why have graphics cards been stuck at 256mB for so long?

diespine

Beta member
Messages
5
why did it take so long for ati and nvidia to get past 256mB on a video card? i think they both have cards out or coming out with 512mB. when are the 1gB cards coming? and are we going to have to wait just as long to reach it as the 512mB cards?
 
Well...

The cost to the end user.
If it costs too much the general public will bypass the high end for a more moderate card. You really don't need that kinda horsepower except for dyed in the wool hard core gamers and serious business users.
On a technical note, you just can't slap memory on a card and it work. The gpu has to be designed to accomodate the larger memory. And those things take time to develope.
 
The average gamer doesn't even need that much memory as it is right now. The only positive I can see about 512MB cards being released this early is that you can be prepared for the next-gen graphics in games, but the cost is still way too much for something that would be of no need. Plus, the 6600 GT is only 128MB and yet still gets no lag with high settings on HL2, so why would we need 512 this soon?
 
Seriously. 256mb is already good for games. 512mb is like overkill for today's games.
 
Yeah this is true. What the memory would do is allow less compressed textures to be used allowing for better looking graphics in the future. It would also affect speeds a slight bit, but not much at all.

Doom 3 on the highest setting (ultra is it?) will need more RAM than 256MB to get all the textures cached into the memory, but this is very unknown for a game at the moment. Even 256Mb RAM allows the caching needed for this game at Ultra quality though they might suffer some slowdown artifacts here and there I'd presume since it isn't quite enough.
 
see why pay for that card? its more than double the price of a 256mb and yet its only double the memory...
 
It is way to expensive, but it would make any game out now would be childs play to it.
 
yes but y bother? you dont need that quality, and when u do that card will be down 500 dollars or so. so i would just wait. dual SLI is still cheaper than that one card (dual 6800ultra 256mb)
 
money_man said:
yes but y bother? you dont need that quality, and when u do that card will be down 500 dollars or so. so i would just wait. dual SLI is still cheaper than that one card (dual 6800ultra 256mb)

I'm not buying that card. it would take forever to save up for, but i'm glad it came out because now in a month or so the 6800ultra 256mb price should come down.
 
Back
Top Bottom