Graphic Card Bandwidth Discussion.

[lhgpoobaa]

Trying to start a discussion about future directions for Bandwidth issues with Graphics cards.

This year we will see AGP 8X, addressing any bottlenecks there (not that it was a problem with 4x).
GPU chips seems to be ontop of the issue, leaving the Graphics card RAM being the bottleneck still.
I see that DDR is almost at 300(600)Mhz now... how much higher can it feasibly go?
whats next???
Over a year ago i heard about DDRII and QDR... but DDRII seems for main memory, and ive not heard a peep from QDR...

so what else is there? Graphics cards with onboard Dualchannel DDR perhaps?
new revolutionary ways to compress the bandwidth usage?

anything else?

The lack of thermal protection on Athlon's is cunning way to stop morons from using AMD.

 

[somerandomguy]

Some of the options are:
1) New types of faster RAM.
- The problem with this is that RAM seems to progress more slowly than core technology, so it will only get further and further behind.
2) Find more efficient ways of using the available bandwidth (i.e. Kryo II).
- The problem with this is that the algorithms involved can be extremely complicated.
3) Very large, high bandwidth, on-die cache.
- The problem with this is that it’s expensive.
4)More efficient means of rendering (i.e. HyperZ etc) so that less bandwidth is wasted on things that you wont see in the final frame.
- Again, the algorithms involved can be extremely complicated.
I suppose the best thing to do for the moment is to use a combination of these things to improve performance.

The <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1566&p=4" target="_new">graphics chip in the GameCube</A> uses a new kind of cache that takes one transistor to store each bit (like DRAM) rather than 6 transistors to store each bit (like conventional cache). Also there are (supposedly) new technologies that allow us to stack transistors in three dimensions rather than two dimensions. Combine this with the fact that the amount of RAM we need for games seems to be going up quite slowly, and I’d say that very large caches are the way of the future.

"Ignorance is bliss, but I tend to get screwed over."

 

[flamethrower205]

I belive that maybe it'll be 2003-2004, but QDR or ODR will come out so that vid cards will be built into mobo, and that in order to get a new GPU, u just swap the chip onboard mobo.

Only if you let me see the Umpa Lumpa- Homer Simpson.

 

[somerandomguy]

You mean like having a GPU socket? That would mean you could have much larger heatsinks on your graphics chip.

"Ignorance is bliss, but I tend to get screwed over."

 

[flamethrower205]

yeah, sorta like a second CPU, but it's actually a gpu

Only if you let me see the Umpa Lumpa- Homer Simpson.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

i still think dual channel is a good way to go.
they got it workin for core chipsets, and u can get 128mb on a board (2 x 64)...
show me the 300Mhz dual channel ddr!
300 x 2 x 2 = 1200mhz euqivalent = 9600Mb/sec.
yep... i want that.


The lack of thermal protection on Athlon's is cunning way to stop morons from using AMD.

 

[AMD_Man]

You multiply by 16 not 8 to get the bandwidth because it's a 128bit bus. So that's 19200MB/s bandwidth.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[flamethrower205]

drool...

Only if you let me see the Umpa Lumpa- Homer Simpson.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

i can see problems though...
increased number of pcb layers due to the complexity, and maybe some sort of dualchannel controller (onboard the GPU?)

even so... it would eradicate the bandwidth problem

The lack of thermal protection on Athlon's is cunning way to stop morons from using AMD.

 

[somerandomguy]

Dual channel is cool because they can do it right now. However, it may make for a pretty expensive card; 300Mhz DDR RAM doesn't come cheap.

"Ignorance is bliss, but I tend to get screwed over."

 

[lhgpoobaa]

well thats the beauty... u DONT have to use DDR300(600).
can use plain old pleantiful DDR200, and that in dual channel would blow away DDR300 single channel.

cauz as it stands i cant see DDR getting too much faster than what it is at the moment.
get to costly/fiddly/low yield to produce.


The lack of thermal protection on Athlon's is cunning way to stop morons from using AMD.

 

[juin]

Dual channel is cool because they can do it right now. However, it may make for a pretty expensive card; 300Mhz DDR RAM doesn't come cheap.

There is no dual channel DDR right now in the market.

http://gamershq.madonion.com/products/orb/?publish_compare.shtml?&project_type=6&dprid=2310900