Graphics Card Memory - How important for SL ?

Now, I understand SL is like a Texture nightmare and just loads more and more textures as you move around all the time.

I have a Nvidea 8800GTS which has 320MG of memory on the card.

I know you can get other cards, 8800 GT, GTX and the 9000 series which have 700ish and 1GB memory on board.

Would there be any benefit in upgrading to the same spec card but with more memory?

depends on how far off you want to see, other than that if you notice textures fuzzing in and out at "random" (like in a large party setting) then it will help cut that out

,,, i run a 128mb card, low draw distance, and barley notice that going on, its all dependant on your screen rez, and view settings

Well, I generally have my view set to 256 or 304 (so I can see sully across my sim) and to be honest I don't see any problems.

the only annoying thing is that when I leave my sim to visit a next door one (loading up all their textures as I do) soemtimes when I fly back to my sim there is a delay which it gets back the textures I was looking at a minute ago.

whether that's graphics card memory or HD Cache memory, or just the way SL is, I don't know.

gfx memory only effects whats being presented on your screen

if you look away and come back to see stuff loading in its sl/ cache

I have tried to re set draw distance, but i'm not sure I was in the right place, do I go to preferences and camera?

Oh right.........

I guess I assumed that the graphics card memory held the most recent textures and when it was full, it started offloading to the SL cache file.

So, just twisting away then back would pull it straight from the card.

That's why I wondered if double or triple the memory on the card, would make the most recent textures keep "in memory" for faster retrieval.

I don't think I've ever had an issue what what I can "SEE" in my view if I don't move.

it used to be under advanced graphics, i cant get in right this second to look tho =(

i think it does keep the most recent textures to a point, but moving the camera to a new view, with a distance set that far could possibly introduce a considerable amount of new texture data, plus theres other things in the video ram such as geometry data, for all the vertices's on the screen * distance

but even then the "pending" data is just shuffled to your ram (within reason, like stuff up close) , which is a bit of a bottle neck vs doing it all on video ram, but its pretty darn fast

i shouldn't discourage you from trying it, but i dont think it will give you the bang you want for your $

ie do you have pci express 2 or a SLI motherboard?

if not i would just hang on for a little bit longer, and wait till the new client is near, then see if sutible upgrades are available in a whatever you consider a reasonable price range, and be able to kick the new client in the arse (prices are about to drop too)

thanks Osgeld I'll have a look there

OMG mine was set at nothing, I changed it and I can see across two sims, I had NO idea my neighbours on the other islands were so close LOL....thanks for this thread, it's changed the way I see SL

By the way the draw distance is in Graphic, custom