Comparing memory Bus speeds 320 vs 384 bit...

[pepsi71ocean]

So i have been waiting for cyber monday to pick up a Graphics card, and i noticed that not a single 400 series card has a 384bit bus face, they are all 320 and under. (well i lied) they do have 384 bit on the 480 class but they are all 500 bucks(give or take), and i don't know if that is worth the money.

The question is that now in the days of GDDR5 is the bus width mean anything?

if im going to drop 250 bucks for a 470 card that has a bus width of 320bit, is it worth dropping 200 bucks more to go to 384 bit?

here is what i am looking at

EVGA GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 012-P3-1470-AR Video Card


EVGA GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) SuperClocked 015-P3-1482-AR Video Card

while i can afford the 480 im wondering if it is even worth the money to go to the 480 series, if the bus width makes any difference. were talking 320 vs 384 bit, and i don't know if it makes any noticeable difference.

Anyone have any idea about what i should choose?

 

[Bo$$]

wait for the GTX580

 

[crush3r]

Don't go by bus width, go by performance! Go for the quickest you can afford. If I were in your shoes I'd probably go for the GTX 470

 

[newtekie1]

So i have been waiting for cyber monday to pick up a Graphics card, and i noticed that not a single 400 series card has a 384bit bus face, they are all 320 and under. (well i lied) they do have 384 bit on the 480 class but they are all 500 bucks(give or take), and i don't know if that is worth the money.

The question is that now in the days of GDDR5 is the bus width mean anything?

if im going to drop 250 bucks for a 470 card that has a bus width of 320bit, is it worth dropping 200 bucks more to go to 384 bit?

here is what i am looking at

EVGA GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 012-P3-1470-AR Video Card


EVGA GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) SuperClocked 015-P3-1482-AR Video Card

while i can afford the 480 im wondering if it is even worth the money to go to the 480 series, if the bus width makes any difference. were talking 320 vs 384 bit, and i don't know if it makes any noticeable difference.

Anyone have any idea about what i should choose?

You can't just look at one aspect like that. Yes, bus width makes a difference, but so do the other improvements that GTX480 has over the GTX470. You have to look at the whole package. The GTX480 has more shaders, more ROPs, and higher clocks as well. You have to look at the overall performance and decide if that is worth the $200. For me it wouldn't be, but for others it is.

And with GDDR5 the bus width is effectively double vs. GDDR3/4. So a 256-bit bus is effectively a 512-bit, and a 320-bit bus is effectively a 640-bit bus, and a 384-bit bus is effectively a 768-bit bus. Is the difference imporant, of course it is, to keep driving these high end GPUs they need high memory bandwidth. The higher the better.

 

[pepsi71ocean]

yea i tend to agree, im questioning if it is worth the cost of the 200 bucks, for what looks like marginal increase in performance.

Keep those suggestions coming!

 

[pepsi71ocean]

im thinking i'll go with the 470 and try to clock it up a bit, but then again i think the 470 would be the fastest card i have ever used, previously it was a gtx 280

 

[wolf]

well the GTX280 you have uses a 512 bit us over GDDR3, so really the bus width should not be the deciding factor at all. for instance I would take certain GTX460's over 470's given the right price. thats 256 bit vs 320 bit both using GDDR5.

my choice right now would be a tough choice between a custom cooled GTX460 (around 200-240$) a stock GTX470 (around 260$) or a GTX580 (~$500)

GTX460's are hugely popular, very overclockable, and great value for money, GTX470's are a cut down beast of a card, now selling at a really good price, overclocking will get you to GTX480 performance. GTX580's are a GTX480 on crack, they run cooler, use less power, are about 15% faster and overclock very well. a single GTX580 is the best single GPU you can buy today and unarguably a butload of graphical power to dump into your pc.

 

[KainXS]

remember the HD2900XT . . . . . . . .

 

[fusionblu]

If your system can support it, I would go with 2 decent 460 Graphics card and run them in 2-way SLI as this set-up would out perform either a single 470 or single 480.

 

[qubit]

Fact: the wider the bus width the faster it goes.
Fact: there's lots of other variables that make this irrelevant!

When choosing a card, all you need to care about is how the card performs compared to the competition and the price, nothing else. While us techies like to know the specs of our cards, the only metric that actually matters when buying is performance, which includes these main variables:

Frame rates in games (this is obviously the primary performance metric that matters)
Noise
Heat
Power consumption

Now look up the cards you're interested in the excellent TPU reviews and you're well on your way to choosing the right one.

 

[micropage7]

bus width is like how much data that could be transfered at one time, from it could be assumed that bigger is better
but so far bigger bus width still aint giving best performance, better yes, just slightly
if you have to choose which one, dont take 64bit, take 128 or 256 bit bigger could but it still aint significant to performance