Graphic card comparison

LeeG wrote:
You could well be right. One thing I have noticed, and I am thinking of
asking nVidia about it, according to the specifications provided by nVidia
this card with the GT216 chipset has DDR3 memory at 800Mhz. The two cards I
have dealt with have DDR2 memory on them at 400Mhz. Could it be this chipset
is optimised for DDR3 and having DDR2 on the card is contributing to the
problem?


The comments section here, mentions they use both DDR2 and DDR3. The
clock rate on the memories could be a bit different. I think the largest
spread I've ever seen in memory performance, on the same nominal model number
of card, is a factor of 4. That is the difference between the card
with the cheapest slowest memory, and the best memory. There is a
lot of latitude for the manufacturer, as to what they can stick on
a card. It is one thing you have to watch for, when looking though a
set of product offerings.

http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-GT-220-card-617.html

I don't think the memory type makes that much difference from a
design integrity point of view. Before a video card can be shipped,
the video BIOS file must be modified, to contain the correct memory
timing settings for the memory selected for the card. So the card
is tuned up, before it is shipped. I don't recollect too many cases
where that was done in a clumsy fashion - they usually manage to get
it right.

Your GPU is designed in 40nm techology, and likely has pretty decent
memory I/O speeds on it. When they connect DDR2-800 to it, I doubt that
taxes its abilities at all. The only question that remains in my mind,
is whether the memories used are well tested, before the card ships.
I don't know whether they have a short burn-in process, with
the GPU doing the "memtest86" on the chips. It would make
sense to do it that way. With the power of the GPU, you should be
able to run a memory test pretty rapidly on the card. If the design
wasn't optimal, the dropout on the production line would draw attention
to it fairly rapidly. At our old factory, if bogus cards are coming
off a line, a huge pile of bad cards starts to build up, next to the
test stations. For anyone that cares (the management), they eventually
notice the mess :-) The people doing the testing, hardly ever care
to tell somebody, that a lot of bad stuff is coming off the line,
but the pile of bad cards is a pretty good means of saying "I've got
a problem".

Paul

LeeG wrote:
You could well be right. One thing I have noticed, and I am thinking of
asking nVidia about it, according to the specifications provided by nVidia
this card with the GT216 chipset has DDR3 memory at 800Mhz. The two cards I
have dealt with have DDR2 memory on them at 400Mhz. Could it be this chipset
is optimised for DDR3 and having DDR2 on the card is contributing to the
problem?


The comments section here, mentions they use both DDR2 and DDR3. The
clock rate on the memories could be a bit different. I think the largest
spread I've ever seen in memory performance, on the same nominal model number
of card, is a factor of 4. That is the difference between the card
with the cheapest slowest memory, and the best memory. There is a
lot of latitude for the manufacturer, as to what they can stick on
a card. It is one thing you have to watch for, when looking though a
set of product offerings.

http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-GT-220-card-617.html

I don't think the memory type makes that much difference from a
design integrity point of view. Before a video card can be shipped,
the video BIOS file must be modified, to contain the correct memory
timing settings for the memory selected for the card. So the card
is tuned up, before it is shipped. I don't recollect too many cases
where that was done in a clumsy fashion - they usually manage to get
it right.

Your GPU is designed in 40nm techology, and likely has pretty decent
memory I/O speeds on it. When they connect DDR2-800 to it, I doubt that
taxes its abilities at all. The only question that remains in my mind,
is whether the memories used are well tested, before the card ships.
I don't know whether they have a short burn-in process, with
the GPU doing the "memtest86" on the chips. It would make
sense to do it that way. With the power of the GPU, you should be
able to run a memory test pretty rapidly on the card. If the design
wasn't optimal, the dropout on the production line would draw attention
to it fairly rapidly. At our old factory, if bogus cards are coming
off a line, a huge pile of bad cards starts to build up, next to the
test stations. For anyone that cares (the management), they eventually
notice the mess :-) The people doing the testing, hardly ever care
to tell somebody, that a lot of bad stuff is coming off the line,
but the pile of bad cards is a pretty good means of saying "I've got
a problem".

Paul

Fair enough.

With this infinite loop problem being such a long lasting problem, with
several different types of systems suffering, you would have thought that
someone would have found out the cause. There must be some common
denominator, however obscure, that could explain why this happens.

Concerning this card I wish I had access to the reviews I have recently
read. I would not have purchased this card for what I want. For a few
pounds more I could have purchased a far superior card.

One last question - Would you say that 1GB graphics memory on XP SP3 for
average gaming is a bit too much. When I upgrade to Win7 would it be prudent
to still stay with the 1GB or can you go to 512MB with no loss to
performance. At the moment it seems my FSX uses the most graphics memory but
this is below 512MB.

"Paul" wrote:

LeeG wrote:
You could well be right. One thing I have noticed, and I am thinking of
asking nVidia about it, according to the specifications provided by nVidia
this card with the GT216 chipset has DDR3 memory at 800Mhz. The two cards I
have dealt with have DDR2 memory on them at 400Mhz. Could it be this chipset
is optimised for DDR3 and having DDR2 on the card is contributing to the
problem?


The comments section here, mentions they use both DDR2 and DDR3. The
clock rate on the memories could be a bit different. I think the largest
spread I've ever seen in memory performance, on the same nominal model number
of card, is a factor of 4. That is the difference between the card
with the cheapest slowest memory, and the best memory. There is a
lot of latitude for the manufacturer, as to what they can stick on
a card. It is one thing you have to watch for, when looking though a
set of product offerings.

http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-GT-220-card-617.html

I don't think the memory type makes that much difference from a
design integrity point of view. Before a video card can be shipped,
the video BIOS file must be modified, to contain the correct memory
timing settings for the memory selected for the card. So the card
is tuned up, before it is shipped. I don't recollect too many cases
where that was done in a clumsy fashion - they usually manage to get
it right.

Your GPU is designed in 40nm techology, and likely has pretty decent
memory I/O speeds on it. When they connect DDR2-800 to it, I doubt that
taxes its abilities at all. The only question that remains in my mind,
is whether the memories used are well tested, before the card ships.
I don't know whether they have a short burn-in process, with
the GPU doing the "memtest86" on the chips. It would make
sense to do it that way. With the power of the GPU, you should be
able to run a memory test pretty rapidly on the card. If the design
wasn't optimal, the dropout on the production line would draw attention
to it fairly rapidly. At our old factory, if bogus cards are coming
off a line, a huge pile of bad cards starts to build up, next to the
test stations. For anyone that cares (the management), they eventually
notice the mess :-) The people doing the testing, hardly ever care
to tell somebody, that a lot of bad stuff is coming off the line,
but the pile of bad cards is a pretty good means of saying "I've got
a problem".

Paul
.

Fair enough.

With this infinite loop problem being such a long lasting problem, with
several different types of systems suffering, you would have thought that
someone would have found out the cause. There must be some common
denominator, however obscure, that could explain why this happens.

Concerning this card I wish I had access to the reviews I have recently
read. I would not have purchased this card for what I want. For a few
pounds more I could have purchased a far superior card.

One last question - Would you say that 1GB graphics memory on XP SP3 for
average gaming is a bit too much. When I upgrade to Win7 would it be prudent
to still stay with the 1GB or can you go to 512MB with no loss to
performance. At the moment it seems my FSX uses the most graphics memory but
this is below 512MB.

"Paul" wrote:

LeeG wrote:
You could well be right. One thing I have noticed, and I am thinking of
asking nVidia about it, according to the specifications provided by nVidia
this card with the GT216 chipset has DDR3 memory at 800Mhz. The two cards I
have dealt with have DDR2 memory on them at 400Mhz. Could it be this chipset
is optimised for DDR3 and having DDR2 on the card is contributing to the
problem?


The comments section here, mentions they use both DDR2 and DDR3. The
clock rate on the memories could be a bit different. I think the largest
spread I've ever seen in memory performance, on the same nominal model number
of card, is a factor of 4. That is the difference between the card
with the cheapest slowest memory, and the best memory. There is a
lot of latitude for the manufacturer, as to what they can stick on
a card. It is one thing you have to watch for, when looking though a
set of product offerings.

http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-GT-220-card-617.html

I don't think the memory type makes that much difference from a
design integrity point of view. Before a video card can be shipped,
the video BIOS file must be modified, to contain the correct memory
timing settings for the memory selected for the card. So the card
is tuned up, before it is shipped. I don't recollect too many cases
where that was done in a clumsy fashion - they usually manage to get
it right.

Your GPU is designed in 40nm techology, and likely has pretty decent
memory I/O speeds on it. When they connect DDR2-800 to it, I doubt that
taxes its abilities at all. The only question that remains in my mind,
is whether the memories used are well tested, before the card ships.
I don't know whether they have a short burn-in process, with
the GPU doing the "memtest86" on the chips. It would make
sense to do it that way. With the power of the GPU, you should be
able to run a memory test pretty rapidly on the card. If the design
wasn't optimal, the dropout on the production line would draw attention
to it fairly rapidly. At our old factory, if bogus cards are coming
off a line, a huge pile of bad cards starts to build up, next to the
test stations. For anyone that cares (the management), they eventually
notice the mess :-) The people doing the testing, hardly ever care
to tell somebody, that a lot of bad stuff is coming off the line,
but the pile of bad cards is a pretty good means of saying "I've got
a problem".

Paul
.

LeeG wrote:
Fair enough.

With this infinite loop problem being such a long lasting problem, with
several different types of systems suffering, you would have thought that
someone would have found out the cause. There must be some common
denominator, however obscure, that could explain why this happens.

Concerning this card I wish I had access to the reviews I have recently
read. I would not have purchased this card for what I want. For a few
pounds more I could have purchased a far superior card.

One last question - Would you say that 1GB graphics memory on XP SP3 for
average gaming is a bit too much. When I upgrade to Win7 would it be prudent
to still stay with the 1GB or can you go to 512MB with no loss to
performance. At the moment it seems my FSX uses the most graphics memory but
this is below 512MB.


There is an article here, that tests various games with respect to
onboard memory usage.

http://www.yougamers.com/articles/13...u_really_need/

It looks like the reason a low end card, with gobs of memory is silly, is
because if you cranked up the level of detail to the point that it
really needed the 1GB of memory, the frame rate would be extremely slow.
You could have an extreme level of detail, but it would be a slide show.

A faster card, would make better usage of the RAM, assuming you like to
turn up the eye candy. My own usage pattern here, is I never use FSAA
or the like. I find, if the game play is immersing, I don't have time
to admire jaggies on diagonal lines.

I've also tested, in the games I play, with a little bit of anti-aliasing
turned on, and didn't find it that effective. I haven't repeated the
tests with my current card, maybe because I was so unimpressed with the
previous test results. Same thing goes with high dynamic range lighting.
Just a waste of time.

Paul

LeeG wrote:
Fair enough.

With this infinite loop problem being such a long lasting problem, with
several different types of systems suffering, you would have thought that
someone would have found out the cause. There must be some common
denominator, however obscure, that could explain why this happens.

Concerning this card I wish I had access to the reviews I have recently
read. I would not have purchased this card for what I want. For a few
pounds more I could have purchased a far superior card.

One last question - Would you say that 1GB graphics memory on XP SP3 for
average gaming is a bit too much. When I upgrade to Win7 would it be prudent
to still stay with the 1GB or can you go to 512MB with no loss to
performance. At the moment it seems my FSX uses the most graphics memory but
this is below 512MB.


There is an article here, that tests various games with respect to
onboard memory usage.

http://www.yougamers.com/articles/13...u_really_need/

It looks like the reason a low end card, with gobs of memory is silly, is
because if you cranked up the level of detail to the point that it
really needed the 1GB of memory, the frame rate would be extremely slow.
You could have an extreme level of detail, but it would be a slide show.

A faster card, would make better usage of the RAM, assuming you like to
turn up the eye candy. My own usage pattern here, is I never use FSAA
or the like. I find, if the game play is immersing, I don't have time
to admire jaggies on diagonal lines.

I've also tested, in the games I play, with a little bit of anti-aliasing
turned on, and didn't find it that effective. I haven't repeated the
tests with my current card, maybe because I was so unimpressed with the
previous test results. Same thing goes with high dynamic range lighting.
Just a waste of time.

Paul