Room For Innovation On GDDR5: Higher Density, Faster Data Rates Coming With 'GDDR5X'

[kcarbotte]

Micron announced the availability of 8 Gb GDDR5 modules, which can either have double frame buffers on graphics cards, or allow for fewer modules to achieve the same volume of memory. The company has also hinted at significant advancements coming in 2016.

Room For Innovation On GDDR5: Higher Density, Faster Data Rates Coming With 'GDDR5X' : Read more

 

[boju]

Another round of referbs that actually matter for a change? before Pascal's 3D chips arrive which will be 9x faster than standard GDDR5 apparently.

 

[ragenalien]

This will be good for keeping the cost down and performance up on some of the lower/mid range graphics cards. But HBM has so much more potential for the high end.

 

[TallestJon96]

I expect to see a lot of memory segmentation. Lowest end gets ddr3, low to mid range gets gddr5, slightly higher gets gddr5x, and the highest end gets HBM2. Hopefully in the next year or two, ddr3 gets dropped, and we have a simple gddr5 for the low to mid end, and HBM 2 for the higher end.

 

[airborn824]

Another round of referbs that actually matter for a change? before Pascal's 3D chips arrive which will be 9x faster than standard GDDR5 apparently.

Pascal is going to use HBM which is already available on AMD Fury and NANO GPUs. IT is a new stackable vRAM that was developed by AMD and Hynix

 

[deksman]

This attempt at restructuring GDDR5 comes a bit late.
Should have been released before.
AMD already transitioned to HBM (which is far superior to GDDR5 in terms of saving the physical space reducing the GPU size, as well as lowering power consumption whilst offering huge increases in speed and bandwidth).

I might only see this being used in Nvidia's Pascal, but even that is questionable as Nvidia has intentions of releasing Pascal with HBM2 (once it becomes available to them).

On that note, AMD has priority access to HBM2 (much like with current HBM1) which is in limited supply, and will be used on their new GPU's with (finally) new architecture and lower manuf. process.

On that end, Nvidia will have to wait until Hynix releases sufficient amount of HBM2 to them, which probably means delays for Pascal.
Alternatively, in order to release 'something' next year in any appreciable time frame, Nvidia might either use GDDR5X for Maxwell rebrands, or will possibly use them for Pascal.

Since Nvidia has more monetary resources than AMD, I can see them using GDDR5X as a way to release Maxwell rebrand cards to have something on the market, and then finally Pascal (once HBM2 becomes available to them).

 

[CRITICALThinker]

I expect to see a lot of memory segmentation. Lowest end gets ddr3, low to mid range gets gddr5, slightly higher gets gddr5x, and the highest end gets HBM2. Hopefully in the next year or two, ddr3 gets dropped, and we have a simple gddr5 for the low to mid end, and HBM 2 for the higher end.

Somehow I feel that we will be seeing DDR4 before we see GGDR5 on the low end. This is good for midrange though, as it looks as if we may be seeing some higher amounts of memory on those cards.

 

[boju]

Another round of referbs that actually matter for a change? before Pascal's 3D chips arrive which will be 9x faster than standard GDDR5 apparently.

Pascal is going to use HBM which is already available on AMD Fury and NANO GPUs. IT is a new stackable vRAM that was developed by AMD and Hynix

Oh cool, I thought this kind of vram wont be available until next gen or at least the era of Pascal, didn't realise it's already here. I still had my head in the GDDR5 sandbox, thanks for pointing that out.

 

[renz496]

This attempt at restructuring GDDR5 comes a bit late.
Should have been released before.
AMD already transitioned to HBM (which is far superior to GDDR5 in terms of saving the physical space reducing the GPU size, as well as lowering power consumption whilst offering huge increases in speed and bandwidth).

but HBM is very expensive right now. and looking ad Fury X and 980Ti that massive bandwidth provided by HBM are not an advantage right now. this could be cheaper alternative without sacrificing performance.

On that note, AMD has priority access to HBM2 (much like with current HBM1) which is in limited supply, and will be used on their new GPU's with (finally) new architecture and lower manuf. process.

that priority access probably will not be much of an issue to nvidia due to this:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/samsung-expects-graphics-cards-with-6144-bit-bus-48gb-of-hbm-memory-onboard/

 

[whassup]

With the emergence of HBM GDDR5 is obsolete in almost every feature. Still GDDR5 can be used to replace the GDDR3 present in some of the entry level graphics cards. The GDDR3 should be completely flushed out from the GPU segment.

 

[HyperMatrix]

Not a bad idea. GDDR5 still beats out HBM for memory latency. At 12gbps, it should be more than sufficient for 4K gaming. And may actually perform better than HBM due to the difference in architecture (slow and wide vs. fast and narrow). Especially on a 384-bit bus like the 980ti/Titan X.