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Video memory usage.

13 REPLIES 13
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Message 1 of 14
deckart
232 Views, 13 Replies

Video memory usage.

Before I knew better I had bought an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro for my home puter. At the time did more gaming than modeling. Now I do more modeling than gaming thanks to some extra contract work. And I had to sell my game card at a big loss but the purchaser threw in a GeForce2. The ATI card would just crash on occasion and had some display issues. I use a GeForce2 at work and performs OK for the most part. At least it is stable.


Now I've been looking at reviews of vid cards and when it comes to gaming benchmarks there isn't a difference between the cards that have 128Megs of memory and 256Megs of memory unless your monitor is setup at rediculously high resolutions. So the reviewers say save your money and get the 128meg cards.


Now, would IV utilize the extra memory on these "non-workstation" cards? Would I gain any performance getting the 256Meg versions?

13 REPLIES 13
Message 2 of 14
Anonymous
in reply to: deckart

you didn't list which version of gforce 2 you have
or tube size and resolution your running along with how many windows you have
running at any given time all witch are important along with your cpu and
ram.

       
               
               
    msk
Message 3 of 14
Anonymous
in reply to: deckart

also did you look at the graphic card info that is
in IV, i know it says knothing about ram size but it does give some info on the
cards.

       
               
               
               
    msk
Message 4 of 14
deckart
in reply to: deckart

commodore 64 @ 640 x 480 on a 13" monochrome w/ 64k RAM. CPU?

Where does the extra memory matter? I'm not looking for a 256M Gefore2. I'm considering a cheap upgrade and wondering what the extra 128Megs could do for me.
Message 5 of 14
deckart
in reply to: deckart

*thinks to self*
"I'll bet jiml could help me with this one?"
Message 6 of 14
deckart
in reply to: deckart

-bump-
Message 7 of 14
rllthomas
in reply to: deckart

I'll make a semi-informed guess here. Based on common resolutions you only need about 4mb ram to fill the screen with 2D pixels. To make things appear 3D textures are used, the remaining memory is for textures. Cad has a ludicrous number of polygons compared to games but the framerate can be much slower. The textures usually used in IV I would assume are not very memory intensive, even though with all the polygons there must be a lot of them. Unless you are doing something using complex textures (maybe some maya or max work) at extremely high resolutions I don't think you would need the extra memory.



Like I said, I'm guessing.
Message 8 of 14
deckart
in reply to: deckart

That is the most informed guess I've got and it is consistent with the research I've done. That and Autodesk doesn't seem to hint at the advantage of having a large amount of video memory. The Ti4200 128Meg is looking like the best "bang-for-the-buck" upgrade choice.
Message 9 of 14
rllthomas
in reply to: deckart

I'm doing fine with my 64mb quadro4 550 XGL which only costs: yes you guessed it everyone I'm a broken record/ 115 bucks from www.micro-xpress.com
Message 10 of 14
deckart
in reply to: deckart

That makes me very curious as to what IV likes to see for video memory. Before the 128Meg cards came out the reviewers were saying 64Meg is plenty enough.

And how well does a quadro4 550 XGL run a FPS game? 🙂

Message 11 of 14
Anonymous
in reply to: deckart

I'll throw a guess too.

It seems that whatever is on screen at the time, regardless of the count
of the assembly, directly affects model manipulation. I have noticed
that if an assembly is "zoomed all", manipulation stays rather
responsive and stays that way even as the model is zoomed in.

However, once the model is zoomed in very close, the zooming out usually
takes considerable time (the pregnant pause) and will even worsen if a
highly (feature) patterned part becomes visible in the process. At this
point, a rotate becomes painful as IV's graphic seemingly tries to
"read" the information.

It would seem that at a "zoomed all" model somehow (as long as the
card's memory can hold it) can extrapolate any rotate manouvers. It also
seems that card memory is dumped as parts disapear off screen, but
re-built much slower/painfully as they come back into view.

As I understand it, IV doesn't use a "list" like MDT does, but at the
same time, it would seem that if a "zoomed out" assembly can be
manipulated in real time, why can't a "zoomed in" portion of the model
be manipulated as fast and without the pregnant pause.... isn't the
(viewing) information for the parts already "in" the card's memory?

I wonder if there is a "task manager" application for video cards. I
would just love to see how much memory is actually being used and how
dynamically it is being utilized.

QBZ


"deckart" wrote in message
news:f18ac0d.6@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> That is the most informed guess I've got and it is consistent with the
research I've done. That and Autodesk doesn't seem to hint at the
advantage of having a large amount of video memory. The Ti4200 128Meg is
looking like the best "bang-for-the-buck" upgrade choice.
Message 12 of 14
deckart
in reply to: deckart

That is exactly what I have experienced. It seems to me that when you zoom out, rendering is simplified. And as you zoom in, greater rendering detail is required. The slow down is primarily in the this zoom transition which suggests that it is while it is determining the rendering detail.

If there was a way that was all done from the beginning then maybe it wouldn't have to continually crunch through the rendering detail. But I'm shooting from the hip here. Maybe it would require a utility that allowed you to do this if you had a high-end card. -shrug-

Message 13 of 14
rllthomas
in reply to: deckart

I'm not much of a framerate snob when it comes to games. The 550XGL seems about the same as my Ti 4200 but I haven't played many games on it nor have I played any DirectX (Direct Draw to be more specific) games on it.
Message 14 of 14
rllthomas
in reply to: deckart

Wrong URL, www.microx-press.com

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