128MB or 256MB card?

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:19:10 +0100 "B" meeped :

I'm sorry to disagree with you but having worked with extensive cad and
photoshop I personally have seen a difference in rendering large images with
256 meg cards and 128 meg cards of the same manufacturer and PC setup. As I
said before the differences are so little that it makes almost no difference
anyway but still the differences are there, and most especially if it's a 3d
drawing.


Were they the same large images each time ?

You are quite right, video RAM has nothing to do with 2D applications
performance, so long as its above about 16MB to hold the frame buffer
for high colour in high resolutions.

It's possible that Windows may load offscreen buffers into video memory on
the card and I believe that, with DirectX, the programmer can request that
a specific buffer be created there. Still, I don't think there'd be a
large impact with Photoshop. The poster also talked about 3D rendering and
I could see that being more likely to utilize more of the card's memory.

"Ook" wrote in message
...
Can some tell me what the difference is, other then the obvious doubling
of
memory? In the real world, what difference will it make? What difference
will I notice?

I realize that my answer is tardy, but I'll contribute anyway. I've
seen this type of question raised numerous times on flight simulation
groups.

The short answer is "maybe, maybe not". It might if your existing
resources are maxed out and there is room for expansion. If the card only
has more memory without more power, a 1 ton truck is still a 1 ton truck.

Besides raw power and capacity, a computer's speed is largely determined
by how resources are utilized and transferred.

Cheers,
John

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:25:38 -0700, "Ook"
wrote:

Can some tell me what the difference is, other then the obvious doubling of
memory? In the real world, what difference will it make? What difference
will I notice?

If you buy the FASTEST $350~500 video card, and have a FAST computer
such as an AMD-64bit system - about 1~5fps - usually 2.

With slower cards - nothing.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 18:42:07 +0100, "B"
wrote:

The difference is actually negligible unless you are running CAD or
rendering some huge graphic pictures such as in Adobe Photoshop. So let's
say you were rendering a 15 meg painting you rendered with photoshop with a
256 meg card compared to a 128 meg card then you'll probably save anywhere
from 15 to 30 seconds, and some people report saving only 10 seconds. The

What are you talking about? Photoshop is a 2D Application - Its
dependent on CPU, HD performance and RAM amount and speed.

Any number of factors can effect Photoshop "rendering" of filters.
Having a 32 -64 - 128 or 256mb video GAMING card makes no difference.

Even 3D CAD work doesn't benift from gaming cards - just a decent 32mb
card will do... it needs CPU/RAM to work good.

Only Workstation cards which have more direct communications with 3D
Rendering software are able to give a BOOST in power.

big difference might be when Windows 64 bit comes out (it's in beta now)
next quarter for the Athlon 64. Provided of course the end user application
is also 64 bit then it should make more of a difference than now. If all
you're doing is gaming however then 128 meg cards are just fine for this
purpose and should be only fractionally slower than a 256 meg card provided
the graphics chip is nearly identical.

All benchmarks have shown the difference of 1-5fps... Typical for 5700
and lower series cards - the 256mb versions are NOT ULTRAS - so they
are even slower than the 128mb Ultra cards.

Hence... fooled customers.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!