Video card memory : 128 slower than 64?

[Philgag]

Can anybody explain to me why is that at lower resolution or in older games, 128 mb card are generally a little slower than their 64mb counterparts, while in higher resolution or more advanced games 128 cards are faster?

if the extra memory isnt used, why is that 128 mb not on par with 64mb?

thanks

 

[IcemanJer]

To be fair, I'm assuming this isn't 64MB DDR vs. 128MB SDR?

 

[Philgag]

nope, i'm talking about DDR vs DDR

 

[sao123]

I dont know your knowledge level on computer architecture, but Ill explaine it as simple as possible.

It really has nothing to do with the amount of memory the card has, other than the amount of memory usually defines which generation of hardware the video card has.

See, older cards were optimized to run older games. There were standards that most older games were programmed by and most cards were made to do those things best.
Every generation things are done newer better and DIFFERENTLY. So newer video cards must be optimized to do the new things best.
Due to cost cutting measures or incompatibilities or other reasons, older optimizations are eliminated from newer generation hardware in faver of new optimizations. Because the older optimizations are gone, older games which tool advantage of them run slower. Newer games which can use the current set of optimizations run faster. Similarly, older cards which lack newer optimizations run newer games slower.

Easy?

 

[imgod2u]

Well, I think what he's talking about is why a 64MB GF4 Ti4200 may actually run stuff faster than a 128MB GF4 Ti4200. Or something similar to that respect.
The actual reason should be pretty obvious. It takes longer to search through 128MB of memory than 64MB and therefore, you will have a slight performance decrease if you are only using 64MB or less of the video ram. This isn't a dramatic loss but it is a noticable one at times.

 

[DeRusto]

Originally posted by: sao123
I dont know your knowledge level on computer architecture, but Ill explaine it as simple as possible.

It really has nothing to do with the amount of memory the card has, other than the amount of memory usually defines which generation of hardware the video card has.

See, older cards were optimized to run older games. There were standards that most older games were programmed by and most cards were made to do those things best.
Every generation things are done newer better and DIFFERENTLY. So newer video cards must be optimized to do the new things best.
Due to cost cutting measures or incompatibilities or other reasons, older optimizations are eliminated from newer generation hardware in faver of new optimizations. Because the older optimizations are gone, older games which tool advantage of them run slower. Newer games which can use the current set of optimizations run faster. Similarly, older cards which lack newer optimizations run newer games slower.

Easy?

This is assuming that the cards are from different generations..which they very well may be. But, if I'm not mistaken, GeForce4 and Radeon 8500 cards both come in 64MB and 128MB versions. I am going to assume that they use the same technology and only differ in the amount of RAM on the card.

If he happens to be talking about two same generation cards, would your explanation still make sense? I have no idea, just trying to give a different view.

 

[Locutus4657]

Older games don't have very many textures to load there for all else being equal the fastest card is going to be the one with the fastest memory. Most video card manufacturers want to keep their products (espeacially ones not based on super high end chipsets). Obviously if you double the amount of video memory on the card you are going to increase the price of the product significantly. To make up for this the companies manufacturing these cards with 128MB will use slower memory chips so they can maintain a certain price point. Becaues of this a card with 128MB of memory will suffer in a game where 64MB would have been sufficient.

 

[TerryMathews]

Older games=smaller textures=will fit into 64MB (Or less). This mean that the slightly higher clockspeed of the 64MB video cards will outrun the 128MB video cards.

Newer games=bigger textures=won't fit into 128MB. This means that some textures have to go into system memory, which is limited by the AGP bus speed and memory speed.

 

[DeschutesCore]

The primary reason you see this in a lot of recent reviews is manufacturer's are using > 4 ns RAM for 128MB, and < 4 ns for 64MB. There are a few cards, Gainward has one I believe, that uses the same speed RAM for both versions. The indicate identical performance in synthetic benchmarks.

In real world performance, searching through 2x the data at the same speed is still going to have an impact, but most games are not fully loading the RAM, thus the identical benchmark figures in most cases. Jedi Knight is one of the few you'll see a difference from what I understand at this point and time.

DC

 

[Chadder007]

Just to let you know.....ATI Radeon 8500's with 128 megs are indeed faster than their 64 meg counterparts.

 

[Kurupshin]

You guys are all missing the point.

It was already explained.

In same speed, same manufacturer cards 64MB cards will always be faster than 128 MB cards as long as the game doesn't use up more than 64 MB of RAM. This includes texture swapping. If everything is loaded into vid card ram and nothing has to be swapped, then 64 MB of ram will always be faster.

Like someone said. Its all due to the fact that less RAM = less latecny ever so slightly.

Its the same reason why sometimes 256 MB of system ram is faster than 512 MB of ram in game benchmarks where the extra ram isn't needed. There is less ram to search through.

I wish I had the link, where it compared benchmarks with 128, 256, 512 and 1024 MB of system RAM. They only ran game benchmarks. The 256 or 512 MB of RAM were ALWAYS the top two. However the 1 Gig of RAM was never more than 3% slower and usually less than .5% slower than the leader. The 128 MB system always got crushed.

 

[Turbo55]

Originally posted by: Philgag
Can anybody explain to me why is that at lower resolution or in older games, 128 mb card are generally a little slower than their 64mb counterparts, while in higher resolution or more advanced games 128 cards are faster?

if the extra memory isnt used, why is that 128 mb not on par with 64mb?

thanks

There was actually an article on this -- do a search for it. I think the example they used was the GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB vs the 128MB version. The 128MB version does have a slightly slower RAM speed if you guys don't know. Like Locutus4657 explained it, the perfomance of the two cards depends on the demand of the games. For games where the 64MB is sufficient, the 64MB is definitely going to kick ass, b/c of the faster memory speed. However, for newer games where there's larger texture sizes, the 64MB version may not have enough memory to hold them but the 128MB does and since the 128MB can run everything inside the video card memory it compensates for the lower memory speed.

Therefore, if you want to play the latest games with huge loads of graphics, aim for the 128MB version even though it may have a slower memory speed. Of course if you can get the 128 MB w/ the same memory speed as the 64 MB version, then that will be even better -- just understand that it'll come at a cost.