256 meg card ?

[DrFx]

Hello!!
Just wondering if you guy's have heard of some game who will need a card with 256 Megs of ram?
As I will buy me a new card at last :D
but am not sure if a card with 128 megs is enough for say Doom 3 ...have heard that you will need 256 for all the candy (texures)..

Thanx in advance..
BTW this year gonna be to good to be true for us Pc gamers hehe..so many great games..Pc gaming start to die hehe dont think so !!

[Chalnoth]

No game anytime soon will need 256MB. But a few games will benefit from that amount, as you'll be able to play with the highest-resolution textures. I believe UT2k3 already will benefit from 256MB of video memory.

Remember that 256MB will typically not improve your performance, but will just allow you to select the highest texture detail possible.

Update:
Actually, now that I think about it, 256MB may help the NV3x architecture far more than the R3xx architcture. That is, with 256MB, the performance hit at high resolutions with 4x AA should be significantly reduced for the NV3x architecture.

[DrFx]

Okey thanx a lot mate..thats what a want to here ..some better textures hehe and to get some speed improvments to sounds great..so I will wait to get a card with 256 megs, then I am a little more future prof :D

Thanx !!

[DrFx]

Oops forget to say that I should have say "benefit not need "
256 meg in the first place ;)

As I know that no game will require 256 meg to run in probably many year's to come..heck you can still game with a 32 meg card, but not so good hehe...But I hope that we will see more and more games who will benefit from 256 megs in not so far away :D
couse we can't have to high res textures ..

[Chalnoth]

Well, given a price difference, more performance now will buy you more than just having more video memory.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Chalnoth
No game anytime soon will need 256MB. But a few games will benefit from that amount, as you'll be able to play with the highest-resolution textures. I believe UT2k3 already will benefit from 256MB of video memory.

Remember that 256MB will typically not improve your performance, but will just allow you to select the highest texture detail possible.

I'm kind of disappointed we haven't seen any screenshots from UT2003(AFAIK) that depict the ultra high res textures supposedly available for 256MB cards.

Update:
Actually, now that I think about it, 256MB may help the NV3x architecture far more than the R3xx architcture. That is, with 256MB, the performance hit at high resolutions with 4x AA should be significantly reduced for the NV3x architecture.

Why do you say that? Why wouldn't the r3xx cards benefit from 256MB as much as NV3x cards in 4x FSAA? When using the same texture quality on both cards, wouldn't 4x FSAA eat as much RAM on one card as one the other? Unless I'm thinking in the wrong direction, and you're not saying performance will increase because there will be more RAM left over for textures after FSAA is applied.

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
Why do you say that? Why wouldn't the r3xx cards benefit from 256MB as much as NV3x cards in 4x FSAA? When using the same texture quality on both cards, wouldn't 4x FSAA eat as much RAM on one card as one the other? Unless I'm thinking in the wrong direction, and you're not saying performance will increase because there will be more RAM left over for textures after FSAA is applied.
No, because the GeForce4 and higher downfilter at scanout. This means that all buffers are the same size. This increases memory size requirements, but also reduces memory bandwidth requirements (provided buffer flipping is used).

I'm reasonably certain that the R3xx cards downfilter at buffer swap. This requires a little bit more memory bandwidth, but the memory size savings can be very significant (Only the current buffer being rendered needs to be full-size).

It may be the case that the NV3x cards, when high levels of FSAA are applied, start downfiltering at buffer swap in order to increase available texture memory. The added memory bandwidth hit would be visible as part of the performance hit we're seeing in the benchmarks. Otherwise, the NV3x cards are just running out of texture memory.

With 256MB, the NV3x architecture can maintain downfiltering at scanout with no texture memory penalty.

[False Christian]

I can't wait for the 512MB cards! They'll probably be out next year.:D

[Smokey]

I think 256mb cards will mainly help with,
high res textures, high resolution and FSAA, all these three things will benifit from 256mb onboard ram.