Video Cards?

hi. can anyone help me catch up. I want to play some games and while looking at the required specs, it states...



Graphics: Nvidia 7800GTX/ATI X1800XT (SM 3.0) or DX10 equivalent



I really dont know how much memory that video card has.. will it be 128MB, 256MB, 512MB or 1GB?



why do the video cards' specs are stated that way? because last three years they just state how much memory your card should have in order for your program or game to function smoothly.



thank you very much.|||If you can find a Nvidia 7800GTX/ATI X1800XT with 256 MB, and 7600GS with a 512MB texture memory, 7800GTX and X1800XT will give a big boost for games while 7600gs gives a poor performance. Let me explain it ,



Memory of a VGA doesn't make any change to graphics of a game.It's needed to load content such as textures of game.



Every real time calculation are done by GPU ( what we call Geforce 7800GTX , ATi HD2600XT etc). Just imagine a game with a high quality sea ( such as Crysis) . All the water details such as reflections, refractions, are calculated by GPU using shaders.



When the number of GPU increases from 7600GS to 7800GTX the core clock and shader clock of the VGA is increased with a very big ammount. That means 7600GS has a very poor shader clock than 7800GTX.



So if you use 7600GS ( no matter 512MB or 1GB- if exist) you'll get a poor frames per second than a 7800GTX 256MB. Because in this case your pc will look for more clock speed to render the sea,it will not look for more memory to calculate sea shaders.



I hope you understand. Never ask for a VGA by it's memory ammount, like " gimme a 512MB VGA".



for more info check this



http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2…

You can see how the VGA ranks.



Excuse my English ;-)|||because memory on a card doesnt in the least tell u anything about the gpu speed , performance, or pixel shading capabilities ..|||512|||the problem is that very low end card started shipping with absurdly high amounts of memory that they could never actually use,



for example, they would have a Geforce 6200..very basic card, comes with 64mb of memory or sometime 128mb..then they would ship one with 512MB but still slow 6200 chip on it.



or what they would do is take a decent card, and use slower memory to offset the cost of more memory, and in turn would perform worse than the faster but lesser memory version



so what they did was just list the chip that they want you to have, and graphics card with that chip would have sufficient memory.



basically, they want you to have a graphics card that is better than a 7800GTX or 1800XT regardless of memory size.



now of course your not going to find a card thats better than a 7800GTX that has only 128MB or 64MB or memory, but you are going to find cards that are worse than a 7800GTX with 512MB of memory.|||Nowadays it can be difficult to look at a video card's numbering system and automatically tell which is better.



For instance, the 8800GT beats the old versions of the GTS, yet now the new versions of the GTS come close to the GTX. It can get confusing.



But anyways, an XFX 256MB Geforce 8600XXX would probably be sufficient to meet those requirements. They only cost $70.



And I can't recall ever seeing a video card requirement being stated as a simple "256MB" before. The RAM has to do with performance, but it is much more than that which determines the card's capabilities.|||OK not to offend you or anything, but gotta ask: are you a hermit or living under rocks for half a decade? It sounded like so to me. Generally spec mix is growing and fragmented



From my perspective I started with 486; in that era computers differ in:

- CPU: 486 DX2/SX/SLC, or 386 class, each with its own speed rating

- RAM size

- Video card slot type, VESA or ISA.



Moving on Pentium 4:

- CPU: Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron or AMD Athlon or Sampron.

- CPU socket types.

- CPU heatsinks and fan qualities.

- RAM size

- RAM type: DDR 266/333/400 that means PC2100/2700/3200 that means 133/166/200 MHz running at either single or dual channel mode.

- Video card: AGP universal or AGP 8x type.

- Video card type: classes like NVidia GeForce 2/4MX/5/6, ATI Radeon 7/8/9 with a speed rating postfix such as NVidia GeForce 5200 or GeForce 5500, GPU speed now matters.

- Video RAM type: SDR or DDR speed.



Moving on to current 64-bit era:

- CPU: Intel Core, Celeron, Centrino or AMD Athlon 64 or Sampron.

- CPU socket

- CPU heatsink and fan quality.

- mobo speed

- RAM type/speed: DDR 1/2/3 each with subclasses of speed and whether or not.running in dual channel.

- Video card slot: AGP 8x, PCI Express, or PCIe 2.0 and whether or not SLI or Crossfire ready.

- Video card GPU speed, you should know what 7800GTX mean by now.

- Video card memory type: GDDR2, GDDR3 each with mixed enchilada of speed and bit-width.

- Power supply unit: wattage, pin types, SLI readiness



This is just a basic sample how industry fragments for us who's budget builder and those of us who is a hard-core gamer. 7800GTX says it is NVidia GeForce 7 type, with a speed rating of 800 and performance tweak of GTX but ATI designations are not compatible even though works in the same way. DX10 says Windows Vista with higher requirement. Video memory amount means the same as it was; resolution requirement, although now throw in the mix that FSB is fast enough for the AMOUNT not to be strict as it was so for previous eras.|||Sorry to tell you but none of the 7 Series Graphics Cards run DX10. You have to get a 8 Series card to even think about it. I have the 8800 GTX. Which was a nice addition to my computer. lol.