AMD today announced that the company will offer Graphics Double Date Rate, version 5 (GDDR5) memory in the company’s next generation of Radeon graphics cards and is working with companies such as Samsung Hynix and Qimonda to bring GDDR5 to the market.
GDDR5 supports higher data rates (five times that of GDDR3 and four times that of GDDR4), which enables more bandwidth over a narrower memory interface, meaning better performance from a smaller, more cost effective chip. It also means gamers will have the potential to play at higher resolutions and image quality settings, with improved load times.
AMD also feels GDDR5 could be beneficial for stream processing, where GPUs are applied to address complex, massively parallel calculations. New error detection mechanisms in GDDR5 can also help increase the accuracy of these calculations by identifying errors and re-issuing commands to get valid data, a kind of reliability not available with other GDDR-based memory solutions.
“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.”
