Friday, May 4, 2012

What's better, 2 x 512MB video cards or 1 x 1 GB video card?

Trying to build a multi-task machine that will be able to handle photo/video editing. Not really a gamer, I just hate having to wait for things to render.|||The memory on a video card is really a frame buffer. The more pixels you push around on your monitor the better a larger frame buffer will be. The GPU on the card processes the data you see on the screen and determines how quickly that data can be shown. Faster GPU = Higher FPS.



Video rendering is handled by your CPU, not your video card. The speed and number of cores of your CPU determines how quickly you can render a video file into a different format, or how quickly an image is updated with changes you have made. When those calculations are complete the data is sent to the video card for display.



If you are not a gamer you don't need a dual card setup. Go with a single card and 1 GB of memory. Look closely at the new HD 5770 for a card that will do everything you need. It doesn't use a lot of power, runs cooler, and is DirectX 11 compatible.|||If the video processor is the same, you are much better off with a single 1GB card.



If the video processor is a lot faster on the 512MB card - like 2 times faster or more, a dual video card will give a lot more processing power. The amount of memory depends somewhat on what video you plan to run (like high end games) and what screen resolution you are running (like dual 1920x1080 screens needs more memory).

Without more details as to what video cards you are looking at, hard to guess here.... If run of the mill types of video cards, get the single card with more memory...|||I would personally go with one 1.00 Gig of RAM rather than two 512MB of RAM simply because:



1. Taking up less space

2. Not using as much power

3. Able to add in an extra 1.00 Gig of RAM if needed|||I would choose 1 x 1GB. Better to keep the power on one card rather than two separate ones.|||1x1gb

No comments:

Post a Comment