512 mb vs 1 gb video RAM

Actually, we do know a lot. We do know that according to the Slides from HeroCon that CoH UltraMode is not tied to DirectX, so you don't need a Microsoft NT6 system with DirectX 11 (that's Vista / Win7).

We also know that according to Ghost Falcon a RadeonHD 4850 1gb can run everything UltraMode has, but that to make sure everything worked properly during the demo, they were running with Crossfired 4870 X2's. So we also know that the new graphics mode seems to be able to leverage multiple graphics cards, while the current graphics engine really... does not.

What we don't know is what the resolution scaling is. I suspect given the way the RadeonHD 4850 performs in other games that the scaling is roughly 1080p (1900*1080 or 1900*1200) with no AA or AF applied. Nor do we know what the processor is, but that probably won't matter. Going Rogue is bringing a new graphics system, but it's not bringing a new computational engine, and according to the developers at HeroCon, that means that the central processor requirements won't be changing (much). Since OpenGL should put the brunt of the graphics load on the graphics card, and not the processor, we can pretty much use existing player knowledge about processors.

We also know that it's memory profile isn't really going to be topping 2gb. While CoH could require more than 2gb of memory while running on Cider or Cedega, mostly because I think x86 OSX is now compiled against x86-64, but also because consumer oriented distributions like Mepis Linux have started carrying PAE supporting kernels as standard for 32bit installs. I could also talk about how only ATi has 64bit Linux drivers worth talking about, but that's going a bit far for the purposes of Going Rogue. Who knows, by the time the expansion launches, Nvidia could fix their glaring driver issues.

On Windows NT systems though, if you hand the Operating system more than 2.5gb of memory, of which you would have to have more than 2.5gb without really awkward memory slotting, the system won't read more than 2.5. I should know. I tried feeding Win7 4gb of memory on both an Intel I7 and an AMD Phenom setup.

While yes, a lot of the pre-installed Win7 installs on consumer computers are now thankfully the 64bit versions, which can access more memory, there's still the problem that most of the Windows Xp and Vista installs are the 32bit version. So I don't realistically see Paragon Studios developing a game that requires more memory than a 32bit Windows system can access.

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So, if your shopping this Christmas for a Going Rogue system, make sure you have at least 2gb of system memory. Make sure you have a RadeonHD 4850 or better graphics card, and if you've got a processor that doesn't say Sempron, Celeron, or Pentium, you should be fine.

I think the big processor question right now is the Athlon II series. I think they should be good enough, but I haven't actually gotten a hold of one myself to see how it stacks up as a budget unit. I'd say avoid buying Athlon II this Christmas and go straight for the Phenoms if you are on a tight budget, and I7 if you have a bit more cash in the stocking.

Well strictly speaking, more video memory doesn't equal More Power™. After a game allocates video memory for all the various buffers it will be using, the rest is available for textures and geometry caching. What more memory can buy you is less data (textures/geometry) needing to be transmitted to the card on every frame.

If 512MB is enough for a particular game at the settings you are playing at, 1GB of memory isn't going to buy you any performance increase. However modern games like Far Cry 2 when it's quality settings are all set to 11 for instance, I seem to remember a benchmark that saw a difference between 1 and 2 GB of video memory, the only game I think that saw a difference.

So it's not that more memory is automatically better, it's not enough memory for the game and settings you are using that can be a detriment.

I will also like to point out that on some mid level and below cards offer both 512MB and 1GB models. Look at the memory specification closely when comparing the cards. Often I see that the 1GB using much slower memory than the 512MB model, this is to keep the price close and to make the 1GB cards more profitable. In reality the loss of video memory performance will hamper the card a lot more than not having enough memory.

Also in multiple card setups, you can't add the memory together between the cards. Each card needs to buffer textures and geometries locally.

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That's wrong.

How big a video card you have does not matter very much until the size gets above 1G.. With anything from a 64M card to a 1G card, the max addressable memory would remain effectively the same for most intents and purposes.

32 bit OS's have a total address space of 4Gb. Some of that is 'reserved' for addressing hardware devices, only one of which is video. The reseved space is about 1G total, limiting the addressable memory to around 3Gb (something a little shy of 3.2 billion bytes due to power of two math used by everyone but hard drive makers) This is similar in some ways to the original 8088/8086 based PC's that had 1MB addressable, and the top 384 reserved for hardware addressing, limiting the system to 640K total ram.

That reserved space is pretty much fixed in place, everything from hex address C0000000 on up to FFFFFFFF. The card shares that space with other stuff, but most of the other stuff is typically not using large blocks of space. A 1G card just starts to exceed that space, and so starts to nibble away at some of your RAM capacity, but not by very much.

Yes depending on your motherboard and inclination to get down and dirty with your bios and other drivers and such, there are some tricks like memory hoisting to get some of the un-used space back when using a smaller video card, but most folks are not going to be inclined or knowledgeable enough to deal with such things.

OTOH, if you go with a dual 2G card setup, then you're gonna start to feel the pain, and you really ought to just go to a 64 bit OS.

Great explination of all this here: http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm