Short and sweet, do 256 mb pci-e cards fair any better than their 128 mb counter parts? I know with AGP and PCI cards the 128 mb versions are said to fair better than there 256 mb partners. (This is simply a follow up to my X700 question below) This is the link that sparked my question, the pro versions are only listed as far as 256 vs 128 so I'm wondering if the same would hold true for the plain cards (considering the 256 cards beat out the 128 mb cards in the benchmarks) http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050524/vga_charts-02.html So should I just save myself a few bucks and go with the 128mb version, or just spring for the 256mb version? Doug Windows Xp Home Celeron 2.8 Ghz 768mb Ram Geforce 5700LE PCI Card 128MB 128 bit

Depends on the card, and the games being played. If the game you want to play contains large amounts of textures being displayed at once (bleeding edge FPS like FEAR) or large landscapes such as in a flight sim, the extra video memory can help. However, the GPU on the card has to have enough horsepower and bandwidth to the memory to manipulate the rendering of the textures to make a difference. "If that [soiled bed] sheet is a [holy] manifestation, then I'm working on a miracle in my Jockey's!"

Some cards only have a 256MB version and those are the ones you should get with 256MB. The "only 256MB" cards are made to have enough horsepower to use that extra RAM. A 128MB version usually means that the manufacturer knew that the entire 256MB of VRAM probably wouldn't be utilized efficiently so they made 128MB cards that are faster because 128MB could be utilized better. The X800 series has awesome power and if i'm not mistaken, the plain X800 is the only one that is 128MB. If you get an older card, get the 128MB versions. Newer cards can finally use 256MB comparably as fast as older cards use the 128MB. Technology still hasn't allowed 512MB to be used efficiently. An example would be the case in the X800XL 256 and the x800XL 512. There is a tiny fraction of a speed difference between the two and the 256 version is actually a bit faster. To summarize, if there is a card with a 128MB version, usually it is better to get that version. If there is no 128MB version and only a 256, it means that 256MB of VRAM is actually effective in increasing speed but beware of low-end 256 cards. Lastly, PCI Express doesn't make much of a speed difference right now but it will later when bandwidth on AGP-8x gets to become a reasonable bottleneck but right now it still provides enough bandwidth. Also, I guess if you overclock, 256MB versions of cards might be useful if you can get the clock settings high enough to process that amount. What I said does not always apply though because on some PCI-E bench's the 256MB Geforce 6800 didn't do as good as the 128MB 6600GT. Build-in-Progress: NZXT Nemesis Elite Athlon 64 3200 Abit An8 OCZ EL PE Rev2 DDR400 X800PRO