Not enough memory?

[fudgam]

I know when you play games at higher resolutions you need a video card with 256 mb of ram. If I get a 9800 pro with 128, can I make up for it with more system memory? Or will system memory not matter?

[keto]

I saw an article last week, tho I don't recall where (a gaming site but which one?), comparing 512MB of memory vs 1024MB of memory for gaming, where the larger amount did make some significant differences to framerates. I will try to find and link it, from what I recall though they weren't using super high resolutions - it may not answer the question you are actually posing.

[fudgam]

That link would be great.

[keto]

I can't find it now...went thru a couple site's news archives and googled for it *doh* I'll come across it sooner or later. It was last week, as mentioned, and was on a gaming site but not a site I am real familiar with.

[SimGuy]

Fudgam, a 128 MB frame buffer on the video card is adequate for now.

256 MB's is really not required at all, as even at 1600x1200 with AA & AF enabled, we don't fill the 128 MB frame buffer.

Can you make up for the frame buffer with added system memory? Yes. When the card runs out of onboard memory to utilize, it will start swapping texture data in and out of main system memory, however it will be very slow, degrading video performance.

With a 128 MB card, you don't have to worry about running out of frame-buffer space at all on today's games.

512 MB -vs- 1024 MB of system memory does yield a performance increase when loading games, especially BF1942, as the game doesn't have to swap to disk and utilize the paging file when loading the game, considerably dropping load time.

Other games and applications may benefit from double the system memory, but your milage may vary.

[fudgam]

Soon I'll have a 21" Trinitron, which supprts higher than 1600x1200. What about the resolutions in the 1800s or higher? 128 is enough for them too?

[Straight_Man]

Probably very marginal for that high a res.

What happens with more RAM is that more ram makes the following less likely to happen-- Windows has to swap parts of game out to HD to let the BIOS use the frame buffer it needs when RAM gets tight, and you get fewer virtual machine crashes where the BIOS grabs RAM that the O\S thinks it owns and is trying to use when the RAM amount is greater on mobo.

So, while you do get lesser of a bang as far as pure video feed out of a system RAM upgrade, you DO get more system stability and more performance out of a game that does not have an ideal card hooked to it and is ohterwise real fast, as the game workspace in RAM and the framebuffer in main RAM can be used to PREBUFFER what goes to video card, and a fast card can prebuffer frames multiple before the card can display them (card is faster than monitor). The game keeps with you on most boxes, or ahead of you, by working ahead of you. Main RAM increase helps with this part of the game operation, though because of sheer card speed with more modern cards, you do not get as much out of it as with an older card as the game has to store more ahead and the card becomes the squeeze point as the game is trying to store more and more data ahead of the slower video card if the rest of the box is hyper fast, and eventually dies when the system cannot free enough or bogs or locks when Windows intervenes and swaps parts of game to HD swap file. games are no longer single threads, at all, and windows CAN and DOES swap out threads that are running at least priority when it runs low on RAM.

John.

[SimGuy]

Yes, but you start to push the limit.

Can't say I've ever ran a game/3D application at 1800x1440, as 1600x1200 has been pretty nice to me.

Given the ability to run 1600x1200, 2xAA & 4xAF over 1800x1440, 2xAA, I'll take the 1600x1200 on my 21" Trinitron. :)

[madmat]

I'd like to interject something here, The less stuff that you keep on your desktop and the lower the image size of the images on your desktop (using jpegs instead of bitmaps for instance) they take up less video memory and I'm sure you know about icons as well, the less the better.
From what I'm given to understand that the frame buffer memory that's taken up by your desktop is still held even when you've got a game loaded which effectively lowers the memory that you have free for your game rendering.

[SimGuy]

1600x1200 @ 32-bit color uses 7.68 MB of frame buffer space to draw the desktop, and that does not include icons, background images or anything else.

[madmat]

Ok but what about the wallpaper and icons? I was told by a friend in the know that the space in the frame buffer taken up by those was also permanantly taken up until it was changed at the desktop level.
That's what I was trying to convey. It's better to use a 100kb jpeg as a wall than a 1 or 2mb bmp as it's taking up less frame buffer space if my friend is correct.

[Geeky1]

My 64mb Radeon 8500 is perfectly capable of running Black & White @ 2048x1536/32-bit & maximum detail settings. I haven't tried it on my 9700 Pro, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work.

Keep in mind that above 1600x1200, AA is totally unnecessary.

[SimGuy]

Black and White. DirectX 7.0-compliant.

No PS. No VS. No Hyper-Z. It only begins to utilize DirectX 7.0 features like Hardware T&L and briefly touches on NVidia's Shading Rasteriser. Hence, fill-rate and memory-bandwidth play the large factors here, not Pixel Shader/Vertex Shader performance.

It's mainly CPU-performance bound, not video card. Hence why the minimum display adapter requirement is an 8 MB video card.

Realistically? a 64 MB GeForce 2 Ultra / Voodoo 5 6000 with a 2 GHz Athlon can do 2048x1536 @ max quality on B&W.

[Thrax]

It's not like Black and White is the most strenuous game in the world. It's early DirectX 8 if I remember correctly; if even that.

As far as the hop between 128mb and 256mb on a video card is concerned, the performance impact depends upon the game. Some game actually have a measureable decrease in performance from the memory density increase on the card.

Other games that benefit from large texture space see an improvement in speed. Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast is one of the games that sees an improvement between 128 and 256.

As far as system memory is concerned; I myself went from 512mb to 1GB, and the performance increase was noticeable by ME.. Not even something that's so scarce it can only be benchmarked.. There was a very noticeable improvement between 512 and 1024. Load times were decreased, and games that had complex visual scenes lost all remaining twitches in the scenery. Twitches between opening doors and walking into the out doors, for example, disappeared.

I believe 128mb card and 1024mb of RAM is the ideal combination for the current gamer.. And I believe this will stay rather constant on through next year.

[fudgam]

Instead of a gig of system memory, how about 768?

[Geeky1]

You have an nforce 2, i865 or i875 board? If so, get either 2 or 4 identical sticks, depending on the number of RAM slots you have.

[fudgam]

NF7-S Soon

[Geeky1]

get 2 512MB sticks of DDR then.

[fudgam]

ok

[Thrax]

Just make sure you pick a name brand: Corsair, Mushkin, or Kingston, to get the most out of your machine.

So many people cheap out and buy OCZ or GEiL, thinking "Oh, it'll be fine." It isn't, it never really is.

Even if you need to wait and get a few more bucks to afford the name brand, it's well worth it.

[fudgam]

Corsair XMS:cool: Any objections?:confused:

[Thrax]

Not a damn one! :D

[fudgam]

:)

[TheSmJ]

Well, I currently have 2X 256MBs of Kingston HyperX DDR3500.

Should I just get the same brand/model/speed 512MB stick? I'd rather not sell my current sticks if I dont really need to.

[Geeky1]

TheSMJ, what do you want to do with it? To run the board in dual channel, you'll need another 256MB stick. Honestly, I'd just sell it and get 2 512s.