Contrary to popular belief a Graphics card that has 1 Gig of RAM rather than only 512Mb is NOT faster.

This myth has been created by Gaming Software Developers.  The specifications that Gaming Software developers give that will run their new game is far from accurate. Usually they state a 256Mb or 512Mb graphics card is enough to play the game. This would make one think that a 1Gig card would be twice as fast and play that game even better. This is far from the case.

Speed in a graphics card comes from the GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) on the card. For example 9500GT, 9600GT, 9800GT and so on. Each card is faster than the previous. Whether it has 512Mb or 1 Gig is irrelevant

gpu_chart3

The above chart shows a 9800GT 512Mb and a 9800GT 1 Gig card perform almost exactly the same in gaming benchmarks.

The above chart also shows a GTS 250 512Mb and a GTS 250 1 Gig card perform almost exactly the same in gaming benchmarks.

The 1 Gig cards will cost you a lot more, so before you spend the extra money on a graphics card that has 1 Gig, consider spending the extra on the next model up.

There are only 2 major GPU manufacturers in the world, ATI and Nvidia. Third party comapanies like Inno3D, XFX, Gigabyte, Asus, Xpertvision etc buy the GPU’s from either ATI or Nvidia and resell the graphics card under their own brand name. Spending more money on a well advertised “brand name” will often cost more money and will not perform any faster. Well, someone has to pay for the advertising!

For examples of how different graphics cards perform refer to How fast is that Graphics card?