Buying a Graphics Card: RAM VS VRAM

so here I read a pamphlet about several laptops being sold at a nearby store.

I know I should have just checked the benchmarks of the graphics card currently being packed with the laptop before i buy it.

but will you guys translate to me in lay man's term what does having 2GB of VRAM and how does it differ from having a 1GB RAM of video card?

I find it awkward that this tech store would sell Video card A showing that it has 1GB of RAM and then compare it with Video Card B that has 2GB of VRAM.

it's like comparing an intel i5 and a 1333Mhz RAM to me. they don't seem to be comparable. so any light out there? thanks

asked Nov 29 '11 at 02:49

xedric14
941●71●77●90

4 Answers:

oldest newest most voted

Well VRAM is just video RAM, the RAM that a video card is equipped with. Some products state it as VRAM and some as just RAM and it can be a little confusing as to which is which. Even more confusing is if the video card shares VRAM with the RAM of the computer itself. This is common on lower end laptops but sometimes it can be a little tricky finding out if they mean the one or the other.

But if they compare it point to point they probably just forgot to write VRAM instead of RAM.

answered Nov 29 '11 at 08:22

Yarvaxea
4.0k●56●72●113

yea, I was wondering whether there's a formality in writing when a RAM mentioned as 2GB for example is Shared or not. Guess I was wrong.

I bought a laptop that the manufacturer claims to be having a 1GB VRAM. well, DXDIAG says so too but GPU-Z has detected that its's only 256. it's ATI so at least it's more descent than an Intel Graphics with the same amount of VRAM (this is by experience as I can play NBA 2k12 here in this laptop and not on the one with an Intel chip)

guess I should really just stick with Google's benchmark results.

(Nov 29 '11 at 10:44) xedric14

companies use all manner of tricks to make products seem more powerful than they are. Usually if it's shared they will say 1.5GB shared video memory. That means 1.5GB of RAM and the gfx card will use that RAM as it's own VRAM which in turn means your VRAM will run at about a fifth the speed of normal VRAM.

(Nov 29 '11 at 11:13) Yarvaxea

They are generally used interchangeably just do your 100% best to avoid a videocard that relies on shared memory or the worst euphemism ever "turbo cache". If a videocard attempts to use system memory, GPU performance takes a major hit, along with issues with memory intensive applications.

Some companies use shared memory to cut down on the production cost of the videocards. it offers the illusion of having a card that can allocate 1GB+ to textures, when in reality it can only truly allocate 128MB-256MB at a reasonable performance level and the rest would be wasted as the bandwidth will not be high enough.

Keep in mind that system RAM generally runs at 7-8GB/s while the memory on a modern videocard will easily do 100-200+ GB/s

Due to the way videocards runs, they need very fast memory to handle large textures. The only content that can be streamed from system memory with little to no performance impact, is computationally intensive tasks such as CUDA or physx processing. (though the programs that use them to their fullest, eg adobe premiere pro cs 5.5, will still store content into video memory in order to save system memory for other things)

answered Nov 29 '11 at 11:54

Razor512
15.6k●34●80●242

I have seen in some of the literature as well where they mention using the main memory of the computer as (shared Ram) in brackets or single and/or Double quotes Which really irks me when they do that. Preferably I would rather have a video card having its own dedicated memory than have something it needs to be shared with the motherboard main memory.

answered Nov 29 '11 at 16:21

Compucore
2.4k●11●19●25

thanks guys, and If you may, I would like to ask another question related to this:

Will there be an instance /are there video cards sold at a lower amount of RAM (say 512mb) and yet perform better than another card with a higher memory (say 1GB)?

or is it really safe to define a video card's performance by their RAM content?

I mean should I only rely on the Benchmarks IF THE VIDEO CARDS I AM COMPARING ARE OF THE SAME MEMORY?

answered Nov 30 '11 at 05:20

xedric14
941●71●77●90

No I don't think any 512MB card would outperform a 1GB card. Not for gaming at least. The amount of VRAM scales up together with amount of cores and shaders etc. It has to because the more cores you have the more VRAM you need to use them effectively. Some cards have different amounts of VRAM on them depending on the manufacturer, this can have a big impact i.e the reason the HD5970 didn't do very well is because 2GB is too little VRAM for a dual 5870. So there existed a 4GB version called the 5970 Black Edition which for a very long time was the most powerful graphics card.

So when comparing cards there's no use in comparing a 1GB card to a 512MB card or to a 2GB card. There's a huge performance leap between them, then you can compare different series from both AMD and Nvidia for the best card depending on your need.

(Nov 30 '11 at 07:36) Yarvaxea

Your answer

toggle preview

community wiki

Follow this question

By Email:

Once you sign in you will be able to subscribe for any updates here

By RSS:

Answers

Answers and Comments

Markdown Basics

*italic* or __italic__
**bold** or __bold__
link:[text](http://url.com/ "title")
image?![alt text](/path/img.jpg "title")
numbered list: 1. Foo 2. Bar
to add a line break simply add two spaces to where you would like the new line to be.
basic HTML tags are also supported

learn more about Markdown