Budget Battle: HyperMemory vs. TurboCache

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• JarredWalton - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  Despite the fact that the system was high-end, the performance of the cards is the limiting factor. A 3.0 GHz or 3000+ CPU with the same amount of RAM would likely post similar scores. However, 512MB of RAM would have something of an impact on performance. Anyway, $100 gets you 1GB of RAM these days, so we're more or less through with testing anything with 512MB of RAM or less.
  
  Consider these tests as a "best case" scenario for budget graphics performance. It will work, but it won't be too impressive. Dropping detail levels will also help, of course. However, reduced detail levels don't really help out performance in some games as much as you might want. Doom 3, for instance, doesn't get a whole lot faster going from High to Medium to Low detail (at least in my experience).

• patrick0 - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  A Budget-card comparision, with 1024MB System memory? I think it would have been better to use 512MB of system-memory.

• DerekWilson - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  Wellsoul2,
  
  The ATI solution does not have DVI -- just one HD15 analog port.
  
  These cards are fine for running native resolution desktops, but you are not going to want to push them over 1024x768 even without AA/AF ... as you can see the numbers dropped off at that resolution for most tests and 800x600 is really the sweet spot for gaming with these cards.
  
  If you really want to guess about the framerate, just remember that moving from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 increases the number of pixels per frame by a greater ammount and percentage than when moving from 800x600 to 1024x768. Eventhough we can't effectively extrapolate performance from our (fairly linear) graph, we can bet that we'd be getting < 30fps which is considered unplayable by our standards. As HL2 posts relatively high framerates (compared to other games of this generation), we made the call to limit our tests to 1024x768 and lower.
  
  If LCD users want to game on a 1280x1024 panel with these cards, they'll need to do it at a non-native resolution.

• Wellsoul2 - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  Again..anyone with an LCD monitor would prefer
  native resolution numbers. No amount of AA/AF
  seems to make up for the crappy interpolated
  video at lower resolutions.
  At least give the numbers for Doom3/HL2..

• Wellsoul2 - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  I'd like video reviews with 1280x1024 resolution.
  This is the native resolution of my 19in LCD.
  
  It would seem more useful to have tests for the
  low budget cards at high resolution for LCD and
  using no AA/AF.
  
  People I know are buying the new cheap cards because they have DVI output to use with LCD.
  If you buy a cheap/mid priced computer they often
  have built in analog video only.
  
  I'd like to know if you can run Half Life 2 at
  1280x1024 with no AA/AF on these cards and what
  the frame rate is.

• cryptonomicon - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  WTF?
  
  what is this thing? these puny performance cards with only 32mb memory can beat previous generations of retail mid-range cards??? how the heck...

• KristopherKubicki - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  stevty2889 and others:
  
  The tests are run on the highest end components to assure the bottlenecks are the video card and not the CPU. Furthermore, since we test every single other video card and motherboard on the same setup, it makes sense for us to use the same hardware this time around as well.
  
  Neither the X300 nor the 6200 will receive a magical advantage by using low end hardware instead of high end.
  
  Kristopher

• Hikari - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  The x300 is more like a neutered 9600 instead of a 9200 I thought. Given that the one tested here won in HL2, that would seem to be the case, no?

• Marlin1975 - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  ^
  
  Ignore, just re-read :)

• Marlin1975 - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

  DerekWilson see my other post at 5. I then saw the graphs are not wrong, BUT you said the "The 16 and 32 MB TC cards round out the bottom and top of the pack respectively" which is not true. The 64mb and 16mb round out the bottom, while the 32mb is at the top.