Memory capacity

The memory capacity is the number of local video memory on the video card. This is one of the key parameters for selecting a video card. The size of the memory capacity determines the ability to display temporary storage of data, which will also affect the performance of the graphics card to a certain extent. Memory capacity is also gradually increasing with the development of video cards, and there is a growing trend. The memory capacity has grown from the early 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, and other extremely small capacities to 8MB, 12MB, 16MB, 32MB, and 64MB, up to the current mainstream 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB of high-end graphics cards. Some professional graphics cards even have 1GB of memory. Memory.

In terms of the maximum resolution of the graphics card, the maximum resolution is directly related to the video memory to a certain extent, because the data of these pixels must be stored in the video memory at first, so the memory capacity will affect the maximum resolution. When the memory capacity of the early graphics cards only had a very small capacity of 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, etc., the memory capacity was indeed a bottleneck of the maximum resolution; but the memory capacity of mainstream graphics cards, even 64MB has also been eliminated, the mainstream entertainment level The graphics card is already 128MB, 256MB or 512MB. Some professional graphics cards even have 1GB of video memory. Under such circumstances, memory capacity is no longer the factor that affects the maximum resolution.

In terms of graphics performance, as the processing power of the display chip becomes more and more powerful, especially for large-scale 3D games and professional renderings, more and more data needs to be temporarily stored, and the required memory capacity is also increasing. The capacity will also affect the performance of the graphics card to a certain extent. For example, if the display core is strong enough and the memory capacity is relatively small, a large amount of large texture map data needs to be stored. If the display memory does not have enough capacity to store the data, the display core is idle at some time to wait for the data. After processing, this affects the performance of the display core and thus affects the performance of the graphics card.

It is worth noting that the larger the memory capacity does not necessarily mean that the performance of the graphics card is higher, because the three factors that determine the performance of the graphics card are firstly the display chip that it uses, and secondly, the memory bandwidth (which depends on the memory bandwidth and memory Frequency), and finally the memory capacity. How well a video card should be equipped with a large amount of memory capacity is determined by the display chip used. That is to say, the memory capacity should be matched with the performance of the display core. The higher the performance of the display chip, the higher the processing capacity. The corresponding memory capacity of high-level devices should be correspondingly larger, and low-performance display chips equipped with large-capacity video memory do not contribute to its performance. For example, some commercially available Radeon 9550 graphics cards with 512MB of large capacity video memory are similar to the Radeon 9550 graphics card with 128MB of video memory in terms of core frequency and memory frequency. The Radeon 9550 graphics core is relatively low. The processing capacity determines that it does not make any sense to have large-capacity memory. Large-capacity video memory also brings about the problem of increased purchase costs.