Nvidia 8800GTS Review - 640MB versus 320MB in SLI

TweakTown have tested SLI mode on 8800GTS, to compare 320MB versus 640MB in SLI.

Dual Graphics solutions today like SLI and Crossfire can not share the memory so even if you have two 640MB cards, the same data is stored on both cards. Apparently the writer didnt know about this but the test is still very interesting.

But we all know that 320MB compared to 640MB is huge different if we active AA, HDR and high resolutions. We can clearly see in the test that the memory is the limitation in some test and the difference between 640MB and 320MB becomes huge.

Take this test for an example. High resolution Half-life 2 with HDR


It's 3 times faster than the card with only 320MB. This acctually show how much performance you can lose by buying a card with lesser memory. You might say that you don't play in this resolution but this is an old game with small textures. Newer games like Crysis and other DX10 games can use textures up to 4 times bigger, thanks to DX10. So think twice before buying a graphics card with memory lower than 512MB.