[Pc_Support] RE: Monarch Computer: GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB for $460(shipped) ...

[Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>]

From: Damien McKenna <dmckenna at thelimucompany.com>
> Under what circumstances would you need 512meg on a video card? 

When you want to jack up the FSAA to 4x4, isotropic filtering to even
higher, etc...  You suddenly go from a X+Y+Z buffer requirement of
only 24MB to _greater_ than 256MB at 1600x1200, or even 1280x1024
in some cases.

And at the power of a GeForce 6800 Ultra or 7800 GTX, you _can_ still
get 30fps at many DirectX/OpenGL titles with that image quality
(whereas it might be not even 1fps on a GeForce FX5200, 5500, 5700LE).

I personally _never_ run with anything less than FSAA 4x4, and people
always go "wow, why does your card look so good?"  Because there's
no jaggies!  ;->

> From what I read lately it didn't seem to be worth the extra cost.

Not for most users interested in ultra-high refresh rates.  Image quality
just brings down the performance.  That's why these reviews are missing
the point.

Jack up Doom3 to 1600x1200 and jack up the image quality settings,
and you'll quickly see why 512MB does matter.  Not many reviews have
done that, because they want at least 60fps.


--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org