Is It Worth It?

[Kikosemmek]

Noticing all those hardware related threads raised up a question that had been latent in the back of my head for a while.

Is it really worth it to shell out on a 1GB GPU? If I were to build the ultimate gaming machine, do I need more than 512 MB? I know that the PS3 has a 256MB GPU, so this really puts some doubts in my head for actually getting so much vRAM. The fact that SLI's are so popular and that monstrous GPU's are all over the place suggests against my doubts so I'll just ask you who are more proficient than I about this:

When would I need (exclude Crysis and professional video editing) 1GB of video RAM? Are there any games that would require more than a decent 256MB or a 512MB GPU, providing I have a good all-round computer?

Another unrelated question: sound cards- what should I be judging their value on? I see a crazy price range for an assortment of them but I don't really know how to judge the quality of a sound card. I never found myself actually complaining about any audio quality on any system I've owned, so I wouldn't exactly refer to myself as a connoisseur of sound cards, even though I am a musician with very good hearing.

 

[James_R]

AFAIK, if you don't have 5.1/7.1/movie theatre in your room, stick with the onboard videocard.
Atleast, that what's told me.

 

[Mortified Penguin]

Noticing all those hardware related threads raised up a question that had been latent in the back of my head for a while.

Is it really worth it to shell out on a 1GB GPU? If I were to build the ultimate gaming machine, do I need more than 512 MB? I know that the PS3 has a 256MB GPU, so this really puts some doubts in my head for actually getting so much vRAM. The fact that SLI's are so popular and that monstrous GPU's are all over the place suggests against my doubts so I'll just ask you who are more proficient than I about this:

When would I need (exclude Crysis and professional video editing) 1GB of video RAM? Are there any games that would require more than a decent 256MB or a 512MB GPU, providing I have a good all-round computer?

Another unrelated question: sound cards- what should I be judging their value on? I see a crazy price range for an assortment of them but I don't really know how to judge the quality of a sound card. I never found myself actually complaining about any audio quality on any system I've owned, so I wouldn't exactly refer to myself as a connoisseur of sound cards, even though I am a musician with very good hearing.

Well, getting a 1gb GPU future-proofs your computer to a limited degree, so if you have the money to spend and can't think of any other reasons, then get it, I suppose.

 

[geldonyetich]

Your subject lacks, "Is it worth it" lacks adequate definition, try something like, "Is 1 GB Video Ram Worth It?" Even then, your topic ("how can I upgrade a PC?") rates up there with rickroll threads in terms of topic bodies which glut message boards lacking proper moderation. Considering this is not even gaming related, it probably should have been dropped on the general forum. Seriously, you should know better than this, this is like passive aggressive trolling.

That said, I figure you're legit enough to deliver unto thee my advice on PC hardware updates:

No need to blow money on the latest features. You can always update to the same thing later when it's half the cost. Go for a sweet spot between high performance (check the benchmarks on Tom's Hardware) and good price. Checking benchmarks is always the best way to determine if a silly feature such as having 1 GB of video ram is really worth it or not.

When you can roughly mentally divide performance you're getting directly by cost of the component and come out with a bigger number, you know you're getting a good deal. Buying the latest thing all the time, you'll get much smaller numbers by mental division, and that's how you know you're basically ripping yourself off. People who shell out massive amounts of money to have the best hardware on the forum are paying egotistic twit tax for hardware I can get two months later at half the price.

In this particular case, a 1 GB video card will serve you in games that have Ultra High resolution textures. I can count said games on one hand right now (EverQuest 2, Mass Effect, Crysis, maybe Assassin's Creed..) but you won't need that much RAM for the vast majority of games you're playing, and on the ones you do it's generally because you'd have a serious hangup about pixelated looking textures and so you set them to "ultra high" resolution mode - they play just fine on "high" (512MB) mode and look good enough to all but the real graphic lovers.

 

[Aiden Rebirth]

uh just buy this

 

[Theo Samaritan]

You really need to get what the memory actually does.

Running at a high resolution? Yep that uses alot of memory. Textures? Yep those to. You say that you doubt you will need more than 512mb because the PS3 has 256. The difference is that the PS3 is tuned up the yingyang, as are the games that go on it. You can't simply look at the memory and consider it an active comparison.

As for games using a gig, that is happening with more and more of the newest releases. While GTAIV isn't a good example of an optimised PC game, if you put everything high, at 1920x1200, it requires a 2gb top-end ATI 4870 x2 to run simply due to the memory usage.

More and more games are going this way. Thinking about it, I can't name a decent card that actually is less than a Gig =/

 

[AwesomeHat]

More and more games are going this way. Thinking about it, I can't name a decent card that actually is less than a Gig =/

The 8800GTX. I'm yet to find anything it can't handle on max or near to max on my system, that's running 768MB of VRAM.

 

[samsprinkle]

Dude, games are ALWAYS on the move. in two years crisis will be standard or even outdated...If you can afford it buy THE PC...

 

[samsprinkle]

uh just buy this

Oh! the Cray supercomputers!