Video Card with 32 or 64 MB

[tenfive2]

Hey guys! Does more memory on the video card increase speed or just resolution? I mean, is the Geforce2 mx-400 with 64MB better than

the Geforce2 MX because it has more ram? The compare charts show the plain 32MB Mx is just about even with the 32MB mx-400 in performance. Help! I'm going insane reading the reviews!

[Schrullenhaft]

More memory on the video card may help with speed in regards to the number and resolution of textures stored in the card's memory. Otherwise it is a trip over the AGP bus > system memory > hard drive and then back again to retrieve the texture required for display. 64Mb will allow you to have more textures loaded up which could possibly increase performance for those larger scenarios with a lot of varied units, etc.

The benchmarks you see in magazines are going to stress the video memory bandwidth and GPU speed in particular functions. They will rarely show any speed benefits due to more memory on the video card (though some benchmarks may have tests that show this benefit).

I can't remember exactly, but I heard that the GeForce2MX's using SDR memory were among the faster ones available. Whether this is true anymore or not I'm not sure. The MX-400 iteration of the GeForce2MX is running at a slightly higher core clock speed that the standard GeForce2MX (MX-200). Core clock speed doesn't make as much of a difference as the video memory performance.

For more info check out this GeForce FAQ:

http://www.tweak3d.net/faq/faq.cgi

[WWB]

Well, looking over at www.tomshardware.com today, I saw an interesting article on a GeForce2MX. Apparently someone has goosed the speed up enought that a SDR GeForce2 MX 400 runs pretty much even with a GeForce2 GTS with DDRAM.

WWB