
GPU performance and memory bandwidth to properly support the
resolutions and settings needed to push that amount of storage
space, it really is pointless.
The Price & Value
Palit has a suggested price of $299 for this video card. While the
Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB is currently not available at Newegg
(they do have plans to make that happen), you can find it online at <http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3525668&CatId=2306
>Tigerdirect for the suggested price of $299. Searching Newegg the
cheapest 512MB 8800 GT we can find is <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150259
>this one at $279.99. That is a difference of only $20. However, if
you plan on purchasing two, then the difference of $40 can
definitely make an impact. $20 more buys you 512MB more RAM, but in
our evaluation here today it really doesn't buy you a higher
gameplay experience, even in SLI. But with that said, you are
getting a much better cooling solution that has already been
installed for you.
Note, I did say NORTH of the performance line of the 8800GT, which is
a decidedly midrange part at this point,
By that, I mean it starts to be worthwhile when you look at the
8800GTX (which has more bandwidth) or the Radeon 4850 (which has more
bandwidth), it does also depend on the texture sizes you're throwing
around, which none of the test you just quoted really gave a good
thrashing too, the HalfLife 2 cinematic mod or Qarls texture pack for
Oblivion soon show the benefits of more ram to stuff textures into.
The article you quoted goes with the assumption that games scale how
they load the gpu down in a fairly evenly balanced fashion, which
often isn't a case, games will use disproportionate amounts of memory
for textures, or shaders and so on and so forth, instead they assumed
that anything significantly heavy on the hardware to grow in >512MB of
ram will also need more memory bandwidth and more shader power... now,
this is certainly true in the case of the 512MB Geforce 8500GT's and
the comically silly 9600GT with 2GB of ram, but throwing more ram at a
high bandwidth, high shader performance part can and does show benefits.
And that's supported by the anandtech link to a 1GB 4870 someone
linked earlier, where it stomps all over the 512MB part.
-JB
