The importance of VRAM amount (screenshots attached)

[zomurn]

Hi everyone ,

I created this topic to reveal the purpose of having a lot of vram (video memory dedicated). I had the opportunity to compare an HD4850 with 512Mo VRAM and now I have a new GTX260 with 896Mo VRAM. (For more information on my config, see my sig. below)
I'am going to expose my case with FFX Pal under pcsx2 0.9.6 at 1680x1050 screen resolution :
With the radeon HD4850 I was able to only set the internal resolution to 1680x1050 to freeze the game at 50fps (Pal version) at any time whatever the scene in the game, not less ! Above this internal, for example 1920x1200, the game start to drastically lose fps ! (sufficiently to not to play at this resolution but stay at 1680x1050).
I was able with my GTX260 to push the internal resolution up to 2560x1600 giving very big texture size that can be stored in 896Mo of VRAM !
So I got know even better graphics in ps2 games (screenshots example attached)

I just like that anyone to confirm that an HD4870 512Mo can't play at this resolution that is 2560x1600.








It is better than PS2 native resolution (1 280 × 720) isn't it ?

[rama]

One problem with your findings:
You're comparing a Nvidia card (runs nice with GSdx) versus an ATI card (runs bad with GSdx).
You can't say one card is faster because it has more vRAM, in fact it doesn't matter at all

[zomurn]

Are you really sure ?
My HD4850 was OK with pcsx2 yet...

[Register]

Dont listen to him j/k, he only have nvidia card and you have both and have some experience to them too. Btw if you have 1giga memory for ATI card or borrow from your friend, can you make some compare too?.

[zomurn]

If it is a ATI problem, can someone confirm that with a 9800GTX/+/GTS250 with 512 VRAM we can't play FFX at full speed above internal resolution of 1680x1050.
And if I can with my GTX260 I don't think this is because of extra speed...but because of extra memory.
Or can anyone confirm with an ATI HD48xx with 1Go we can play FFX at this ultra high internal resolution.

Thanks !

[dotHack]

You can't compare two totally different cards in the same situation. ATI cards and nVidia cards have very different architectures and their drivers works very differentely too. In any case you should have compared two ATI cards, one with 512 and the other with 1024.

This could be either an ATI driver issue. We know their drivers aren't specialy famous because they work oh-so fine...

If you take a look at computer games benchmarks you will find out that sometimes, having more vRAM even lowers the FPS. As of now, it is well known that more vRAM (512 and above) doesn't make difference...

Anyways, thanks for taking the time and posting this, nice pics, nice rig.
If you can manage (borrow from a friend or whatever) to compare two identical cards with different memory sizes, it will show us a better picture of how much vram affects pcsx2.

[NAG3LT]

It is better than PS2 native resolution (1 280 × 720) isn't it ?

Man, 720p would be overkill for PS2. PS2 had native 640x480 (NTSC), 768x576(PAL). Although there is an ability to use 720p in latest versions of PS2, none of the best games on it could run on that res.

[stpdrgstr]

He means 1280x720 looks better than 512x448... And internal resolution generaly for 3d games isn't 640x480. That's just the DISPLAY resolution, NOT the INTERNAL resolution. Internal in 3d games might be 512x512 or 512x448, etc.

[Saiki]

they're close to 1024x1024 I'm sure. the textures have to be much more detailed.

[TheOnlyOne]

Hey, I have an 8800 GS 392mb video ram and I run FFX at 2048 by 1600 on a 1920 display with no slowdowns. GSDX says it uses at most 67% cpu whihc would be how much time the cpu spends on the gpu part of the emulator I think. by the way my processer is an E7200 at 3.2