Can Someone break it down to me what Certain Graphics Parts mean?

K, i have the GeForce 4 Ti4200 card 64mb's DDR. On the box it says certain Terms, and id like to understand what each of them mean.....


"Performance Features"
"256 bit Graphics core"
Is this what's related to what video games are in bits? I know game consoles are only at 128 in bits, but i dunno. ?

"128 bit ddr memory interface"
K i know my graphics card is 64mbs ddr, so whats this about?
Is THIS whats related to what video games are in bits? lol

"8.0 GB/sec memory bandwith"
I get this sort of, but what exactly does this do?
How fast it can transfer textures, data, etc. right?

"4.0 Billion AA Samples/sec fill rate"
?

"113 Million Vertices/sec. "
?

"1.03 Million trillion operations/sec."
think i got this one.

"500mhz effective memory clock rate"
Thats like the computers cpu power just for the card right?

"(2) 350 mhz Ramdacs"
What exactly is this one?
I know this is important though lol.


I would goto a site if i knew exactly where to start, thanks for any help.

Ok....
256bit Graphics core means that's how many bits the gpu handles per clock. 4 paths of 32bits each.

128bit ram interface means the same as above: the ram handles 128bits of info per clock. It's split up with different memory controllers.

8.0Gb/s memory bandwidth means that 8Gb can be tranfered between the gpu and the on board ram. This is very important with video cards, because the gpu can only process as much info as can be transfered.

The AA (antialiasing) and vertices per second is just basically bs theoretical numbers that mean nothing. In theory the card can do this... it usually can't in reality.

500MHz effective memory clock. This means the memory is DDR, and is only really running at 250MHz. But because data can be tranfered twice per clock, it can send the same amount of data as sdr running at 500MHz.

Ramdacs are digital-to-analog converters that actually feed the video output to your monitor. If you have 2, that means you can run 2 monitors at the same time.

oh ok, guess ramdacs was'nt as important as i thought lol

But relating the 500mhz clock on a graphics card, i now understand how ddr works more better on a ram for normal memory. So if i have a sd ram stick that's 512mbs of mem, all i need is 256mbs of ddr mem to get the same performance as the sdram , right?

On the 256bits on the gpu, im still curious as to how that compares to video game consoles graphics memory. Any thoughts?

thanks for the info given.
Please if u know of any sites where i can find out all i can on stuff like this, point me to them .

Thanks again.

I'll keep that memory bandwith in mind when buying another graphics card

If you know of any sites that can tell me any more info please lead me to them. Im still curious as how 256 bits gpu compares to video game graphics memory.

Id like to know where graphics cards stand on graphics vs video game consoles.

TechnoNRGKid said:

oh ok, guess ramdacs was'nt as important as i thought lol

But relating the 500mhz clock on a graphics card, i now understand how ddr works more better on a ram for normal memory. So if i have a sd ram stick that's 512mbs of mem, all i need is 256mbs of ddr mem to get the same performance as the sdram , right?

Click to expand...

......no

500MHz effective memory clock. This means the memory is DDR, and is only really running at 250MHz. But because data can be tranfered twice per clock, it can send the same amount of data as sdr running at 500MHz.

Click to expand...

If you had SDRAM running AT 500MHz it would be equal to in SPEED as 250MHz DDR not CAPACITY.

~~~end of rant~~~~

yes, i meant to say as in speed. Not in actual capacity, my bad.

TechnoNRGKid said:

"Performance Features"
"256 bit Graphics core"
Is this what's related to what video games are in bits? I know game consoles are only at 128 in bits, but i dunno. ?

Click to expand...

This means that the card can perform 256bit calculations

example 32-bit vs. 256-bit calculations

2+2 in 32-bit binary

00000000000000000000000000000010
00000000000000000000000000000010
=
00000000000000000000000000000100

2+2 in 256-bit binary

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010
=
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100

I think it's pretty simple when you look at it that way

Yeah I'm sure you made it real clear for him

256bits is twice as fast as 128bit, think of it as lanes in the highway; with a 256 lane highway you can have double the amount of cars reach the destination as compared to a 128 lane highway. Think of the clock speed as the speed limit and DDR...hmm well pretend you can stack one car on top of every car on the highway... I thought my analogy was working pretty well untill the ddr part.

As for comparing to consoles, the Xbox uses something similar to a geforce 3 just to give you a rough idea (it also has a 700mhz or so p3 type CPU... not a P3 but similar).

As for comparing to consoles, the Xbox uses something similar to a geforce 3 just to give you a rough idea (it also has a 700mhz or so p3 type CPU... not a P3 but similar).

Click to expand...

dont be afraid to say Celeron

If you know of any sites that can tell me any more info please lead me to them. Im still curious as how 256 bits gpu compares to video game graphics memory.
Id like to know where graphics cards stand on graphics vs video game consoles.

Click to expand...

here are some hardware sites in general:

www.anandtech.com
www.arstechnica.com
www.hardocp.com
www.tomshardware.com (shh!)
www.xbitlabs.com
www.hardwareanalysis.com
www.digit-life.com

im sure if you look through the articles on those sites you will find what you need...if you cant repost and ill see what I can digout