I'm building a PC and buying a laptop (first time) and want to be

[FMod]

That 1gb of vram will set you back if you are planning on modding skyrim.

Not exactly. The useless chip in GT620 is what would set you back. As for VRAM, it doesn't matter for that card, you could give it 4GB and won't gain a single fps. 1GB is actually too much for GT620, anywhere between 256 and 512 MB would've been in order.

 

Anyway, 760 is a well sufficient card, so.

Edited February 2, 2014 by FMod

[Thor.]

Skyrim uses 90% of the video memory for texture caching. The thing is, those textures get really big, i mean big. Even my gtx780ti has limits to what it can do in regards to textures because of that 3gb limit.

Video cards rely a lot on vram when it comes rendering a lot of textures at once, especially if you want to go 2k or above. You would notice a real dip in fps when the video memory caps out, that's when you need to claw back a bit.

Edited February 2, 2014 by Thor.

[FMod]

Even my gtx780ti has limits to what it can do in regards to textures because of that 3gb limit.

So why don't you run a 290X?

(I know why, making a point here.)

 

You would notice a real dip in fps when the video memory caps out, that's when you need to claw back a bit.

It doesn't matter. The dip will be from 12.4 fps to 12.3 fps at that point, you'll never notice.

 

It matters if you have a high-end CPU and a high-end GPU and the only thing falling short is the amount of VRAM. But if any one element of your system is anything less than best-in-slot, it doesn't matter. Any video card that you can buy new has well enough VRAM for anything.

 

To add insult to injury, the VRAM on GT620 is actually slower than your main computer's RAM. Not just a little bit slower either, but 2-5 times slower. PCI-E bus isn't much of a bottleneck, since GT620's VRAM is only a little faster.

 

So it doesn't matter if it runs out of memory or not. GT620 has no need for 512 MB or more, and a balanced amount for it would be 256.

[Thor.]

The reason why i chose Nvidia over Radeon is the awful microstuttering it suffers from, and the gpu boost throttles like no tomorrow.

 

Even my older 7950's suffered from gpu boost throttling, they have not fixed the issue with the latest models. It didn't matter how cold the gpu was, the longer the thing ran the slower it got, so i had to OC it balance it out.

 

 

Its a common problem. Its the main culprit to microstuttering.

Edited February 2, 2014 by Thor.

[hoofhearted4]

I can proudly say my 7950 has none of those problems! :-D