I REMEMBER JUST HOW badass I felt when I picked up a Voodoo 2 card with 12MB of memory instead of only 8MB. Even 8MB seemed opulent to me at the time, considering I was pairing the card with my Matrox Millennium II. Today, however, it's common to see mainstream graphics cards with 64 and 128MB of memory—even 32MB of memory has become passe.

But do we actually need 128MB of graphics memory, or is this one of those cases where the marketing folks are trying to sell consumers on anything with a higher number? My curiosity got the better of me, and I just had to find out. I grabbed 64 and 128MB cards from both ATI and NVIDIA and put them through the wringer to see just where extra graphics memory can benefit performance.

Do you really need 128MB of graphics memory, or is it all just a lot of hype and hot air? Let's find out.