Video Card/ Ram

singloud

When playing video games I was wondering what difference RAM and video cards make to the experience.

What are the benifits of having more RAM or a video card with more MB?

Thanks

dazftw

Pretty sure normal ram is better for loading games quicker! Then video card ram would be for rendering the picture the more ram on it the higher resolution you can get also!

TerrorFirmer

They are both equally important. In your case, we'd need to know your current specs to know which one would be a more important upgrade.

Anima

Any kind of processor can't work without memory to give it (a) the information it needs to process and (b) the storage to hold the result of processing. Having more memory means being able to perform more calculations and no waiting to read from slower memory like a harddrive. What this means ingame is that you get better fps and what I would say is more important, a more consistant fps i.e. not fluctuating between 10 and 100 all the time.

singloud

Well I'm thinking of getting a computer with 1024MB RAM and a Geforce NVIDIA 7300 256 MB video card, I have a 512 MB and a 256MB sticks floating around which I can add in, is that decent specs for gaming or should I go for more RAM/a better video card?

SwampThing

Are you sure these memory sticks are the same and compatible with the new system?

singloud

Their both 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM if thats what you mean

Fanny Cradock

1Gig of RAM is fine for all modern games. Some titles like BF2 preform better with more RAM, e.g. I believe the loading times are shorter. But I'd say that is the exception rather than the rule. Things change, however.

I really wouldn't bother getting that card. It's rubbish. Something like the 7600GT is FAR superior.

singloud

No, it's an integrated part of the computer, I'm going to Uni, so am blowing my savings on a laptop, it comes with the thing

This is one using the customizing thing on Dell website, getting a Geforce 7300 video card and 1GB of RAM (1792MB once I've added in my own memory sticks) for around 800euros.

is there anyway I can get a laptop with a decent memory card for around 800-900Euros

TerrorFirmer

Go7300 is bad for gaming unless you're either playing old games or newer ones on low settings. If you want decent mobile gaming the bare minimum would be a Go7400, or more desirably a Go7600/7700 X1600/X1700. But be prepared to pay. Unlike desktops, it is very hard to get a respectable gaming laptop for little money.

For 800-900 euro the best you could expect probably is a 7300 or X1300 but don't expect much performance wise.

Dublin_Gunner

Unless those are lapto SODIMMS, you're not gonna be able to add in you're ram.

Laptops are generally very sparse when it comes to the available ram slots for expanding, with usually only 1 spare, and they are not like desktop PC modules.

Also, whats most important here is what type of games you wish to play??

DOnt expect to play the latest and greatest on a laptop unless you're willing to spend at least 2K on a gaming lappy.

Extra ram for playing games helps a HELL of a lot as the PC doesnt need to swap to/from the HDD as much, as a previous post stated, keeping your frames per second constant.

More ram does not = higher FPS

As far as the vid card goes, its THE single most important element for gaming. Its the thing thats going to be rendering all the game data and outputting it to the screen. Sure, a faster CPU can help, as it must process all of the geometry data before passing it to the GPU (this process will be a thing of the past with DX10 applications & hardware, as the GPU will process the geometry data itself).

Weak GPU = poor gaming experience.

joshcork

^^
Agree, of course all parts are essential but certain parts help more in certain disciplines of computing. Halflife 2 will work on a ATI x300 graphics card with 512MB of RAM I bet ya it would look much the same with 2GB of RAM (it'd load faster though) but with the x1300 and 512MB RAM it would look very much prettier.

singloud

At the moment I'm playing Oblivion on a Nvidia 7300 card and it works ok, is an x1300 better for gaming?

Dell offers a "256MB ATI® Mobility™ Radeon® X1400 HyperMemory™ graphics card" with it's laptops, how good is that?

Dublin_Gunner

joshcork wrote:

^^
Agree, of course all parts are essential but certain parts help more in certain disciplines of computing. Halflife 2 will work on a ATI x300 graphics card with 512MB of RAM I bet ya it would look much the same with 2GB of RAM (it'd load faster though) but with the x1300 and 512MB RAM it would look very much prettier.

But you'd want at least a 7600GT to max the settings.

Dublin_Gunner

singloud wrote:

At the moment I'm playing Oblivion on a Nvidia 7300 card and it works ok, is an x1300 better for gaming?

Dell offers a "256MB ATI® Mobility™ Radeon® X1400 HyperMemory™ graphics card" with it's laptops, how good is that?

x1300 is no better than a 7300, neither are really very powerful at all.

X1400 afaik is an x1300 variant, but with hypermemory and designed for mobile platforms.

TerrorFirmer

The X1400 is considerably better then the X1300 but not great either. It will however get by Oblivion on medium-ish settings without too much problems.

Again, depending on what you're wanting to play, the X1400 might be perfectly adequate for you. It's identical to the Go7400 performance wise, and here's my 7400 screenshot thread on another forum if you want to have a look at what I could get performance wise.

joshcork

Sorry for some confusion there I was just giving an example of what would make the major diff in performance I played Halflife 2 on my laptop which has 512MB RAM and an x300 and it worked ok. I was giving example of how the x1300 would do a much better job with nothing else changed on the system, I know there is better stuff and I wasn't suggesting the x1300 to be used I just used it as an example cus it's a thousand times better than my current laptop card.

Although I would suggest ATI their older cards have a more rounded ability than NVidia at least from what I know of it anyway.

singloud

Yeah, will an x1400 be good for playing games at a decent setting? Nothing flash but still decent?

What exactly is hypermemory?

TerrorFirmer

Hypermemory is taking system memory to make up a cards full amount of Ram. For example, the X1400 is a 256mb card in total, but it only has 128mb dedicated so the other 128mb is taken from your system Ram. Hence, if using most laptop cards, you'd want at least 768 - 1gb for most types of game, as a recommended minimum.

I have 1gb of ram, and a 7400 that's only 64mb Dedicated and 192mb shared - thats the card I took the screenshots on above, and it still performs rather well. Generally though, Nvidias turbocache (their equivilent name) is considered far more efficent then Atis hypermemory. As I said, the 7400 performs the same as the X1400, so take a look at the link I posted and see if you're happy. Keep in mind, if you had more ram, the games would run slightly better.

singloud

Yeah I looked at the link, it looks grand but would a Nvidia 7300 be better off than an ATI radeon x1400? Or are they almost exactly the same.

TerrorFirmer

The X1400 would be much better then the 7300, yes. A 7400 and X1400 are practically the same, the 7300 is comparable to the X1300.

singloud

Thanks mate, and the x1400 makes the laptop 50euros cheaper to boot.