Wednesday, May 21st 2008
AMD Confirms GDDR5 for ATI Radeon 4 Series Video Cards
AMD today announced the first commercial implementation of Graphics Double Data Rate, version 5 (GDDR5) memory in its forthcoming next generation of ATI Radeon graphics card products. The high-speed, high-bandwidth GDDR5 technology is expected to become the new memory standard in the industry, and that same performance and bandwidth is a key enabler of The Ultimate Visual Experience, unlocking new GPU capabilities. AMD is working with a number of leading memory providers, including Samsung, Hynix and Qimonda, to bring GDDR5 to market.
Today's GPU performance is limited by the rate at which data can be moved on and off the graphics chip, which in turn is limited by the memory interface width and die size. The higher data rates supported by GDDR5 - up to 5x that of GDDR3 and 4x that of GDDR4 - enable more bandwidth over a narrower memory interface, which can translate into superior performance delivered from smaller, more cost-effective chips. AMD's senior engineers worked closely with industry standards body JEDEC in developing the new memory technology and defining the GDDR5 spec.
"The days of monolithic mega-chips are gone. Being first to market with GDDR in our next-generation architecture, AMD is able to deliver incredible performance using more cost-effective GPUs," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. "AMD believes that GDDR5 is the optimal way to drive performance gains while being mindful of power consumption. We're excited about the potential GDDR5 brings to the table for innovative game development and even more exciting game play."
The introduction of GDDR5-based GPU offerings marks the continued tradition of technology leadership in graphics for AMD. Most recently AMD has been first to bring a unified shader architecture to market, the first to support Microsoft DirectX 10.1 gaming, first to lower process nodes like 55nm, the first with integrated HDMI with audio, and the first with double-precision floating point calculation support.
AMD expects that PC graphics will benefit from the increase in memory bandwidth for a variety of intensive applications. PC gamers will have the potential to play at high resolutions and image quality settings, with superb overall gaming performance. PC applications will have the potential to benefit from fast load times, with superior responsiveness and multi-tasking.
"Qimonda has worked closely with AMD to ensure that GDDR5 is available in volume to best support AMD's next-generation graphics products," said Thomas Seifert, Chief Operating Officer of Qimonda AG. "Qimonda's ability to quickly ramp production is a further milestone in our successful GDDR5 roadmap and underlines our predominant position as innovator and leader in the graphics DRAM market."
GDDR5 for Stream Processing
In addition to the potential for improved gaming and PC application performance, GDDR5 also holds a number of benefits for stream processing, where GPUs are applied to address complex, massively parallel calculations. Such calculations are prevalent in high-performance computing, financial and academic segments among others. AMD expects that the increased bandwidth of GDDR5 will greatly benefit certain classes of stream computations.
New error detection mechanisms in GDDR5 can also help increase the accuracy of calculations by indentifying errors and re-issuing commands to get valid data. This capability is a level of reliability not available with other GDDR-based memory solutions today.
Source:
AMD
Today's GPU performance is limited by the rate at which data can be moved on and off the graphics chip, which in turn is limited by the memory interface width and die size. The higher data rates supported by GDDR5 - up to 5x that of GDDR3 and 4x that of GDDR4 - enable more bandwidth over a narrower memory interface, which can translate into superior performance delivered from smaller, more cost-effective chips. AMD's senior engineers worked closely with industry standards body JEDEC in developing the new memory technology and defining the GDDR5 spec.
"The days of monolithic mega-chips are gone. Being first to market with GDDR in our next-generation architecture, AMD is able to deliver incredible performance using more cost-effective GPUs," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. "AMD believes that GDDR5 is the optimal way to drive performance gains while being mindful of power consumption. We're excited about the potential GDDR5 brings to the table for innovative game development and even more exciting game play."
The introduction of GDDR5-based GPU offerings marks the continued tradition of technology leadership in graphics for AMD. Most recently AMD has been first to bring a unified shader architecture to market, the first to support Microsoft DirectX 10.1 gaming, first to lower process nodes like 55nm, the first with integrated HDMI with audio, and the first with double-precision floating point calculation support.
AMD expects that PC graphics will benefit from the increase in memory bandwidth for a variety of intensive applications. PC gamers will have the potential to play at high resolutions and image quality settings, with superb overall gaming performance. PC applications will have the potential to benefit from fast load times, with superior responsiveness and multi-tasking.
"Qimonda has worked closely with AMD to ensure that GDDR5 is available in volume to best support AMD's next-generation graphics products," said Thomas Seifert, Chief Operating Officer of Qimonda AG. "Qimonda's ability to quickly ramp production is a further milestone in our successful GDDR5 roadmap and underlines our predominant position as innovator and leader in the graphics DRAM market."
GDDR5 for Stream Processing
In addition to the potential for improved gaming and PC application performance, GDDR5 also holds a number of benefits for stream processing, where GPUs are applied to address complex, massively parallel calculations. Such calculations are prevalent in high-performance computing, financial and academic segments among others. AMD expects that the increased bandwidth of GDDR5 will greatly benefit certain classes of stream computations.
New error detection mechanisms in GDDR5 can also help increase the accuracy of calculations by indentifying errors and re-issuing commands to get valid data. This capability is a level of reliability not available with other GDDR-based memory solutions today.
135 Comments on AMD Confirms GDDR5 for ATI Radeon 4 Series Video Cards
Without the clocks increased, we'd get a performance drop with slower timings, obviously.
to say ATI cards play crysis better than NVIDIA is a very subjective term. u got to explain further with screens, or a benchmark. its difficult to believe u when all the benchmarks prove otherwise.
Also read this about DX11 being nix'd (take it with a grain of salt). But if true, see a pattern?
but now, years later, it hasn't lead to an increase in competition . . . it's lead to an increase in one-sidedness.
But, the only thing, IMO, that TWIMTBP really accounts for - aside from the fact that a game is written to be optimized for green camp hardware - is the major performance lead nVidia cards have over ATI when a new title is released. It leaves ATI having to make up that ground with CAT releases, and IMO, they reclaim that ground quite respectfully after a few months. Sure, the game will continue to run better on nVidia hardware, but months after a major release, ATI cards are at least back on par, or slightly behind nVidia.
Somewhat back on topic: I'm really glad to hear that the new HDk4s will be utilizing GDDR5, and hopefully it will work out great to their advantage performance wise . . . but, I also find it somewhat disturbing how ATI tries to stay at the top of technology support, while nVidia seems to ignore any indusrty-wide technological advancements. ATI is the first to support GDDR3, GDDR4, GDDR5, HDMI, PCIE 2.0, DX10.1, etc, etc . . .
Curious . . . did nVidia ever release a GDDR4 video card?
another interesting point u make is that games on ati hardware catch up with nvidia after few months , u have any link to a benchmark ? i'm interested in seeing this.
Of course it's totally cool that AMD/ATI is still pushing memory innovation in the graphics arena, they definately got something here, especially if the performance netted from GDDR5 proves to be a strong value and factor for the card series' performance. I will sit back with my 9600GT and watch for now, as-always I hope that AMD/ATI are successful, same with NV...if neither succeed, we lose.
:toast:
For those of you that care about the politics in this industry, then you can support the company that makes you feel good...I support what makes my games play smoothly, look pretty and is easy on the wallet, to some that may seem wrong, but for me that's just how it is.
:toast:
I'm not expecting much out of the HD4870.
#1 Work on how you reply to people.
#2 I suggest you check your folks water hose in the yard. Just turn the facet on a little bit and use the nozzle on the end to release the water. The water volume at the facet won't be the same at the nozzle ;)
#3 If you want to continue this PM me, no need to derail the thread!
back on topic:
lets hope the price of gddr5 doesn't hurt Ati to much...:)
they need to be putting some money into marketing, ATi's marking is close to non existent at the moment.
we can kind of see it, though, in our e-peen "post your gameX benchmark score here" threads
but, again, I'll try and dig up what I remember seeing, and I'll post it back up here in this thread once I find it . . .