Video Cards/RAM question (256-bit or 128-bit?)

[bob_bobness]

I'm buying a new graphics card and I was thinking about buying a Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb. I was wondering whether it was worth it to spend the extra money for a 256-bit card instead of a 128-bit card. Also, I have 512mb of RAM. Should I upgrade?

[Martin_89]

Welcome to the forum

id say that you should spend the extra on the 256-bit card, as long as it isnt to much more expensive than the 128-bit.

As for your ram, i find that for most games 512MB is ok but for Far cry, Unreal Tournament 2004 the upgrade to 1GB of ram is a must if you like the game to look pretty and run at a good frame rate.

[bob_bobness]

I already bought Doom 3 and it doesn't run at all even on the lowest possible settings on my 9200 SE 128mb. The games i'll be playing most will be Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, but I'm not looking for the best quality. For an improvement over my 9200, is my 512mb RAM enough? I'm talking about 1024 x 768 resolution, high quality (not highest).

[Martin_89]

well andy (AGW_01) from this forum said that from his upgrade from 512MB ram to 1GB ram Doom III ran alot better, as it is a pretty hungry game on ram. so if you have the money then id upgrade.

[Todd a]

A 128MB version with 256bit memory would be MUCH faster than a 256MB version with a 128 bit memory bus. The 256MB version with 256 bit bus is pretty expensive and does not perform much better than the 128MB version. As for performance the Radeon 9800Pro (128MB 256bit version) will run Doom3 just fine. I run Doom3 at 1024x768 on High Quality at 41FPS, which is pretty smooth. My card is a slightly slower Radeon 9700Pro (128MB 256bit). The Radeon 9800Pro should be at least 10% faster, or about 45FPS.