Every so often, hardware makers strike out in a new direction, improving their product in an almost random manner — double the shader processors! stick two cards together! — and sometimes it actually has good results. The big move happening right now is a vast increase in the amount of RAM available to the video card, even though that’s not really what’s limiting game performance these days.
But if you trust HardOCP (and I do), that doubling of video RAM makes for a simply better gaming experience , and at a relatively small premium to boot (a 512MB 4870 costs ~$275, a 1GB 4870 ~$300). Although games are pushing more on the performance front than the RAM front, it helps to have that cushion of space for swapping, caching, and so on.
Wow thats crazy, I love seeing technology improve all the time. I can’t wait to see where SSD’s will be in a year.
I was just wondering if the video card doesn’t matter then what does? I’m really a n00b when it comes to most things about building a computer. I just always thought as long as you had a decent amount a ram, an acceptable processor, and a pretty good video card you we’re set to play some pretty graphic intensive games.