Further to AMD's announcement of the launch of their 4800 series of graphics cards, the company have revealed the first commercial implementation of GDDR5 memory, which will feature in the forthcoming next generation of ATI Radeon graphics cards.
The high-speed, high-bandwidth technology of GDDR is likely to become the new industry standard in the future and will allow greater expansion of GPU capabilities. The company is believed to be working with a number of leading memory providers, including Samsung, Hynix and Quimonda to bring GDDR5 into the marketplace.
As things stand today, GPU performance is restricted by the rate at which data can be moved both onto and away from the graphics chip. This is directly impacted upon by the memory interface width and die size, and the higher data transfer rates of GDDR5 will address this. GDDR5 runs at speeds of up to five times faster than GDDR3 and four times faster than GDDR4 and will allow for more bandwidth over a narrower memory interface.
AMD believe the use of GDDR5 will greatly enhance PC graphics, allowing gamers to play games at higher resolutions and levels of detail than before, and will also benefit CPU intensive applications, such as video encoding.
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May 21 2008, 05:31 AM