Video Card... Is more Vram or stronger GPU better?

[nodoze]

Excuse my ignorance but when we talk video card GPUs are we referencing core clock, effective memory clock or something else?

Duane, I am also no expert but when I say GPU I am basically referring to the "overall power or speed" of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) on the Graphics card which I believe consists of multiple clocks & speeds, cores, specialty circuits (shaders, aliasers, etc), etc... A graphic card's GPU is different from graphics card's resident Video RAM (vRAM) which the graphic card's GPU has local bus access to without having to go to an external bus to access additional memory (shared system RAM or some kind of "disk" SWAP space/virtual file)...

My references/questions in this thread were very general on "power" & "size" which are only generic "layman" references to the detailed specs the cards GPU and memory have... Not to complicate things, but just like GPUS, vRAM also have specs in addition to size (1GB, 2GB, etc) like speed (DDR1-5) & clocks & then there is the local bus that connects the GPU to the memory as well as the bus the graphic's card used to connect to the computer to consider.... It can get pretty complicated pretty quickly and the bottom line is that all of that technical stuff can be irrelevant if it doesn't perform well in the real world which is why people have created benchmarks to try to test/simulate real-world use and publish reviews for us non-specialists...

Sorry if what I said above isn't helpful or make much sense... For more info I recommend the following site for a good overview / starters and it has nice links to more detailed sites:

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/b...november-2010/

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/r...nstream-kings/

For a good, but more technical read, I found the following review pretty well written for a layman:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...50-6870-review

As always, Guru3D's full articles are great but in particular I would point you to the following pages:

- Guru3d's page 2 & page 21 gives you some idea of the GPU & vRAM specs & an sample of overclocking...
- pages 3 & 13-22 gives you an idea of some of the benchmarking...
- page 10 gives you good info on power consumption...
- page 11 covers comparative heat & sound...
- page 23 is the summary which I suspect many people just skip to...

There are also sites which directly compare detailed stats & benchmarks of card A to card B but I don't have the URLs for those handy.... If you are still wanting more info after reading the above links let me know and I can likely re-find them again...

[Duane]

Duane, I am also no expert but when I say GPU I am basically referring to the "overall power or speed" of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) on the Graphics card which I believe consists of multiple clocks & speeds, cores, specialty circuits (shaders, aliasers, etc), etc... A graphic card's GPU is different from graphics card's resident Video RAM (vRAM) which the graphic card's GPU has local bus access to without having to go to an external bus to access additional memory (shared system RAM or some kind of "disk" SWAP space/virtual file)...

My references/questions in this thread were very general on "power" & "size" which are only generic "layman" references to the detailed specs the cards GPU and memory have... Not to complicate things, but just like GPUS, vRAM also have specs in addition to size (1GB, 2GB, etc) like speed (DDR1-5) & clocks & then there is the local bus that connects the GPU to the memory as well as the bus the graphic's card used to connect to the computer to consider.... It can get pretty complicated pretty quickly and the bottom line is that all of that technical stuff can be irrelevant if it doesn't perform well in the real world which is why people have created benchmarks to try to test/simulate real-world use and publish reviews for us non-specialists...

Sorry if what I said above isn't helpful or make much sense... For more info I recommend the following site for a good overview / starters and it has nice links to more detailed sites:

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/b...november-2010/

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/r...nstream-kings/

For a good, but more technical read, I found the following review pretty well written for a layman:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...50-6870-review

As always, Guru3D's full articles are great but in particular I would point you to the following pages:

- Guru3d's page 2 & page 21 gives you some idea of the GPU & vRAM specs & an sample of overclocking...
- pages 3 & 13-22 gives you an idea of some of the benchmarking...
- page 10 gives you good info on power consumption...
- page 11 covers comparative heat & sound...
- page 23 is the summary which I suspect many people just skip to...

There are also sites which directly compare detailed stats & benchmarks of card A to card B but I don't have the URLs for those handy.... If you are still wanting more info after reading the above links let me know and I can likely re-find them again...

Thanks for the information. I'm still going to have to spend more time looking at things before I fully understand it though.

[nodoze]

Thanks for the information. I'm still going to have to spend more time looking at things before I fully understand it though.

Understood. I have been playing computer games & working with software & building machines for around 30 years & I always look for help & peer review... Don't feel bad as I don't claim to fully understand everything even after a formal Computer Science degree with a Management Information Systems (MIS) Masters & I work with large Enterprise Resource Planning systems with huge Blade/SANs 24x7 & game while waiting for issues to arise...

That is what focused reviewers with ratings are for...

There are plenty of good info out there on how given Graphic Cards perform for current "single box" games but what makes sense for the best Frames per Second for the current First Person Shooter flavor of the day doesn't necessarily help me...

Not that much info out there on maximizing systems for multi-boxing which is why dual-boxing & ISboxer is the place to be for these types of questions.

In the end, with the price breaks, I think I kinda got the best of both worlds (pretty close/equivalent GPU with double the RAM)...

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Keep in mind how the individual components affect the video card's price/performance ranges:

Model:

Base GPU = this is the "generation" if you will of the GPU; i.e.: 9xxx, 8xxx, GT2xx, GT4xx, etc.
VRAM size = how much

Variant:

GPU capabilities = how many shaders, etc. are enabled/supported on this variant of the base GPU
GPU clock = aka core clock; how fast the GPU runs
GPU<-->VRAM bus width = 64bit, 128bit, 256bit, etc.
VRAM clock = how fast the VRAM speed is set

The model of the video cards determines the base feature support. The variant determines what performance class the video card falls into.

So basically, find a card that supports the features you want (DX10? DX11?) and then look at the cheapest variant that does what you want for your application.

In my experience, the order of importance for determining performance within a given model's variants is roughly:

• GPU<-->VRAM bus width
• GPU clock
• TIE: GPU shaders/texelgens OR VRAM clock, depending on how "purty" your game is.
• VRAM size

Now, these things aren't linear and depending on your specific application, the order of the bottom 2/3 might change.

To give you an example, an 8800GT is still faster FPS in games than a 9600GT or a GT240, though it may not support certain advanced effects in some games if the game requires DX10/11 for those effects.

In the end, it's really up to you to do some intelligent research and find out what your primary needs are. If you can't figure it out, then you're going to either have to abuse store return policies to test them out and find the one that fits your games, or throw money at the highest-end card you can afford.