AMD today said that its next graphics cards series will integrate GDDR5 memory. The higher data rates supported by GDDR5 - up to 5x that of GDDR3 and 4x that of GDDR4 - will enable more bandwidth over a narrower memory interface, which can translate into superior performance delivered from smaller, more cost-effective chips, AMD said.

According to AMD, GDDR5 technology also holds a number of benefits for stream processing in general purpose GPU applications. The increased bandwidth will "greatly benefit certain classes of stream computations" and 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," AMD said.

You can read about AMD’s next-gen graphics cards in our detailed Radeon 4800 preview articles.