whats the difference between 128bit and 256 bit in GPUs?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

acemanph

Distinguished
Jun 12, 2010
72
0
18,630
whats the difference between 128bit and 256 bit in GPUs? 256 is faster? better? how? Is this a very important factor if say i want to play games at high or ultra settings? Thank u
 
Solution
drtweak
The bit you see there. (128, 192,256,448,512, ect) is the width of the Memory Bus. Think of it as channels. how there is Dual Channel Tripple channel and Quad channel memory for you PC. In other works each Channel has its own Controller allow for faster speeds. Now with memory every 64bits is pretty much a channel.

Now the thing is though its not just about the channel. What you really want to look at is the bandwith. If you have a high bit with ram (I'll take my GTX 260 which has 896 Megabytes of ram and its a 448 Bit Bus) But the new Cards which have like 128,192,256 on average BUT the Ram Speed is much higher and faster. My old card only uses GDDR3 while most new cards use GDDR5 which is MUCH faster. Yes a high bit rate is better...
Sort by date Sort by votes
drtweak

drtweak

Illustrious
Sep 17, 2012
6,342
75
38,640
The bit you see there. (128, 192,256,448,512, ect) is the width of the Memory Bus. Think of it as channels. how there is Dual Channel Tripple channel and Quad channel memory for you PC. In other works each Channel has its own Controller allow for faster speeds. Now with memory every 64bits is pretty much a channel.

Now the thing is though its not just about the channel. What you really want to look at is the bandwith. If you have a high bit with ram (I'll take my GTX 260 which has 896 Megabytes of ram and its a 448 Bit Bus) But the new Cards which have like 128,192,256 on average BUT the Ram Speed is much higher and faster. My old card only uses GDDR3 while most new cards use GDDR5 which is MUCH faster. Yes a high bit rate is better but not always faster .

Look at the memory Bandwith. Thats what you should really look at.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
leeb2013

leeb2013

Honorable
Aug 5, 2013
1,967
0
12,460
I think you are refering to the GPU memory bus. For the same memory clock frequency, a 256bit bus will give twice the memory bandwidth, hence theoretically faster access, which can help in some higher end cards. Which ones are you looking at?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bystander

Champion
Dec 9, 2009
15,141
6
57,965
The reality is, you don't need to know anything about internal spec's of a card. Look at benchmarks for the resolution you are gaming at. That will tell you all you really need to know. Well, read the full review as well, other things like stutter, heat and noise may also matter.

The bit of the bus will show up in the benchmarks. It might not matter if the memory is fast enough to deliver all the bandwidth needed.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom