Minsc said:
Yes, that is what I was looking for thanks. Interesting how GRID destroys the 512 meg cards at 2560x1600, I guess that's a pretty damned hardcore resolution that most people would not experience any time soon you have to admit (with 4xAA to boot, sheeeit).
Would have been even better if they did 1920x1200 and 1280x720 as well for the game. I can see how if you were gaming at 2560x1600 you might not be satisfied with a 512 meg card though.
Well the thing with video card memory is as long as you have "enough" performance is always going to be basically the same. The problem is that once you run out perforamnce really can just drop off a cliff, its rarely a gradual thing.
Cards like the 9600GT, 9800GT, 4850 and lower are never really going to benefit from the extra memory as they just don't have the raw bandwidth and/or performance to cope with situations that demand more than 512MB anyway. By the time you reach that sort of usage, something else (likely bandwidth as it happens) is probabely going to bottleneck these cards first anyway.
However, cards like the 4870, GTX 260 and above quite clearly do have enough resources to cope with these situations, they quite literally have damn near double the bandwidth of the cards just one tier below them and as such coping with memory intense scenes is a lot more reasonable. So, by going the 512MB the problem is that you're limiting the potential of your card if you're going mid-high end. Crysis, GTA 4, Grid, Far Crys 2, Mirror's Edge and the like can already quite comfortably use more than 512MB at a decent resolution given the huge textures they use, so the evidence is already there. The 260s/4870s and above of this world CAN deal with more than 512MB of RAM so if you want future usefullness out of them or decent usage at 1080p with nice IQ quality now, having a nice chunk of RAM is a smart move.
Basically, all that waffle comes down to this? Planning on buying a 4870 or GTX 260 or better ? Then make sure you've got more than 512MB of RAM even if the advantages aren't huge right now (although at 1080p and above they are there in plenty games already). If your card is below that standard its not really worth the bother.
Its not as if this situation is unique. You only have to look at the ill fated 320MB 8800GTS. That card quite clearly could handle more RAM than it had, and whilst at release it performed on par with its 640MB sibling within the year it was looking a very, very poor investment as its framebuffer just can't cope with the demands of newer games, especially at decent resolutions. The 640MB 880GTS as it happens is still a pretty damn decent solution for modern games, and most will play pretty well at high settings.
Hazaro said:
OCCT is just another stress testing program like PRIME or ORTHOS.
I'd have to add its probably the most comprehensive one out there as well. It has two very different CPU tests, each of which will push your CPU much further than Prime and it has built in temperature and voltage monitoring which is very useful. Along with that it now comes with a very useful GPU stress test with error reporting, in a similar vein to Furmark. As a one stop, all in one stress testing program for OCers its the best solution out there imo. Well worth the download, and quite customisable too, which is always handy.
Oh, and it even has a "PSU" stress test that runs both the CPU and GPU tests at once, which will make your system exhibit the absolute peak operating conditions its ever likely to face. If it passes an hour of two of that, you can be pretty damn sure your PSU is up to the job and your OCs are nice and stable. Of course DO NOT run this test if you're using a cheapy PSU without the built in modern overvoltage, overcurrent etc. protections. If anything's going to make a cheapy PSU blow up, that test is it.
I will not get tired of recommending such an awesome piece of hardware.
