Hello Jason!

05 Oct 95 23:48, Jason Hendriks wrote to Stewart Davis:

 JH> I am constantly hearing people refer to the speed of a video card
 JH> by how much RAM it has.  Someone correct if I'm wrong, but isn't
 JH> this false?  The amount of RAM on a video card controls only it's
 JH> maximum resolution and colour combinations; not how fast it
 JH> updates the screen.

There can be performance advantages to having more memory available on the
card than the current mode in use requires.  It is faster to update an
unused portion of the video memory on the video card and move the result
into the active display RAM address region than to do the same process in
system RAM instead and move it across the bus to the video card.  The
graphics accellerator chips are highly optimized for exactly such tasks. 
Many high-end cards bundle separate drivers that are optimized for the
amount and type (DRAM/VRAM) of memory that is installed on the card.

.\\ike

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