Graphics Cards

[5614]

i recently bought a graphics card which said it was a 64MB GeForce MX etc etc,

i know it isnt the best one, but itll do for me, and i didnt wanna spend to much on it, so dont tell me how bad it is!

but seriously, what does the 64MB stand for, like obviously its a speed, but the speed of what? what does that speed determin?

[Sayonara]

64 Mb of onboard random access memory.

 

Generally the better the RAM, the better the performance of the card.

[5614]

so does the RAM of a card effect the speed of the card,

or how high resolution it can go or what,

soz, that might seem a bit basic, i know alot about computers, but not alot about graphics cards

[Sayonara]

The way I understand it is this: the idea of the card is to take processing duties away from the CPU and motherboard RAM, so they are free to get on with running the game without the overhead of the graphical processing.

 

The faster the chip is on the gfx card, and the bigger the gfx memory, the faster overall performance should be.

 

I'm sure it probably affects the possible output of the card (in terms of resolution etc) but I don't know how tbh.

[mossoi]

Yeah - more RAM gives better performance and higher resolution, colour depth and refresh rate.

[bloodhound]

no. it involves more than just the RAM. for example a 32 MB ati radeon will outperform my 64Mb integrated graphics. if u wanna benchmark ur graphics card then download stuff like

 

Aquamark or 3d mark

[5614]

no. it involves more than just the RAM. for example a 32 MB ati radeon will outperform my 64Mb integrated graphics.

Aquamark or 3d mark

 

ok fine, but what else does it depend on??? how can something half the speed outperform another twice as powerful one?

[Sayonara]

RAM is not an indicator of speed.

[5614]

yeah i know, but what else contributes to its speed

[Sayonara]

The processor on the graphics card - when people talk about the speed of the card, they mean the speed of the processor.

[bloodhound]

you can get graphics card reviews at http://www.tomshardware.com , and they go into extreme detail analysing each stuff.

[Dave]

Should probably note that if you go out and buy yourself an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb, the performance increase is hardly noticiable if you go and buy the 256mb unless you're running a game with a serious amount of texture rendering at a high resolution.