[ The PC Guide | Systems and Components Reference Guide | Video Cards | Video Card Performance ]

Video Memory

The type and speed of memory used in the video card play an important role in the card's performance. Faster technologies mean improved performance in two ways. First, the card itself is faster when the memory is faster, leading to better performance overall for the PC. Second, better memory means higher memory bandwidth, leading to support for higher resolution and color depths, and better refresh rates.

The size of video memory on the video card has, for the most part, not much impact on video card speed. There are a couple of exceptions: one is the slowdown with 64-bit cards that use 1 MB of video memory. Another is the fact that 3D accelerators often have better performance when given more memory to use for intermediate calculations. Otherwise, increasing the memory size gives you more resolution and color depth options, but no increase in overall speed.

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