FiringSquad: Home of the Hardcore Gamer - Games, Hardware, Reviews and NewsSubmit your own or view users' CPU overclocking results!

  
 Home   News   THE MATRIX   Deals   Hardware   Games   Features   Media   Products   Forums   FS China 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Home : Hardware : Video Cards : Budget Graphics Showdown: ATI X300 SE HyperMemory vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache
» Join the Greatest Gaming Community NOW! (It's free)

Already a member? Login
 


Random Gallery >> 
Click to view high-res Image!
Medieval 2: Total War Review Screenshots [62] (3)

Bioshock: The Brutally Honest Review [Preliminary #2] (8) by Swatt
13.1 miles of EVGA (0) by Odoyle721
War! Huh! Yeah! (aka Blatant Plagiarism) (1) by ICDP
Guild Wars Gets a Bad Review (11) by Joluha
Know Your Roots: Unreal Tournament Review [Preliminary #2] (10) by Discobiscuits
EVGA: my number 1 (0) by imagination
it could have been better T_T (0) by exe3
Overclocking: The Basics (2) by slugbug
OverClocking Boot Camp (3) by Odoyle721
Scandle at EVGA! (2) by exe3

More Blogs >>




Budget Graphics Showdown: ATI X300 SE HyperMemory vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache
June 17, 2005   Paul Clarity Jastrzebski > [View My Other Articles]
Product Info | User Reviews | Article Images(17) | Image Gallery | Comments | Forum Thread
Introduction


When one thinks of leadership within the computer graphics industry, Intel isn’t a company that typically comes to mind. NVIDIA and ATI are usually the two companies that get all the attention, but in reality, they both are trailing Intel’s lead in the overall graphics market. According to JPR’s latest statistics, Intel currently holds more than 40% of the graphics market, ATI holding 25%, and NVIDIA holding about 22%.

Intel’s market leadership is of course attributed to its integrated graphics solutions in their 845G, 865G, 915G, and now 945G chipsets. The bottom line is that most people buying PC’s aren’t willing to pay $400 for graphics cards, especially when brand-new computers can easily be found under $500.

There are two ways for NVIDIA and ATI to take some of Intel’s market share in the graphics industry. One is by developing new chipsets with integrated graphics, which ATI now has with the RADEON XPRESS 200, and which NVIDIA is developing for this Fall with their C51G motherboards.

The other is through new discrete solutions (based on existing architectures) that hit new all-time-low price points.

Budget Graphics Showdown: ATI X300 SE HyperMemory vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache [  @ 1024 x 750 ] > View Full-Size in another window.


Budget Graphics Showdown: ATI X300 SE HyperMemory vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache [  @ 1024 x 526 ] > View Full-Size in another window.



Concocting a sub-$100 GPU

To hit these new $50 and $60 price points, both NVIDIA and ATI have had to drastically redesign their low-end graphics cards. Fundamentally, the new design from a hardware standpoint is quite simple, the cards now ship with less memory. This reduces manufacturing costs for ATI and NVIDIA’s graphics card board partners.

In other words, with only 16MB or 32MB of graphics memory onboard the card, it costs considerably less for board partners to produce these cards.

As any gamer who follows that hardware scene however can tell you, today’s games usually need at least 128MB of frame buffer memory to run effectively, and in some cases 256MB. A traditional graphics card with 16MB of memory simply doesn’t have the memory footprint to keep the graphics core fed with data. The result? Terrible performance, as the graphics card is constantly having to access system memory.

Budget Graphics Showdown: ATI X300 SE HyperMemory vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache [  @ 1024 x 607 ] > View Full-Size in another window.



This is where NVIDIA’s Turbocache and ATI’s Hypermemory technologies come in. Both are designed to efficiently use your system’s system memory as additional frame buffer memory. How do they do it? Both techniques use the PCI Express interface’s exorbitant amount of bandwidth to access system memory, keeping the graphics core from stalling, and thus preventing your games from turning into a slideshow.


    ATI’s HyperMemory technology Next!
Blog + Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit SU furl • More: AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Send This Article to a Friend!  
Table of Contents
  Print Entire Article  

MATRIX CONTENT » RANDOM MEDIA BLOG More Blogs >>
No ratings yet
» Please rate this
Read this Media-Blog entry!» FTW! (0)
by Gh3tTo5oLdIeR (19) Talk with this user on their Shout Box (My other blogs) Posted 6 months ago


 Latest Headlines
Modern Warfare 2 PC limited to 9v9 matches (27)
RAGE won't support dedicated servers either (22)
NVIDIA earns $107.6 million in Q3 (2)
Battlefield Bad Company 2 beta plans announced (2)
Modern Warfare 2 launch trailer released (13)
Today's News >>
Today's Siteseeing >>


 Table of Contents


FiringSquad is powered by... Back to Top Site MapContact UsAdvertise With Us Privacy StatementAbout Us  
News RSSSiteseeing RSSArticle RSS   © 1998-2009 FS Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved