Just curious if anyone here has enough technical savvy to talk a bit of hardware. I'm curious how someone can find out true bottlenecks of what is holding a system back. Also, even if a system can run a new 512MB video card when they're released, how would you know that the max potential of that card would be utilized? I mean, how can you tell that you aren't have power to spare that you could never use because of your processor or ram or motherboard???

That would be a nice vid card zeplin, but we all have the potential of maxing it out, though i hope we don't end up with freezers in our comps =P

Well, maybe I don't know any better, but I'm not too impressed with the difference of my 128mb card and the reviews of the 256s. With that, I'd figure all special effects would be on and at really high resolutions, but as an example, they're run of Doom3 isn't maxed, so why get one? My card allows me to run medium detail at 1024x768 with shadows, and it looks okay at 20fps. If I up it to 1280x1024 it drops to 15fps. I hate it. I'm uncompromising when it comes to detail, so I really hate reviews that only stress frames per second. Thats all nice, but different cards yield different quality atmosphere, and I want the best of both worlds... Call me greedy.

the amount of ram in the card is only going to enable you to have more textures and at a higher quality.
whats more important for performance is the speed of the ram... and obviously, the power of the GPU(s) in the card.

personally, i think 3d games have become pointlessly bloated with eye candy that requires ever more insane amounts of hardware to run it.. but without adding anything to the gameplay.

You should try Farcry then. Atmosphere is as much part of a story as the story itself. But I won't completely disagree with you, many games are seriously hurting. There are so few out now that really take the cake, and I find myself looking back to oldies but goodies. These are games I can't get enough of, but they are abandoned by game makes which I think is the greatest mistake. These were the reasons people got them in business, and they repay us by forgetting. Most of the sequels to these pale in comparison, and I feel sorry for people who rave about them when they have no clue about what preceded.

X-Wing
Tie Fighter
Darklands
X-COM
Kingpin (mostly for multiplayer)

This is why I like PS2. :D

As far as I know, Video Card memory is dedicated to store video cards prosesses (and this saves internal memory for other things, and it saves bandwith since the memory chips are ON the card that calculates graphics).

In the most of todays games 128MB of graphics memory is sufficient to store the textures etc.

Doom 3 will run faster and better looking on a 256mb card (of the same type/GPU). Because you have to use compressed textures wich looks less detailed (like JPEG vs. BMP). If you use uncomressed textures with 128mb ram you'll notice a slowdown because the computer starts to use the main memory for the textures (and unless you have some megabytes free here, you'll start to use the harddrive SWAP... and that SUX)

A 512MB vidcard will not speed up your system at all. The extra vid memory is nothing more then a sales gimmick. Even Doom3 does not use that many textures. A 128MB card is plenty right now and if you are looking to buy for the long term buy a 256MB card instead. 512MB is a complete waste of money.

As to your origional question There is no special program to find out bottlenecks as they are not the same every time. If you post your current computer and what you want to do with it we can help you upgrade it for your needs.

Doom 3's highest settings are "only recommended with 512 MB video memory". But as The Picard says, it's better to have a good graphics chip than extra graphics memory .

The Anandtech and Tom's Hardware guys shows us that the CPU is the biggest limit on their HIGH-END machines. But this depends on the whole system. The chepest DELL Computers for example have bottlenecks in graphics hardware.

Yeah, I used to buy Dell computers, but wisened up later and built this one that I use now. I already knew about the compression methods and how that slows things up, but the speed of the memory was the part that peaked my intrigue. Most likely I'll get a 256 card when the prices fall. Call me stupid, but I just love athmospheric games, so I'm willing to toss the buckazoids in. I know some guys at a major retail store I can get this stuff at for cost anyway, so that helps.
I own a ps2 also, and used to have vice city on it. When I got it for computer since the ps2 kept locking up, I wasn't regretful. It is WAY better on computer with 32bit graphics at 1600x1200!

Yep...
But understand me right... There's nothing wrong with Dell computers, but the cheapes models of ALL brands has cheap and useless graphics cards.

edit:
Did you know that high-end graphics cards (6800 Ultra and X800XT) are 200$ cheaper in US compared to Norway?

It depends on the range of your card to. If you buy a Radeon 9600 pro. It doesnt really matter if it's 128mb or 256. The higher end cards have a slightly bigger difference between 128 and 256. But still not really that great.

Better invest in regular RAM.

Almost 90% of the high-end cards have 256mb ram. But as you says, its wasted money to buy a R9600 or FX5600 with 256mb

Silicon Grafix! 2 GB Video mem!

Seriously, Internal memory and CPU is more often the problem then the GPU and its memory... A good steady L1 and L2 cash for the GPU and CPU is also a good idea to have.. so down with Celeron!

Hard-drives CAN be a problem depending on the tasks. But if you have 512 - 1024 MB RAM onboard, it will load most into the memory in advance..

Having a 800 MHz system bus also speeds things up :)

Well... if you wanna ruin your D3 experince, plug in a TFT to your 1337 machine :)
Can promise some fun effects when you try and play with high fps..

chop chop with dittos. That's why I sport 1.5gig of ram. I've been able to OC my bus just past a gigahertz too, but as far as I could tell I didn't see too significant a difference. I'd like to see if anyone with specs close to mine yield much of a difference with 2 or more gig of ram.

Dual video cards are apparently coming out this year from nvidia, so improvement on the all important graphics front is coming. So our games will be far far prettier if not actually any better to the classics. Shame about that eh?

nah i don't value pretty that much.
I would never get a game because it looks pretty.

atmosphere plays a pretty big role, but I agree. There haven't been any games too engrossing for a good long while. I hope I haven't been ruined by age here....

512 mb video cards will be about the size of a Voodoo 5 6000. There is a limit to how small you can make all the circuits - you're gonna have to make the card bigger. Computers are going to start getting bigger again.

http://www.sitesled.com/members/cheesegrater/voodoo.jpg

I'm in no rush to go PCI Express GPU. I'll just be happy when the prices drop to an affordable & comparable level. I don't mind altering out GPUs every year or so, but I'd like the jump to be worth the cost.

About dual video-cards: They are available already: Geforce 6600 GT has SLI. Combine this with an nForce 4 chipset and you can couple two cards. Great stuff and this will certainly improve performance, since you have 2 GPU and 2x16 PCI-e lanes to pump 'em full of graphical data...

Where are you getting your 2GPU compliant motherboard?

It is not the video cards that need to be compliant the motherboards needs to support SLI and does so with the NForce4 chipset. As long as you have two of the same card it will work.
Also there is yet no motherboard with 2X16 PCI-e slots. One is 16X the other will be either 1X or 4X but the performance boost is still around 60% for a midrange card.

exactly. there no such thingy yet. give it til the end of the year. No rush yet. If you want to go waste tons of mulah for a menial increase, have at it, but I'll wait using the refines of the proven method and ease into it when all the kinks are ironed out. Sides, I haven't heard much support on the gaming programmers side, so there's that as well. Never see any games come out saying they use hyperthreading either... or if there was a way to tell I dunno...

http://www.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/...d/overview.htm#

And sure you need two cards that are the same. But then, if your investing, do it right :) Hardware prices are always on the decline so waiting will always pay off, unless you want the top-of-the-edge stuff... If you check the specs on the ASUS-board above, you'll see:

:D Hubba hubba... only this board 'll cost you at least EUR 149... but it's well worth it with the firewire, RAID, 1 Gbit LAN and onboard 8-channel audio... if I had the mony right now... I'd certainly buy it!

Disclaimer: I'm not associated with ASUS in any way ;)

It is a sweet board but you need a monster of a power supply to make it all work. If you have the money to throw around and don't mind having a price performance quotient that is out of wack you could go for it. I prefer to spend a lot less for something that is marginally less powerfull.