World's First 2GB Graphics Card Is Here

An anonymous reader writes "TUL Corporation's PCS HD4850 is the world's first graphics card to offer on-board 2gig video memory. The card is based on RV770 core chip, with 800 stream processors and 2GB of GDDR3 high-speed memory." That's more memory than I've had in any computer prior to this year — for a video card.

2GB of memory for a videocard, eh?

Great for the pointless eye-candy first-person shooters. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh?

Actually, it's pointless for FPS style games. They'll never use even a GB of that memory effectively because the games are designed around people with 512MB at the high end. The only reason I see to buy this card is maybe there are drivers optimized for professional work where the memory requirements are much higher (3D modelers and the like).

Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh?

Depends on the resolution. If you are playing at 2560x1920, with AA and AF at high levels, and texture details set high, you can eat up quite a lot of memory.

Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh?

The maps tend to be stored in main system memory. The graphics tend to be stored in graphics memory. You indeed need extra memory capacity, processor speed, and memory bandwidth for some of the post processing. However, resolution is not post-processing. Higher resolution means more pixels. More pixels means more RGB values in memory. More pixels also means more things to post-process. A higher polygon count and more textures can use more video memory, too.

Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh?

Just that the resolution of the framebuffer and the textures are two entierly different things.
The framebuffer, even at 2048 x 1600 x 48 bit uses a ridiculous 18.75 MB per frame... out of 2GB? That's nothing.
The rest of the memory gets used for textures, vertex data, normals, and so on... so you have to have color, normal, bump map, and specular reflection information, just for one texture. Then a mip map of everything. For large textures you can never have enough graphics memory as long as the chip can render the textures. Main RAM is useless for this. Just try an onboard graphics chip with memory sharing. Huge PITA.
Shaders are not even worth mentioning in terms of graphics memory. Code is usually the tiniest part.

Main RAM on the other hand holds mainly the word data, sound files, textures that are preloaded but not used yet (think GTA) and other game data like model data used for game calculations.

And: Yes, IAIGD (I am a game developer).

Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh?

Heard of that. Personally I'm waiting for psychotropic filtering. That oughta be a lot of fun.

Re:2GB of memory for a videocard, eh?

Actually, it's pointless for FPS style games. They'll never use even a GB of that memory effectively because the games are designed around people with 512MB at the high end.

They're only doing this because DDR3 is much cheaper than the DDR5 on the 4870. A 2GB 4850 with DDR3 is cheaper than a 1GB 4870 with DDR5. Me, I can't see the value of getting a card with more than 1GB, even for future games.

The only reason I see to buy this card is maybe there are drivers optimized for professional work where the memory requirements are much higher (3D modelers and the like).

There won't be. This card is marketed as a 4850, not a FireGL, which means it won't be all that useful or professionals. Without the drivers to accelerate professional applications, the extra memory is largely useless.

Re:And maybe....

And with Aero disabled.

Actually disabling Aero manually will not result in a performance increase. When an application enters full-screen mode, DWM essentially shuts down since there are no windows to manage.

But of course this will get modded down because people here don't want to believe that Vista doesn't suck as much as they think it does.

Re:you have no idea

i dont like fpses. but then again, that kind of graphics, makes some fpses worth playing. And that right there sums up the problem with the gaming industry. Game producers don't even need to worry about whether their game is any good simply because some people will play it just because it's shiny (unity100, I'm looking right at you).

That's one of the easiest ways to be modded +5 insightful on /., just complain about games with good graphics not having any creativity. What about the games with bad graphics and bad gameplay? The two are not mutually exclusive. Games are a visual medium, they are supposed to look good.

Re:you have no idea

How about games with good gameplay and bad graphics? Those exist too, and they are better than games with good graphics and bad gameplay.

Re:you have no idea

How about games with good gameplay and bad graphics? Those exist too, and they are better than games with good graphics and bad gameplay.

Here's a novel concept: developers should strive for both graphics and content! That's just crazytalk...

Somehow, I'm not that sure

While _some_ people do buy based on screenshots, the blanket generalization is little more than wishful thinking on the part of the publisher. You know, right next to, "people don't mind it if it's released buggy and patched later" and "people don't talk to each other, they only take their information from our marketing department."

The most visible fly in the ointment is WoW. It has the least detailed graphics of any MMO since, I dunno, 2003 or so. Yes, it actually has less polygons and lower detail textures than some games _older_ than it. Shader effects, bump-mapping, and any kind of shiny stuff are almost non-existent. (Ok, ok, they added weather later.) It also sold like hot cakes.

EQ2 was launched roughly at the same time as WoW, and tried to have _much_ higher resolution graphics and a metric buttload of shader effects. You can't even have a freaking armour modelled as just a texture, it just has to have a shader that makes it look 3D. It required a 512 MB card just to play with all those details... at a time where such a card didn't even exist. I think it never managed to get more than 1/50 the number of players WoW had, and it went slowly downhill from there.

Interestingly enough, more people complained about EQ2's "sterile graphics" than about WoW's cartoonish ones. (See what Penny Arcade had to say about EQ2's graphics back then, for example.) Turns out that just using insane texture resolutions and polygon counts isn't a substitute for talent, you know?

City Of Heroes had a _major_ graphics upgrade in Issue 6 (which coincides with launching the City Of Villains standalone expansion-pack), and the new Villain zones _quadruple_ even that number of polygons on screen. But let's concentrate on the COH side alone, because that was almost the same old game as before, only with a ton of graphical upgrades. Funnily, it didn't produce much of a jump in the number of players, and certainly no lasting effect. Anyway, the game peaked at 175,000 players in the USA alone soon after launch, and went gradually downhill from there. Last I heard a number it was last year at 145,000 in all territories combined and including both COV and COH players.

Basically high-res, shiny graphics don't seem to do all that much. Sure, it helps if you're not butt ugly. But if you look at the number of subscribers, the effect of insane graphics just isn't there. EQ2 vs WoW, the better game won, not the one requiring a new graphics card. Or COH pre-I6 and post-I6, just doesn't show the players rushing in because of the graphics.

Or in the offline game arena, The Sims was launched as a mostly 2D game with 2D sprites (ok, it used primitive low-polycount 3D graphics for the characters), in an age of shiny 3D games. It outsold not only any of those shiny 3D FPS games from the same year, it outsold them all combined.

And I'll further guess that Crysis and all those other games presented as "proof" that graphics sell... they probably had some other merits too. A lot fewer people would have bough them, if their _only_ merit were the graphics. Games with good, shiny graphics have flopped before.

Re:Somehow, I'm not that sure

This is in support of your argument. Every quarter or so I do the Valve hardware survey that logs our gaming systems' specs so that they can get a handle on what paying customers are using. The top 15 right now are...

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 166,588 9.37 %
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 101,218 5.70 %
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 95,619 5.38 %
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 79,478 4.47 %
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 64,704 3.64 %
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 59,544 3.35 %
ATI Radeon 9600 54,727 3.08 %
ATI Radeon 9200 45,585 2.57 %
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 44,134 2.48 %
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 42,834 2.41 %
ATI Radeon X1950 41,533 2.34 %
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 40,839 2.30 %
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 38,990 2.19 %
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 36,192 2.04 %
ATI Radeon X800 35,449 1.99 %

About 1/3 of the top 15 cards are what the "Oooo Shiny Crysis Crowd" would call obsolete, and frankly the presence of a DX7 card even raises my eyebrow. This is the target audience for a powerful graphics card, but if Valve wants to sell to their customer base they can look at this and think, "Gee, maybe we should make a game that doesn't require a fuckton of curiously high bandwidth LMNOPRAM.and maybe make a fun game that at least scales down well.

Bottlenecks?

The article mentions that too little video memory can be a bottleneck. But wouldn't squeezing 2 gigs of memory on a graphics card simply move the limiting bottlenecks elsewhere?

Re:Bottlenecks?

But wouldn't squeezing 2 gigs of memory on a graphics card simply move the limiting bottlenecks elsewhere?

Well, sure. No matter how good your gaming rig is there's always going to be a bottleneck. And if it's an older game that runs 200 fps at full detail, then the bottleneck is the game itself capping maximum poly/texture counts (ie. the detail itself).

But the whole point of having and maintaining l33t gamer systems is to continually shift that bottleneck somewhere else which is also farther up the scale of performance so you keep getting a better gaming experience with each iteration.

Re:Bottlenecks?

The article mentions that too little video memory can be a bottleneck. But wouldn't squeezing 2 gigs of memory on a graphics card simply move the limiting bottlenecks elsewhere?

I understand your question, but the whole point is that sometimes a game can be sluggish only because there is not enough memory and not even remotely close because of core performance. Today's games and the future brings us more games that utilize all the extreme amounts of memory, which ultimately results in greater textures and more variety.

But to answer your question: there's always going to be at least one bottleneck, but by adding more memory, at least they raised the bar a bit. Not that today's games are going to run much faster with this, but upcoming titles will.

Re:Bottlenecks?

Yes, it could, unless you're running a 64-bit OS and processor. Most computers, which are 32-bit, have a total or 4 GB of addressable memory space, which includes video memory, sound card memory (if you actually still use one) and system RAM. Therefore, if you put in a 2GB video card, you can't make use more than 2 GB of system RAM.

The 4GB address limit is probably the best argument for why we should see more progression to 64 bit computing, but there isn't yet enough demand in the market to force the issue for at least a few more years.

Huh

I'm still rockin 512 megs and doing fine - main system I mean. Integrated graphics.

The only reason this kind of thing bothers me a bit is that I imagine it's pushing videogames further and further into the world of being 1,000 employee, NASA sized engineering projects. Rather than charming little projects that say, that husband and wife that were Sierra could do on their own and be competitive.

This kind of reliance on jet-powered hardware kind of insures that the game is going to be all megacorporations working from market research.

Impressive!

With graphics cards like this, Duke Nukem Forever will be damn good when/if it comes out! :-)

"FIRST" 2GB card? Err...

Workstation cards have been multi-gigabyte for ages! the ATI FireGL V8650 which was released a while ago is 2GB.

Market need?

Is there any market "Need" for this, to be able to play your games better, or is this simply filling the "uber-leet-most-money-I-can-spend" market?

Wolfenstein

Finally, I will be able to play Wolfenstein 3D in all its beautiful glory!

32-bit address space limitations

We're really beginning to feel it now. With this card, you're limited to around 1,750MB of RAM on a 32-bit Windows system; 4GB minus the 2GB on the card, minus all the other mapped stuff which amounts to 250MB on my computer.

In summary, I for one welcome our new 64-bit overlords...

Re:Wow..

I bet that this thing would have enough power to run all the AERO stuff in vista.

Jesus, my ex's laptop runs Vista with Aero effects turned up to maximum with no problems and a crappy NVidia mobile GPU. This stupid "Aero eats your resources" meme needs to die.

By all means whale on MS, but at least do it for the right reasons.

Re:That's cool but...

Somehow I don't think that those two billion transistors will be cool.