Given that the general consensus of the regulars in this forum feel that 256mb of RAM in a video card is unneccessary, I was wondering about buswidth. My limited understanding in this area is that the buswidth is the "highway" between the card and the CPU (obviously a 4 lane freeway is more efficient than a 2 lane freeway). So, is a 256 bit better than a 128 bit card? Given that the higher end cards only come in 256mb/256 bit (some are 512mb/512 bit, I take it these are overkill)should we be looking at 256 bit cards? I think this would be helpful to alot of people since a video card upgrade is probably the most common upgrade for everybody. To the regulars, thanks for the input.

That number is actually the bandwidth of the card's onboard memory. 256 bit cards are a little bit zippier, although not overwhelmelgly so... for example the difference between the 9600XT and the 9700 Pro... the XT can clock itself to match the 9700 Pro with good cooling, but the 97 tends to be just a bit faster...check the benchmarks on Tom's Hardware to get a good idea. Basically, 256 is better but it's not night and day. -Exobyte

Like you said, the buswidth is like the number of lanes on a highway. As long as the traffic (data) is kept to within the limits of capacity of that highway, traffic will flow quickly & smoothly. But if you have too few lanes (64-bit) to handle the traffic during rush hour (gaming), traffic backups up & you have "stop & go" (lag). 128-bit doubles the amounts of lanes to the highway & can handle "most" traffic that is thrown at it...but there are times when max capacity is reached, causing slowdowns. 256-bit is an extra wide super highway. It can easily handle all the traffic that's thrown at it & can keep that traffic flowing at a high rate of speed. But building a super highway is more expensive. 512-bit is an over engineered super highway...lol ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

512bit (the same as 512 meg) cards may be "overkill" right this second but who knows about next week, i remember when 4 meg ram was overkill =D