Do I need 1 GB on my video card?' I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked that question the last year or so. Up until pretty recently, my answer has always been “No, you don’t need it.' The reason for this has been the fact that most games have simply not needed a frame buffer more than 512 MB. With the release of DirectX10, faster video cards, games that use higher resolution textures as well as monitors with higher resolutions coming down in price, things have changed.

Late in 2008, AMD released an updated version of the HD4870, with 1 GB instead of 512 MB. Today, we are testing the HIS HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo 1GB to see what benefits we get from the increased memory size. Is it worth the extra dollars or will a 512 MB card still be enough?