PowerColor PCS+ HD4870 1GB reviewed...

[Bo_Fox]

That is some inefficient memory usage then. UT3 uses 350-400mb @ 2560*1600 for me

Well, I usually play with 4x FSAA on, and that significantly increases the amount of video RAM used. Most of the time, it's 16x CSAA with TR SSAA. TR SSAA increases it *a lot*, much more than just simple 2560x1600.

My condolences for you gaming at that rez with only 512MB.. I feel ya!

some games will be more memory intensive, i bet.


looks like a significant difference to me.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...light=4870+1gb

different games different effects; some (games) dont benefit from the extra ram and some will....but based on what little info at hand, maybe most games will not benefit from the extra 512 of gddr5.


with respect, an 8800gtx is not a 4870 512MB or 1GB.

Yeah, thank God my 8800GTX has just enough (768MB) for most games released within the last 18 months! Using Rivatuner's monitoring, it's passed 700MB with 3-4 games but the memory usage kept on dropping after peaking somewhere so close to 768MB. It seems that the texture buffers were being "re-cached" or something like that, and I could notice some hitching in the game as confirmed with the graphs.

It is a big factor of stability in some certain resolutions with some level of AA. Some cards will simply refuse to let you play a game at a high rez+high AA. Some games just crash due to poor texture management at a limited buffer, or due to poor drivers. I'd just rather have more than enough memory and not worry about it.

Sometimes, if our hardware does not advance for a while, the software development also stays stagnant. More often than not, software development usually follows hardware development. If Nvidia and ATI went ahead and marketed 1GB flavors of the 9800GTX, 3870/4870 right from the beginning, many of us would have already bought it, and more game developers would be encouraged to use higher-rez textures. We've been stuck at 512MB for like 2 years and then the "half-step" to 768MB for another 1.5 years. Remember Doom 3 released in 2004 "requiring" 512MB for Ultra quality graphics? That was 4 damn years ago!! Seriously guys, do you really want hardware tech to be that stagnant, unlike the past when we went from 16MB to 128MB (8x the amount) within 2 years between 2000 and 2002?