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Sweeney Says Go for the 512+MB Vid Cards
Posted by Steve on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:30 pm

The Inquirer recently fired off a question regarding upcoming video cards at the opinion of Epic’s Tim Sweeney, THE man behind all the Unreal Engine technology to date:

Two major titles from Epic are coming out now, Gears of War for PC and Unreal Tournament 3, mega-titles that are also going to be on market in November. When asked about the amount of video memory, here is what Tim stated:

“In Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War for PC, there is a significant gain in having 512MB of video memory rather than 256MB. So, first and foremost, get at least a 512MB card if you can afford it. If you haven’t maxed out your budget, then go for the maximum single-card performance that doesn’t require extreme cooling, e.g. buy an entry-level GeForce 8800 over a GeForce 8600.”

The whole 8800 > 8600 comparison seems logical. So what about all those early adopters who skimped and got the 8800 GTS with 320MB of onboard ram? Are they SoL come time for UT3? I think what Sweeney meant to say here is that unless you want to turn off a lot of graphical options in UT3, you’d best invest in a card with lots of onboard ram. Now the really confusing part is which does he recommend more? The 8600 variant with 512MB or the 8800 with 320MB? I guess the gist of it is that Sweeney recommends anyone who can squeeze the budget should go for the 8800 640MB flavor. What the hell was Nvidia thinking with the non 128 multiples anyway?

Also it makes me wonder how much more extra detail the retail version of UT3 will bring. I know it will have higher res textures. Just how much higher compared to the demo? The demo seemed pretty reasonable on the sys reqs. Yes, I know it’s a beta demo. Anyway, they should put a “Holy Sh@t!” checkbox in the retail UT3 settings for those crazy enough to buy a video card with a gig of ram. If anything do it for comical value.

Via The Inq

UT-3 does require a lot more video memory.Also more ram.Im running a AMD Athlon 64X2 6000+AM2 chip with 2 evga 8800GTX 768mb each and it rocks but if you do not want to spend that much on a good GPU check out the new Nvidia 8800GT a great card for the money and ready for the directX10.1 upgrade comming soon.

Hey - Thanks for the information ChaoticDayz!