Faster graphics card, or more graphics ram?
 

Enjoying the game on good details with my 6800gt, however, I can't enable high textures without it slowing to a crawl.

Does anyone know how much VRAM the game is taking up at high? And which is more likely to get me better performance at 1024 - a faster card, or a card that has 512mb VRAM?

Thanks in advance,

A normal missunderstanding when it comes to graphics card is to simply read the number of RAM and go "oo this is a good card". Not so. Some cards use their ram in much better ways, and have better gpus to take some of the load from the cpu.

If I were you, and wanted to invest in a new graphics card, I would wait for the new GeForce 8800GTX or GS coming soon(a couple of weeks). They will be expensive, but around Christmas they should be affordable(at least the GS version) in certain webshops.

Why, you say? Because they have DirectX 10 support for when Vista arrives, and are cards for the future. DX9 has been around for years, and DX10 will be out over newyear - and then be around for years. If you buy a card with DX10 support already now, you can stick with that card for a lot longer than regular DX9 cards.

The best version, GeForce 8800GTX is a sick card to be honest, with 768mb RAM and seriously fast GPUs. It is also rumored that it has an own GPU for physics processing.

If you want a cheaper card, just ask for recommendations. :)

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not interested in dx10 cards until this time next year at the earliest when they've done a few die shrinks and refreshed the line up. I'm planning on getting an X1950pro 256mb, but if graphics ram was especially important in Gothic 3, I'd consider a 7900GS 512mb.

Still worth waiting for the 8800, since it will drive down the prices of the 7900 series.

There is no question that the high res texture pack for G3 exceeds the 256MG buffer you have. Developers try to build texture packs to correspond to the sizes (128, 256, 512) but often the games fail to unload the buffer properly and the texture memory spills into system RAM. Oblivion does that on the 250MB hi res package occasionally. I've seen it as high as 320MB.

Do you already have 2 GB RAM? If not then this would be a better investment for now IMHO. Did you do all the .ini, graphics driver and HDD tweaks?

Indeed, 2GB is the most important thing for running Gothic 3 smoothly. Also, I'd recommend going for a GF card even if it's not a GF80 series card - I've had far more graphical glitches on my X1600 than GF7800GT.

Yes, I have 2gb of fast ram. G3 plays smooth and I've not (yet) had any crashes since I sorted out the problems with starting the game at all.

Because it's all smooth and stable I haven't bothered with many of the ini tweaks, the only thing I'm concerned about (at the moment) is switching to high textures and the corresponding hit.

I'll have to consider going the 512mb 7900gs route then. Previously I've been heading to ATI due to the better performance in Oblivion, which I still enjoy playing a lot :)

Given how much trouble other people have I wouldn´t buy a new graphics card before the final patch is out. Just backup the ini files and do some tweaking. Maybe you can squeeze out enough to increase the resolution one step. Should make things look better.

The problem with graphics cards is that they go out of date so quickly. Spend $500 on a brand new card that would cost $250 within a year.

*nods*

That's why it's never wise to buy more than you actually need at the time. I never spend more that $250 on a graphics card - they depreciate in value less quickly than the top range ones.

For 250$ you wouldn't even get half a proper card in Norway, they're all 400-800$ here, hehe.

You are very optimistic, actually it is more likely that $500 won't be at shops in one year time and all the $250 available within one your will greatly outperform the $500 one year old one. So if you value your many, there is always a "value" segment.

x1900GT would be my pick in the "value" segment at the moment. Can be picked up for under 200 USD I believe and doesn't perform too far off the best cards out there.

Graphics RAM is not really part of the equation, as higher resolutions are used more RAM is needed. If your GFX card is running out of onboard ram then there is something very wrong with your card or your card is simply not fast enough for the resolution you are trying to play at. The onboard ram on a video card is used to store data which has an extremely short life cycle, i.e. before it is rendered, it is not used to cache anything or store persistant data so normally no benefit is obtained by increasing the amount of ram onboard, unless the video card actually has below the minimum needed.

If you are playing at 1024x768 then 256mbyte ram cards is normally more than enough.

i only have p4 2.6 with a 6600 gt oc 128 mb, which i bought in january and 2 gigs of ram. I have shadows off and texture on medium and everthing else can be set high even with 1280x1024 resolution. the game has always run smoothly for me and i only crashed once in the first 80 or so hours of gameplay…after that it got worse for sure, but all is good. so yes i imagine since i have a fast card, supports shader model 3 as well, the only thing preventing me having high textures is the graphics ram, the game becomes absolutely non playable. but choosing between stunning and more stunning really is of no value to me. my whole computer will have to be rebuilt eventually anyhow. but as long as i can play bioshock in the spring it's going to be awhile

before rebuilding your computer, consider GeForce 7800 GS+
much better AGP card

Am I correct in assuming PCI Express outperforms AGP Slots?

Not much if at all but it does make sense to buy only PCI-E as currently the AGP is getting lower and lower coverage in terms of newly released GPU's.

It actually runs slightly slower (unoticeable) than the EXACT AGP equivalent. AGP slots however are a lot more expensive to produce and PCIe x16 also has more bandwidth available.

Ah well, after tons of stock problems at different shops (delays, then notes saying that they're waiting for stock, then missing restock dates) I've eventually gone for a fast 256mb card - the 1950xt. Should arrive tommorow and I'll find out how much of an improvement it is over the 6800gt.

I'm using 6800GT and I'm running on max without DOF, 1280x1024. You need 2GB of ram(doesn't matter if they're fast really, I got 333Mhz and it works fine). Other than RAM most important thing is your hard drive. Playing on 5000rpm on laptops is no-go, you need at least 7200rpm hard drive, and it needs to be completely defragmented(multiple times).