I was wondering what the benefits of each are going to be in todays games. If I can't get my 9600xt RMA'd, it looks like I'll be upgrading. I've been looking at 9800's and evga's 6600gt. But I can't really compare and contrast cards with knowing what 256bit is going to give over 128bit, and if 256mb is really necessary, I've heard that 256mb cards actually run slower than 128mb cards. Is that true? I'm looking for a card in the ~$200 price range and I want to passively cool it with a zalman heatsink/pipe thingamabob (for an additional ~$30).
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128bit vs. 256bit, and 128mb vs. 256mb
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Brent_Justice
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the 6600GT is faster than the 9800Pro, it allows higher quality settings in games with more performance, hence, a better gaming experience, plus more features
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njg5
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njg5
mentok1982
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To build on waht Mojo said above me:
The amount of memory on your graphics card determines how the game's (Doom 3) textures are compressed.
The more memory you have the better the textures will look because they are not compressed as much.
There is not much difference between the 128MB textures and the 256MB textures BUT when the 512MB cards come out you should see a difference between 128MB and 512MB.
The amount of memory on your graphics card determines how the game's (Doom 3) textures are compressed.
The more memory you have the better the textures will look because they are not compressed as much.
There is not much difference between the 128MB textures and the 256MB textures BUT when the 512MB cards come out you should see a difference between 128MB and 512MB.
Mojo and mentok1982 pretty well nailed it, some times ultra high settings require uncompressed textures and with newer games you'll see an advantage with 256MB but only under that condition. However going from 128Bit to 256Bit could be a dramatic performance increase.
Or to make a long story short...
I 3rd what they said
Or to make a long story short...
I 3rd what they said
In general, a 256 bit bus is twice as fast as a 128 bit bus at the same clockspeed, since it is twice as wide.
Although it's not 100% correct, the performance pretty much comes down to clockspeed*buswidth.
So 500 MHz 256 bit memory will be about as fast as 1000 MHz 128 bit memory.
What this boils down to, is that in practice the cards with 256 bit memory are usually faster, since the clockspeed difference is rarely this large.
As for memory... In theory more memory should always give at least the same performance... It could give better performance and/or quality when a game uses it properly.
However, since memory is quite expensive, a lot of 256 mb cards use slower memory than their 128 mb counterparts, so this translates to a loss in performance, especially in the cases where only 128 mb is required (most games).
Note also that I am solely talking about memory performance here. Faster memory will not always increase performance. In some applications, the GPU speed is more important than the memory bandwidth.
Although it's not 100% correct, the performance pretty much comes down to clockspeed*buswidth.
So 500 MHz 256 bit memory will be about as fast as 1000 MHz 128 bit memory.
What this boils down to, is that in practice the cards with 256 bit memory are usually faster, since the clockspeed difference is rarely this large.
As for memory... In theory more memory should always give at least the same performance... It could give better performance and/or quality when a game uses it properly.
However, since memory is quite expensive, a lot of 256 mb cards use slower memory than their 128 mb counterparts, so this translates to a loss in performance, especially in the cases where only 128 mb is required (most games).
Note also that I am solely talking about memory performance here. Faster memory will not always increase performance. In some applications, the GPU speed is more important than the memory bandwidth.