Graphics card advice

[dern]

I was about to buy a 7900gt (despite saying previously that I wouldn't ) with 256Mb of memory... to get 512Mb seems to cost a substantial amount more, is it worth it?

Needless to say this is for gaming so want something to support all current games and be ok for a while. I'll be driving a 1280x1024 LCD panel from it.

Thanks,

Mark

[mr_yogi]

256Mb is fine for the moment on a 7900GT, but in the future may limit you. Games like Quake 4 already make use of more than 256Mb video RAM on max detail, though the difference is hardly noticable. Unreal Engine 3.0 is supposed to make use of 512Mb video RAM also.

The thing to remember is that the more textures and higher quality shaders a games uses the slower it will be. Thus if you go for a 512Mb 7900GT you may have the RAM to run future games at high quality but may not have the power to get decent frame rates anyway Of course you could always add another at a later date with SLi

Off the top of my head, I seem to remember when I bought my cards the ATI based cards have 512Mb at lower price points? not sure if it's still true though.

BTW I got 2 7800GT extreme's with 256b RAM and I wish i'd waited until the 512Mb Cards came out, oh well it runs things ok at the moment

[Zad]

256MB is fine, the difference to 512MB isn't worth the extra at the moment and would be better spent on "extreme" edition of the card which is overclocked slightly. Put the money you save towards purchasing a second SLI card in a years time when they have dropped in price.

[voyds9]

Thoroughly recommend 7950 now getting silly speeds, bank balance is suffering.

[dern]

Thanks very much for the advice... having looked at prices I'll go with a single 7900gt for now with 256Mb and then stick another one in next year when they're worth 10p.

Regards,

Mark