Another Video Card Question

That's not entirely true. It depends on the number of textures a game uses and whether or not those textures are being compressed. Granted, you're talking about a couple of frames per second, but there is some difference.

2Hostyl, let me remind you of one of my favorite quotes:

"640K of RAM will be enough for anybody"
-Bill Gates in regards to only allocating 640K of conventional RAM in DOS. I forget the year, but it's somewhere around 1980ish.

dan: I'm not saying that you will *never* need 256, I'm just saying that by the time you do, the cards that are out *now* will be 'budget' cards and wont even be able to keep up.

Jeff: the minisucle difference you are talking about inst even something that a user will notice. If you're all about 'bragging rights' sure, spend the money. But run a 128 and 256 version of the same card side-by-side and you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference. Especially not enough of a difference to justify the higher expense.

I agree with Jeremy on this one. There really isn't much sense in buying a video card with 256MB right now, since it won't really be used. By the time that much is used, there will be newer, faster graphics chipsets out there.

Graphics cards aren't like the full computer, where you can (often) buy a new CPU (or possibly motherboard and CPU) and reuse the system RAM.

Well I don't think my 6800GT came in a 128 MB flavor. :)

There IS that :)

Well here is my thing, I have a 2800 Sempron 2Ghz, 333 Mhz FSB, 512Mb of DDR Ram, Integrated sound, and a ATI Radeon 7000 (64 MB, AGP), now my only problem after fixing most of it, I still get a crappy frame rate, NOw a few days ago I learned that PCI slots share recource memory, so...I'm wondering since we are all speaking of video cards.... Is it my card? or is the game just not utilizing everything in my pc? or is it just the card?

I'd say it's most certainly the card. The 7000 is pretty old technology.

Ok, I'll consider upgrading at a later time...cuz this last upgrade cost me $215 and thats quite a bit, lol! ;)

Heh. I hope the 7000 wasn't included in that upgrade. You can get vid cards with the ATI 7000 on them for as low as $27 new.

no, definatly not, lol! I bought a 2800 Sempron and 512 MB DDR Ram, thats what cost alot! seeing as the processor was about 149.99, and the memory about 85 dollars + tax, oh, and I hate CompUSA! LOL! ;)

Why didnt you order the stuff from newegg or tigerdirect or something like that (no taxes)? but anyway Big 'G' is right, your vid card is the bottleneck.

I would of but my family had to be able to give me a gift certificate for it or something. They helped me on the upgrade. Yea, I thought it was just a little old, but I can still play games with it, and its the best I've had, so I'm not complaining just yet. LOL! ;)