upgrade graphics card

[ihabkal]

Hi Friends,

It seems when having 8GB of ram, you keep cramming things until your graphics card can't keep up. I have a Quaddro FX1500 with 256MB ram, and I am thinking of replacing it with an ATI 4870 with 1GB ram. Do you think this will increase performance? I think the more ram, the less freeze ups I will be having...Did anyone try both?

thanks.

[BOXXLABS]

Adding system RAM to your computer won't affect your realtime 3D/GUI performance.

 

And adding a GPU with more RAM doesn't make anything faster unless you are using HUGE HUGE HUGE texture maps.

 

If you use many very very (very) large textures in your 3D scene and you want to turn up your viewport's texture display settings, then maybe you need more than 256MB of RAM.

 

A better measure of GPU speed (and therefore GUI interactivity) is the number of triangles (polys) the card can process per second.

 

The ATI 4870 will be much faster than your current card but not because of the amount of RAM it has. It's faster because it uses newer technology and is more capable of moving polygons around the screen.

 

You will want to be very careful that your application(s) and computer can officially support this card before you make any decisions to buy one.

 

I like the ATI cards - they seem to be a good value. But I find that the Nvidia-based cards (especially Quadro cards) have much better (and more stable) drivers for professional graphics applications.

 

my $.02

 

Adam

[ihabkal]

Thanks Adam, I really appreciate this. It is nice to see a major comapny helping in the forums.