The Zone

Card Manufacturers are abuzz with their plans to release the new 8800 GT chipset with 1GB of memory. Seeing as how succesfull the 512MB version of the chipset is, most pundits are already hoping that such a move will double the 8800 GT card's already exceptional performance. But will it really do that?

The practice of doubling or adding on more memory to a graphic card is not something new nor is it unprecedented. The most recent case is the addition of 1GB worth of memory to 8500 GT and 8600 GT graphic cards. From our experience with the 8500 GT 1GB the increase in performance is marginal at best, with only 1 to 2 frames per second added on. The key there was the type of memory used, since it was only 1GB of GDDR2.

If card manufacturers are willing to add on 1GB of GDDR4, then maybe we can see a notable increase in the performance for the new 1GB 8800GT cards, but if there is only going to be more GDDR3 or worse GDDR2, well... we'll see when it arrives in our hands.