• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

256MB Graphics Cards Standard Soon!

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

OC-Master

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2001
Location
Edmonton, Alberta
I was told by a bunch of people that both the R300 and NV30~NV34 cores all can support 256MB configurations of memory on board.

I guess these guys were right, Abit has already launched a 256MB GeForce FX 5600.

Appearently, we wont see any R300 core VPUs with 256MB but were supposed to see the RV350 and R350 with 256MB configurations.

The difference in price will be around $80US for most of the configurations.

I'm yet to see the ATI Radeon 9800 non Pro 256MB edition.. I'm really eyeing this sucker up!

BUT!, dont be surprised to start seeing stuff like a Radeon 9600 Pro with 256MB or GeForceFX 5200 Pro with 256MB for $149US or sometin like that.


OC-Master
 
OC-Master said:
I was told by a bunch of people that both the R300 and NV30~NV34 cores all can support 256MB configurations of memory on board.

That was all reported back when the cards were released...im surprised your just hearing it
 
Not surpising at all. Next will be 512 MB. Then, 1 GB, and so on. Thus, AGP 8X, 16X, and etc. will continue to be a big marketing BS.
 
there's a review of a 256mb radeon 9800 (think pro bu not sure)...the 256 only helps with 1600x1200 and 4x AA and 16x Anio, and if you run that it's gonna be slow as hell.

Review is at firingsquad.com
No games come close to utilizing the 256 so you might as well save your money.
 
Beast Of Blight said:



Isn't PCIExpress supposed to be the next big thing after AGP8x?


You are right that PCIExpress will be the next standard, but even then, it's another AGPish BS. The initial bandwidth will be 2.5 GB/s which is crap compare to 10 GB/s GF4, 16 GB/s GF FX, and 20 GB/s 9700 Pro. PCIExpress should get better (heard 16 GB/s), but so will bandwidth on video cards. Thus, it's like another AGP. Pretty useless for video.
 
Considering Matrox came out with 256mb last year sometime - it is about time the rest of the compainies caught on.

I think alot of people forget that some people who do own a 9700 pro or something might also use their system for things OTHER then gaming, such as GFX design or cad applications.
 
Last edited:
Shade00 said:
Methinks graphics cards will be hard pressed to use 128mb, much less 256mb. :rolleyes:

Epic actually publically stated that several of the levels in UT2K3, when all sliders are at "highest quality", will use more than 128mb of video memory at the standard resolution of 1024x768x32. Throw in some AA and AF and you've got 160+mb of video memory in use...

Yeah, that's not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it's VERY easy for a current card to make use of 128mb of ram. And if you're expecting any of the newest DX9 and OGL2 games to play nicely, you'd better start with at least 128mb.
 
Mr.Guvernment said:
Considering Matrox came out with 256mb last year sometime - it is about time the rest of the compainies caught on.

I think alot of people forget that some people who do own a 9700 pro or something might also use their system for things OTHER then gaming, such as GFX design or cad applications.

If you do CAD and such then your better off getting a CAD card.


3d gaming cards suck at CAD, and CAD sucks at 3d gaming. So if your doing CAD you shouldn't even be bothering with game cards.
 
SimCity 4 takes advantage of cards that have 256MB of video ram. It has an extension to its graphics which are turned on when a graphics card with 256MB or more is detected. Man, that game eats alot of video memory with all that detail!


OC-Master
 
64MB =

640x480x32 4XFSAA 2XAF
800x600x32 2XFSAA 2XAF


128MB =

640x480x32 4XFSAA 16XAF
800x600x32 4XFSAA 8XAF
1024x768x32 4XFSAA 8XAF
1280x960x32 2XFSAA 8XAF


256MB =

640x480x32 4XFSAA 16XAF
800x600x32 4XFSAA 16XAF
1024x768x32 4XFSAA 16XAF
1280x960x32 4XFSAA 16XAF
1600x1200x32 2XFSAA 8XAF


These statistics are all presuming that your gonna have some room left over to store plentiful amount of textures on the graphics card and room for a larger Z-buffer. This was conducted after I took information from four hardware review sites around the web that benched the FX 5900 and 256MB Radeon 9800.


OC-Master
 
Shade00 said:
Methinks graphics cards will be hard pressed to use 128mb, much less 256mb. :rolleyes:

"A gigabyte???? How could anyone have that much information! Surely I would never be able to fill something that huge" -Me about 5 years ago. Trust me, if there is a will, there is a way.
 
There was a time when peopel thought computers of our day and age would way hundreds of tons and take up entire city blocks..

1gig of oncard video ram, sure... its jaw dropping right now for what we precieve uselessness and idiocy... But just think how your perception will be changed two, five or even ten years down the line. For all you know those types of cards could be bargan bin after a while should we begin to replace monitors with Virtual Reality displays or some such.
 
I was actually referring to hard drives, which I should have said because it confused a lot of people, but I wouldn't doubt if video cards get there in a few years. The technology keeps getting better, and the programmers aren't far behind.
 
Beast Of Blight said:
There was a time when peopel thought computers of our day and age would way hundreds of tons and take up entire city blocks..

1gig of oncard video ram, sure... its jaw dropping right now for what we precieve uselessness and idiocy... But just think how your perception will be changed two, five or even ten years down the line. For all you know those types of cards could be bargan bin after a while should we begin to replace monitors with Virtual Reality displays or some such.

All of these ideas are gonna be real sooner of later, so we might as well get used to the idea that these thing will be coming out.

Truthfully, most games don't need 256mb to run, and we are saying that it is useless, but just wait until games start coming out and they need more than 256MB and then you be saying th same thing about the a "512MB" card when it comes out.

So guys and girls, all of this technology is gonna come out sooner or later, we might as well get used to the idea that it is gonna happen.

If we do look back, we would never think of any computer parts being this fast this soon, would have told each other that is nuts and that you are outta your mind.

This is just my 0.02cents
 
Back