"Mr.E Solved!" wrote in message
...
I think it is interesting that focus is being turned away from bandwidth
and memory performance in general, when it was such a critical area of
concern.

There probably will be games where the reduced memory bandwidth hurts the
GTS 512 MB. However, if those games already perform very well (Prey, ETQW,
Bioshock...) on mid-range hardware, then the real-world impact will not be
felt. Do you really care if a game drops from 80 fps to 70 fps?

As long as the more demanding games (Crysis, Gear of War, Hellgate
London...) don't see a performance drop from GTX to GTS 512 MB, then the new
card will be worthwhile.

How often do you get superior performance from inferior specs?

Several cases where the new card had inferior memory bandwidth, but was
faster than its predecessor:

TNT2 Ultra to Geforce1 SDR
Geforce2 Ultra to Geforce3
FX5950 to 6600GT
X1950XTX to HD3850

Admittedly all these were also accompanied by architectural changes which
either increased the card's fillrate or shader capability.

I'm not so sure we do know how the 8800GTS 512M will perform in all
conditions! More benchmarks under more conditions will have to wait until
dec 11th, the end of the NDA embargo.

I'd be interested in the HardOCP review. It may come down to some situations
where 512 MB simply isn't enough, and the GTX pulls ahead by virtue of its
*greater amount* of video memory.

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."