Expect NVIDIA to appear with something clever up its sleeve in the next week or so, when it introduces a Geforce 6200 with something called "Turbo Cache." A PC equipped with this technology will deliver better photographs, better video, and better gaming, according to NVIDIA.
"With say 512MB of system memory, and local display memory of 16MB, 32MB and 64MB, you'll get effective frame buffer for apps of 128MB, 128MB and 256MB respectively. All of this isn't for free, but Nvidia figures it will help people out a lot on both price and performance."
NVIDIA has made all of this possible by using proprietary algorithms and by changing the 3D pipeline. The new card coming out soon which implements this technology will likely be positioned against ATI's X300 SE, which can't render directly to system memory.