What does video card memory have to do with it's performance? I am looking between a 256 MB card and a 512 MB, Help me decide please.

It's basically more RAM.

It lets you pre-load more things, so when the time comes for them to pop up on screen, your computer doesn't waste time loading, and then drawing.

Buy a Geforce 8800 GTS (320MB version) to play ever game that will come out from now to around 7 years because it has DX10 support and major power. Shame is the price is $300-$600. If you want something smaller priced by a mid range GF card such as a Geforce 7300 ($100 AUSD).

Geforce 8800 GTS (320MB) http://au.gamespot.com/features/6165714/index.html

No matter what you do avoid a ATI. They have horrible Customer Support and I never hear any devs thanking them for there support in there game. But with NVidia lots of devs talk about them, http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php? ... mv&pl=game

I'm not really sure that I want to to upgrade to Direct X 10. I want two cards for SLI and the GTS does not really interest me. Also the 200 USD card that I have found can run Oblivion at Maxed settings on 1280 x 1024, how much better can the GTS do that than the card that I am looking at? And the 8800 cards have been reported to have a lot of bugs.

Wait a bit, the 8600's are coming out , extreamly cheep, it will be a Dx10 card for any upgrades later, and will be SLI cappable when you get the money.

Just make sure your motherboard & Power unit can handle the card.

as for the ram size, alot of people i know say , i got a 256mb videocard or a 512 mb videocard, i say what model , they go huh.

You can get a low end videocard thats been hacked up with 256mb's of the slowest ram ever. and you can get a high end videocard thats got 128 mb and is 1000x faster then the low end.

Well then, Could you please point me to some info about these 8600's? You have intrigued me....
EDIT: I looked into them and I must say.......I don't like the looks of them. If I were to buy a graphics card right now I would either buy the 512Mb 7950 GT for $200 or the 300Mb 8800 GTS for $300.