How much of a difference, if any, does the amount of memory on a GPU make?

I ask because I'm wondering how cards compare, for instance the 8800 GT with 256 MB of memory versus the 512 MB cards. The GPU itself is the same, but does the memory impact crunching times at all?

So nobody knows the answer to this?

How much of a difference, if any, does the amount of memory on a GPU make?

I ask because I'm wondering how cards compare, for instance the 8800 GT with 256 MB of memory versus the 512 MB cards. The GPU itself is the same, but does the memory impact crunching times at all?

I've heard/read that the shader clock speed makes the biggest difference -- so, the WU times between two 8800GT's (one with 512MB memory and another with 256MB memory) should be very similar. I'm no expert, just reiterating what I've heard. The extra memory will help with games, but not so much with GPUGrid (focusing on gpu and shaders).

How much of a difference, if any, does the amount of memory on a GPU make?

I ask because I'm wondering how cards compare, for instance the 8800 GT with 256 MB of memory versus the 512 MB cards. The GPU itself is the same, but does the memory impact crunching times at all?

I've heard/read that the shader clock speed makes the biggest difference -- so, the WU times between two 8800GT's (one with 512MB memory and another with 256MB memory) should be very similar. I'm no expert, just reiterating what I've heard. The extra memory will help with games, but not so much with GPUGrid (focusing on gpu and shaders).

We suggest that you get 512MB. This will be fine for future gpugrid application which may require more memory.

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