Learning about what the GPU specs mean?

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Toosdey

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Oct 9, 2013
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Despite being into PC gaming for 10 years or so now, I've never really learned about the specs for PC parts, what they mean, or how to really value them, and I want to change that, starting with GPU's.

For example, I wanna know what VRAM and clocks speeds actually mean. What do they effect in games? I was wondering where I can go to actually learn about these.

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Epsilon_0EVP
I'll give you a rough primer to get you started. I would definitely still recommend following the other suggestion and Googling to find an answer, though.


  • ■ VRAM (Video Random Access Memory) is the memory the GPU uses. Jut like your CPU uses RAM, the GPU needs a place to store the data it uses. It will often be filled with textures, buffers, shaders, and other data required to create the image.

    ■ Shader count is the number of shaders a GPU has. You can think of this as the number of cores in a CPU. A GPU has many more "cores" than a CPU (usually over 1000 in mid-level cards), but each of them is much more specialized than the ones in your CPU; they simply serve a different purpose. Sometimes, the shader count is...
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Ecolouge

Ecolouge

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Jan 11, 2016
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Haha, as cheap as this sounds, I would just say to google it. With websites like Tomshardware and many others, any info someone hear could tell you has already been talked about in the past. If you still need help, you can PM me.
 
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Epsilon_0EVP

Epsilon_0EVP

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Jun 27, 2012
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I'll give you a rough primer to get you started. I would definitely still recommend following the other suggestion and Googling to find an answer, though.


  • ■ VRAM (Video Random Access Memory) is the memory the GPU uses. Jut like your CPU uses RAM, the GPU needs a place to store the data it uses. It will often be filled with textures, buffers, shaders, and other data required to create the image.

    ■ Shader count is the number of shaders a GPU has. You can think of this as the number of cores in a CPU. A GPU has many more "cores" than a CPU (usually over 1000 in mid-level cards), but each of them is much more specialized than the ones in your CPU; they simply serve a different purpose. Sometimes, the shader count is actually called something else by the manufacturers; Nvidia like to call their shader cores "CUDA cores", and AMD usually gives you the number of clusters of shaders a GPU has, and sometimes calls the cores "stream processors"

    ■ Core clock is the speed at which the shader cores run. This is about equivalent to the clock rate of a CPU. It can rarely be used to compare the speed of two cards, though, since cards tend to have wildly different architectures.

    ■ Memory clock is the speed at which the memory runs. GPU's like to have very fast memory to be able to load textures quicker. Most GPU's today use GDDR5 VRAM, so it is easy to compare memory clock speeds. However, newer GPU's are using a new format called HBM, which is significantly faster even though it runs at a lower clock speed.

    ■ TDP (Thermal Design Power) is the maximum amount of heat generated by a processor. Since heat comes from the power consumed by the processor, TDP is usually a good approximation for the worst-case power consumption of a graphics card.

Hopefully that's enough to get you started. You can ask about any other ones you want, but I would recommend trying to do research and learning on your own.
 
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