Is it better to have a video card with more memory or more speed?

I'm shopping for a video card that would be compatible with Vista and at the same time run some new games that are demanding. how ever I'm on a budget. Is it better to sacrifice speed for memory on a video card (my pc has 2 gigs already) or sacrifice memory on the card for speed? |||More speed. More memory onboard just mean you can support higher rez. Doubt you even have the monitor to go up to the max your card's capable of. |||The 2 GB memory in your PC doesn't affect the memory in the video card.



As long as the video card has enough memory for the game, then a higher clock speed generally will give you more performance than additional video memory. So a faster 512 MB video card should outperform a slower 1 GB video card. This will vary by game however.



Visit gaming websites and forums to find out what people think of different video cards for the game(s) that you play.|||I would go with a balance of speed and memory. If you have too much speed and hardly any memory or vice versa, your games would run slow either way.



Get the GeForce 8800 GTS, a great card for a decent price.|||that depends on the memory type in the video card



my friend bought a 512MB DDR3 video card that would out shine my 1GB DDR card.



DDR3 memory is much faster...also much more expensive



I would suggest going for the memory over the speed of the card....high speed with low memory will bottleneck your system|||This is probably you're best bet for a card that supports vista, is pretty cheap and dosen't require any external power connectors or a really good power supply. Best performing part, in fact, that dosen't need extra juice to run...



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



$80 .