ATI 4850 512MB vs 1GB?

quarryman

I building a new rig. I'll be hooking it up to a 1920x1080 display.

The 4850 512MB is €113
The 4850 1GB is €155

Is the extra 512MB worth the extra €42?

StopNotWorking

Yes, the "old" rule of thumb was 512VRAM for anything under 1680x1050. 1GB on your screen will be perfect. 512 would strain if you added any AA.

Effluo

Ahem ahem.....

There is next to no difference between performance of these.

observe....

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gainward-hd4850-1024mb-gs_7.html#sect0

Also for €150 you could get a 1gb 4870!! :O

quarryman

sweet.

TerrorFirmer

For top quality gaming on that resolution you'd really want to be going for the 1GB 4870 or 4890. The 4850 is a good card - and the 1gb does help a bit in certain games, but not all, but is definitely not worth that money - but 512mb is going to limit you running anything new at native resolution and high settings. AA would be totally out the window. Pixmania are a fairly crap company do deal with should anything go wrong but their prices are excellent:

4870 1GB - 159E
4890 1GB 189E

requiem1

The easiest way to solve this is to post up what games you play and then the decision can be made.

Personally I'd always go for more memory if it was around the same price but its not always necessary

Here's some review worth checking out

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/i3dspeed/0409/i0409-video-p1.html

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18281