It's not that complicated really. Just like Doom 3, Quake 4 has uncompressed textures on ultra settings, so of course it won't fit into 320mb. And COD2 just has more detailed textures and bigger levels. Latter was discussed a lot, because that game quickly made 256Mb high-end cards obsolete (X800XL 512Mb faster than X850XT PE 256Mb). So any problems with VRAM will be only more pronounced with less PCIe bandwidth.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-12-11, 00:56:

It's not that complicated really. Just like Doom 3, Quake 4 has uncompressed textures on ultra settings, so of course it won't fit into 320mb. And COD2 just has more detailed textures and bigger levels. Latter was discussed a lot, because that game quickly made 256Mb high-end cards obsolete (X800XL 512Mb faster than X850XT PE 256Mb). So any problems with VRAM will be only more pronounced with less PCIe bandwidth.

So as I inferred from your posts - PCIEx4 has issues if you choke it with frequent transfers, such as textures, which happens if you have lower VRAM?
So PCIEx4 is good up to ~2005, after that you need a beefy card, especially on the VRAM front, true?

swaaye wrote on 2022-12-11, 00:33:

To be sure you would probably need to test a 8800 GTS 640MB. I think it is slower because of less memory but it is due something […]
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To be sure you would probably need to test a 8800 GTS 640MB. I think it is slower because of less memory but it is due something a bit more elaborate like the G80 chip or driver of the time wasn't good with having only 320MB to work with and the slow bus speed makes it even more obvious. There were various discussions about curious behavior with the card.

Nvidia admitted to some kind of slowdown issue eventually too.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/nvidia-wil … eptember.38720/

I would probably avoid 2007 and 2008 drivers for G80+.

See reply above, but yes this could also explain 8800 PCIEx4 behavior, but this just makes my simple-ish question "up to when is PCIEx4 enough" a complicated matter.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-12-11, 00:17:

That review is showing what each games is doing with GPU by crippling the GPU by restricting the bandwidth.

My question was why 8800 is crippled and x1900 wasn't, and the answer so far was VRAM size.
Both of these are med-high GPUs, but ATi card isn't affected.
I know PCIEx4 would cripple stuff, that's why I asked at what degree, which GPU series, and which year of games starts to show this bandwidth issue.
Apparently 2005 is more or less a cutoff point for PCIEx4.

PS: Is there a list of last NVidia and ATi native AGP GPUs? I know some GF6000 are native, some aren't but can't find a definitive answer. I also see some NV are also native AGP but bridged into PCIE ones?

Apparently 2005 is more or less a cutoff point for PCIEx4.

It's a cut-off point for 256Mb VRAM on high-end GPUs. More PCIe bandwidth won't fix that completely.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-12-11, 10:56:

It's a cut-off point for 256Mb VRAM on high-end GPUs.

Sure, that holds up even today (well, in gigabytes).

More PCIe bandwidth won't fix that completely.

Well, on 8800 320mb it will, hence the whole "investigation".

So on such a platform (P4 3.x Ghz, 775, AGP+PCIEx4), what's the highest GF series you'd go for a GPU (preferably no HSI bridge)?
6000 seems a tad "old", 7000 seems to be more native PCIE oriented anyway, but dunno if a P4 and PCIEx4 would hold them down...