Samsung Touts 4GHz Memory for Graphics Cards

Some more news, it sounds like ATI/AMD might be trying to use this RAM after all. Source: http://forums.legitreviews.com/viewt...?p=59876#59876

According to Apoptosis's contact the release date is now in the May/June timeframe...

in theory, 1 game with game engine written for DX9 and one engine for DX10 with same visual effects, should see slightly better performance under DX10, due to less overhead.

until DX10 only games are released, it's impossible to gauge what effect onboard vid memory will have.

Okay then. I guess I just had a somewhat skewed view...

Would ya care to guess how much of an impact DX10 will bring to the table on this? While 320mb is a logical step above 256mb, ATI's call to gun for 1gb kind of throws logic into the wind... It should be capable of being monitor limited with a 3007WFP.

I don't find it to be too low no, 256Mb has been "enough" memory for video card for quite some time now

7900gt 256 vs 512mb showed no difference worth mentioning either; 320mb is the next logical step up from 256mb

Thanks for the chart/table, I appreciate it.

No, I wasn't kidding. I wasn't really paying attention to anything over 4AA as I'm not quite that naive to think RAM size wouldn't have an impact at that point.

Even with your chart, are you saying you don't find a 20% decrease in performance (21FPS difference) to be surprisingly low for Oblivion at 1600x1200, 4AA 16AF and I assume max detail to go with that HDR? It's only 320mb of RAM. I'm certainly not trying to refute your charts here, just that I find the difference to be less than what I'd expect which was the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts. I guess part of my problem is Anandtech didn't use any AA... even at 2560x1600 Oblivion performed the same on both versions of the GTS.

HL2: Episode 1 at 1920x1200 with 4xAA and HDR only offered a ~3FPS difference between cards... The numbers only start to separate between the cards by 16FPS at the 2560x1600 resolution with those high settings, but I grant I don't know if any AF was used.

depends a lot on the shop and country

$50 cheaper I think

I think the question is always how much cheaper the 320MB cards will be. If the difference is too small they are useless.

you're kidding right?




20% drop in performance at 4AA

Grr, hadn't even finished editing my post yet. I'll have to read a few more reviews I guess... nonetheless, I still say the impact from the drop in RAM size isn't showing the effects it should.

ugh? at 1600x1200 and higher with AA/AF enabled the 640Mb card has a very noticeable lead.

True. But, here's a genuine question: The best DX9 cards were starting to show a real need for 512mb at the higher resolutions like 1920x1200 with extra eye-candy running.

Flash forward to the 640mb and 320mb DX10 part GTS cards, and suddenly memory size doesn't seem to matter much again. Except for Quake4 using uncompressed textures there is a very surprisingly little difference at 1920x1200 resolutions between RAM sizes. I was under the impression nVidia was already supposed to be more RAM bandwidth limited due to their architecture as well, so given these two points... Will ATI's DX10 cards even show any improvement with RAM at those speeds? Let alone 1gb of it instead of 512mb, and they already have a 512bit wide bus now.

I'm genuinely curious, am I missing something obvious? RAM size doesn't seem that critical anymore, even at 2560x1600 some games aren't showing above a 2% difference going by Anandtech's article. I'd tend to think this would directly relate to memory frequency as well?

yes but considering the insane data bandwith at 2 GHz it is worth it, right now 1.1 are R600 spec

Um, ouch? 1gb of 2v GDDR4 is alot to add to the power requirements of a overclocked x2900XTX... First time I've even heard GDDR5 mentioned as well. Any bets we'll have DDR4 on the desktop by the time GDDR5 rolls around?

I think ATI needs that for the UBER edition.