X-bitlabs reviews PowerColor HD 2600 Pro video card
The standard amount of onboard graphics memory for ARI Radeon HD 2600 Pro equals 256MB, but today we are going to tell you about a solution offered by PowerColor Company that features 512MB of memory onboard. Will it be able to benefit from more graphics memory? Let's try to find out now!
An important characteristic of every graphics card, the amount of graphics memory determines the card's ability to store a large number of textures and other data on itself avoiding the need to access the system memory or hard disk. Each access has a negative effect on the overall performance because the speed of accessing graphics memory is usually faster even with inexpensive graphics cards than the speed of accessing system memory, let alone disk memory. Thus, it is very desirable to store all the textures and other data in the graphics card's local memory in order to achieve maximum performance in games.
Today, top-end gaming graphics cards come with 512MB to 1GB of graphics memory. Such solutions usually have a 256-bit or wider memory bus, from 16 to 32 texture-mapping units, and from 16 to 24 raster operators. For such devices the amount of graphics memory can be a significant performance-determining factor, especially in high resolutions with enabled full-screen antialiasing, but is it the same for cheaper and less advanced solutions?...
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