How Does Improved Memory Bandwidth Help Gaming?

[Alyus]

How does faster VRAM affect gaming. Please explain in a way a common gamer (non-technical) can understand.

 

[jafrankl]

Faster VRAM = more information in a shorter time frame. Basically allows everything you are seeing to load and display faster, increasing the number of frames produced.

 

[Alyus]

Thanks for the simple explaination Now can you please interpret what this person in another forum is saying?

"As for the reason I was talking about memory bus width - because it has everything to do with HBM. HBM is a technology that allows to, in a nutshell, stack memory dies on top of one another - thus bypassing the engineering difficulty of creating a chip with a wider bus. Memory bus width for the GPU board is the total sum of memory bus width of the chips - 384 bit R9 has 12 500MB chips each 32bit wide bus, hence total of 384 bits and 3 GB. Now, the HBM basically allows to stack memory dies on top of each other, thus dramatically increasing the amount and memory bus of each chip. Effectively, HBM can reach orders of magnitude higher bandwith, and memory density, at the expensve of engineering difficulty and higher board design complexity. The current HBM allows stacking of 8 dies, each having 32 bit bus = 256 bit bus.Per chip. With typical boards having anywhere from 4 to 16 chips...lets say, if GTX 970 would have had 8 HBM chips instead of 8 GDDR5 - it would have had 2048 bit bus, 64 gigabytes of RAM, and same memory clock - it would have had memory bandwith of 1.792 TB/s. Terabytes per second. That is absolutely immense increase in memory bandwith. And if it had it, but with the same Maxwell core we have today - it would have performed ABSOLUTELY THE SAME. Not even 1% faster - because its 224 GBs coupled with compression is more than the chip can ever need. Even if a chip theoretically can pull more data, doesnt mean it can process more data.
So my point still stands. Nice PDF tho, I suggest you also read some articles about how memory bandwith affects actual performance of a processing unit, and to what degree. If you ever wondered why people still suggest 1600 DDR3 RAM for their PC builds, instead of 2133 that is already available.
EDIT : In case of GTX 970 with HBM, it might just get a tad bit better performance in 4K due to having bigger RAM. However, since its possible to manufacture 8 GB version of GTX 970 with traditional GDDR5 and there is no single GPU chip that can handle more than 8 GB(maybe the next titan will) - the point still stands. HBM will not bring anything by itself - you need to pair it with a GPU chip for which GDDR5 is not enough anymore."

 

[JackNaylorPE]

This is a bit old and pay attenmtion to the " A video card with higher memory bandwidth can draw faster and draw higher quality images. But there's more to video cards than just memory bandwidth. You also have to consider the drawing speed of the GPU." part..... higher bandwidth does not necessarily mean higher fps.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/vramwidth/width.html

 

[jafrankl]

HBM is high bandwidth memory. He's basically just explaining the technical aspects of its workings with sample speeds. HBM is currently a work in progress that will change GPUs a lot. His final word is that no processors can currently use the HBM properly and it isn't exactly viable right now.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I guess NVidia don't think so . look at there gtx 960 with a 128 bus and then gave the cards a bump from 2 gb to 4 and still on the 128?? so I assume they don't look at it that way [opinion]

 

[Alyus]

HBM is high bandwidth memory. He's basically just explaining the technical aspects of its workings with sample speeds. HBM is currently a work in progress that will change GPUs a lot. His final word is that no processors can currently use the HBM properly and it isn't exactly viable right now.

Thank you. Any advice can you give me so I can understand the technicality of computer hardware? I spend thousands of dollars so I might as well try to understand besides just using it.

 

[jafrankl]

The technicals for how and why things work the way they do would require multiple courses at the college level. Understanding the basics of specs is much simpler... just google any specific spec you want to learn about; there are many great sites with information.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I guess NVidia don't think so . look at there gtx 960 with a 128 bus and then gave the cards a bump from 2 gb to 4 and still on the 128?? so I assume they don't look at it that way [opinion]

Again, bandwidth is the "be all and end all" of everything.

Ya know those moving side walks in air ports .... think of bandwidth as the width of the moving sidewalk .... what one moves more people

One were peeps can stand 2 abreast and moves 7 feet per second
One where peeps can stand 3 abreast and moves 4 feet per second

 

[jafrankl]

I guess NVidia don't think so . look at there gtx 960 with a 128 bus and then gave the cards a bump from 2 gb to 4 and still on the 128?? so I assume they don't look at it that way [opinion]

Again, bandwidth is the "be all and end all" of everything.

Ya know those moving side walks in air ports .... think of bandwidth as the width of the moving sidewalk .... what one moves more people

One were peeps can stand 2 abreast and moves 7 feet per second
One where peeps can stand 3 abreast and moves 4 feet per second

You know people have more than 2 dimensions, right... makes that math question pretty impossible to answer. I get your point, but it seems to be an unrelated analogy to me.

 

[Alyus]

Here's something that seems understandable to me about GPU, VRAM and bandwidth: http://www.technologyx.com/featured/graphics-cards-really-need-know/2/

 

[JackNaylorPE]

You know people have more than 2 dimensions, right... makes that math question pretty impossible to answer. I get your point, but it seems to be an unrelated analogy to me.

The idea, as requested, was to "explain in a way a common gamer (non-technical) can understand." So a simple analogy was preferred. HBM is wholly unrelated as it's not here yet and therefore was discarded. There are no 3 dimensional sidewalks in airports, but the analogy applies if you want more dimensions ... carry some kids on your shoulders. Or make it a conveyor belt and stack packages as high as you like... analogy still holds.

http://www.analogyexamples.com/

I have to admit I borrowed the analogy from my college professor when he explained bandwidth to the class 30+ years ago.... except he used a highway with 2 and 3 lanes.

 

[jafrankl]

You know people have more than 2 dimensions, right... makes that math question pretty impossible to answer. I get your point, but it seems to be an unrelated analogy to me.

The idea, as requested, was to "explain in a way a common gamer (non-technical) can understand." So a simple analogy was preferred. HBM is wholly unrelated as it's not her eyet and therefore was discarded. There are no 3 dimensional sidewalks in airports.

http://www.analogyexamples.com/

I have to admit I borrowed the analogy from my college professor when he explained bandwidth to the class.

I did say I got your point, but the analogy itself seems like even less of an explanation to someone who has no basis for comparison.