GDDR5 - what is it on the video card? Fifth generation of DDR SDRAM. Modern types of video memory

NVIDIA leads us by the nose! Comparison of GT 1030 graphics cards with GDDR5 and DDR4 memory

On the market today you can find two video cards with the same name and at a similar price, but with completely different performance. We are talking about the GeForce GT 1030 from NVIDIA. One part of the video cards is equipped with the current GDDR5 memory, the other is equipped with DDR4 memory, which, in terms of its characteristics and performance, is junk from the past. We are talking about NVIDIA's amazing misleading policy today.

In the spring of 2017, without much fanfare, the GeForce GT 1030 video card with GDDR5 memory from the ultra-budget segment appeared on the virtual shelves. It is located approximately at the back of progress and is intended for the cheapest assemblies, where games are not particularly expected to run. Although for undemanding gaming at Full HD resolution, this video card is suitable.

In the spring of 2018, another GeForce GT 1030 video card came out quieter and more modestly. Slightly modified. It is equipped with a different type of memory (DDR4), which made it possible to slightly, but reduce the cost of the video card.

As you can see, in our catalog the price difference between two GT 1030s from the same manufacturer is 14 rubles. At the start, manufacturers announced that the new product would be $10 cheaper in all markets. Pennies? However, that inexperienced layman who does not understand the intricacies of alphanumeric designations of video cards may think that the difference between these two models in performance will be approximately equal to their difference in cost. Why not save then? This is where the real tsimus of the story lies - in terms of performance in games (the most obvious way to appreciate the difference), the 2018 GT 1030 video card turns out to be two, and in some places even three times worse than the 2017 video card. And the point is in the bandwidth of their memory.

We will demonstrate this difference on specific video cards in some games, and also take the opportunity to explain how memory bandwidth affects performance. Note that the article features video cards from Palit. But a similar situation is typical for other contract manufacturers that work with NVIDIA (MSI, ASUS and others), since they are strictly dependent on the manufacturer's specifications.

But before proceeding to a specific analysis, we note that changing some of the nuances in the product is not a crime. It smells of crime only when the manufacturer tries to deliberately confuse the buyer by releasing two different video cards under the same name. It would be much more honest with users to name the 2018 graphics card GT 1020 or GT 1030 SuperShit Edition. But for some reason, NVIDIA decided to tarnish its reputation on such an ultra-budget trifle.

GT 1030 video accelerator vs GT 1030 video retarder

First, let's introduce our test subjects. These are two GT 1030 graphics cards made by Palit. They were provided to us for temporary use by the Socket.by online store, for which we are immensely grateful to the guys.

Specifications from NVIDIA official website

The 2017 sample has a GPU frequency of 1227 MHz (1468 MHz in Turbo mode), while the newer model has 1151 MHz (1379 MHz). The difference in frequencies is noticeable, but by no means does it play a key role in the performance gap.

The one that came out in 2017 is longer, equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, which has a bandwidth of 48 GB / s. The 2018 variant is slightly shorter and has 2GB of DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 16.8GB/s. In both cases, the memory bus width is identical - 64 bits, but the memory frequency in live examples is radically different: for DDR4 it is 1050 MHz, for GDDR5 - 3000 MHz.

As a result, the decrepit DDR4 bandwidth on the GT 1030 video card is comparable to the outdated video memory speed that was used on devices 4-6 years ago.

Test practice

The most obvious difference between the two types of memory in graphics applications is visible in games. We put the GT 1030 GDDR5 graphics card into a computer with an Intel Core i-5 4690 and 8GB of RAM and ran it through several games at Full HD resolution. Then the same thing was done with the same graphics settings with the GT 1030 DDR4 video card.

Special benchmark World of Tanks Encore on average graphics settings in the first case gave us an average of 82 frames per second, in the second - 37 frames per second. More than double the difference.

In Game The Witcher 3 at the lowest graphics settings, a GDDR5 video card averages 34 fps (in Novigrad), a DDR4 video card averages 17 fps. And if in the first case you can still play somehow with microfreezes, then in the second you will have to lower the resolution of the picture.

V PUBG on low settings, the average FPS in the first case was 55 frames per second, in the second - 33 frames per second. At the same time, drawdowns were much more noticeable and uncomfortable.

The game Rocket League at medium settings, a video card with DDR4 memory was too tough - the average FPS was 23 frames per second, while the GT 1030 with GDDR5 demonstrated 51 frames per second.

Project Dark Souls 3 on minimum settings turned out to be unplayable on the GT 1030 DDR4 video card - only 17 frames per second. The patient with GDDR5 memory showed 37 frames per second.

The best indie platformer of the last year Hollow Knight in the case of GDDR5 memory, it came with an average FPS of 136, while on a newer video card you can count on 67 frames per second.

The game Overwatch perfectly optimized and on the "plug" with GDDR5-memory shows 87 frames per second at low settings. But the “plug” with DDR4 memory from the past was able to show only 36 frames per second.

A word about memory bandwidth

Video cards are in extreme dependence on memory speed. I don’t remember a case when a video card on the market, which first came out with the current GDDR5 memory, was eventually replaced with a “stump” with DDR4 memory. Although there have been cases throughout the history of the industry when manufacturers have installed larger memory, but of an older type, with low bandwidth, on video cards. And thus misled consumers. So gamers are arranged that for some reason, first of all, they look at the amount of memory, and not at its frequency or bus width. Although this is one of the most important parameters that affect performance.

In the early days of the computer industry, graphics card manufacturers didn't really choose which memory to use for their devices: the speed of traditional RAM suited them just fine. But over time, monitor resolutions grew, graphics became more complicated and textures improved. The RAM speeds for feeding video cards with data for processing were no longer enough. Over time, GDDR3 (Graphics Double Data Rate) branched off from DDR2 memory. For the first time in a commercial product, it was used in a video card from NVIDIA in 2004. The technological basis for this type of memory was DDR2 RAM, but with reduced power requirements, heat dissipation and corresponding to the requirements of working with graphics. This type of memory was used in video cards for both computers and current generation consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii).

Video memory frequencies grew, GDDR4 appeared (not widely used), and then in 2008 - GDDR5. Since then, there have been no major breakthroughs. For example, the current GTX 1070 with this type of memory with a 256-bit bus shows a throughput of 256 GB / s. Only in 2016, for NVIDIA's top solutions (GeForce GTX 1080), GDDR5X memory chips were used, which doubled the bandwidth of their predecessor. Thus, the flagship GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and GTX 1080 demonstrate memory speeds of 484 GB/s (352-bit bus) and 320 GB/s (256-bit bus), respectively.

The memory bus width in this case is the width of the channel that connects the memory and the GPU. Bitness is characterized by the ability of this bridge to supply the processor with as much data as possible per unit of time. The larger the bus, the more productive and more expensive the video card will be.

DDR4, in turn, feels great as RAM, but its bandwidth as graphics memory leaves much to be desired. These are practically technologies of bygone days, comparable in performance to DDR3 memory in budget GeForce 600 or 700 series graphics cards.

Thank you for the provided components online store

Video cards have always been equipped with the most technologically advanced, and therefore the fastest, memory. Since 2009, the fastest graphics memory has been GDDR5, which first appeared in the AMD Radeon HD 4800 graphics cards. But time goes by, and modern cards no longer have enough GDDR5 bandwidth. In older models of video cards, GDDR5X, HBM and HBM2 video memory began to appear. Let's compare these memory chips.

GDDR5

GDDR5- the most widely used high-speed memory, which is common on current generation video cards. It is the successor to GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory. Currently, GDDR3 or DDR3 is only used in entry-level graphics cards, while GDDR4 is not used at all.

GDDR5 is one of the fastest types of graphics memory and is used in many graphics cards from budget to high performance cards. GTX 1060, GTX 1070 and Radeon RX 480 are examples of powerful graphics cards using GDDR5 memory. Budget and mid-range graphics cards with GDDR5 memory are GT 730, GT 740, RX 460, GTX 750 Ti, GTX 1050 Ti, etc.

GDDR5 is a memory that, compared to its predecessors, has a high bandwidth and lower power consumption. The data transfer rate can reach 8Gbps. GDDR5 memory chips are available from Samsung, Hynix, ELPIDA, or Micron. Chips have volumes of 512 MB, 1, 2, 4 and 8 GB. The bus width of each GDDR5 memory chip is 32 bits. Now GDDR5 is being replaced by GDDR5X memory.

GDDR5X is an improved version of GDDR5 memory. Like its predecessor, GDDR5X refers to high performance SGRAM (Synchronous Graphics Random Access Memory) used in graphics cards, high performance servers, and other modern hardware devices. GDDR5X is twice as fast as conventional GDDR5 memory and can reach speeds in the 10-14Gbps range. In the future, GDDR5X memory bandwidth may reach 16 Gb / s. Currently, GDDR5X memory is manufactured by Micron.

Also, GDDR5X consumes less power compared to GDDR5. GDDR5X memory chips are available in 4 GB, 6 GB, 8 GB, and 16 GB. The most popular graphics cards using this type of memory include the GeForce GTX 1080 and Nvidia TITAN X (Pascal). High-performance workstation graphics cards such as the Nvidia Quadro P5000 and Quadro P6000 also use high-speed GDDR5X memory. Samsung plans to launch GDDR6 memory in 2018, which will be the true successor to GDDR5 memory. It will have speeds up to 16 Gbps and have even lower power consumption.

It is worth noting that it is impossible to replace memory from GDDR5 to GDDR5X, since the chips have a different number of pins (170 for GDDR5 and 190 for GDDR5X).

HBM(from High Bandwidth Memory - high-bandwidth memory) is produced by Hynix and Samsung. Just like the types of memory described above, it is used in video cards and other modern devices. At the moment, HBM memory is used in several video cards. By design, HBM is a non-planar memory with a three-dimensional cube or cuboid design. In an HBM, several memory chips are stacked on top of each other to form a cubic structure. Due to this, the area occupied by the memory chips is reduced, which makes it possible to place it in close proximity to the GPU.

Each "stack" (stack) of HBM memory is independent of the others, but they work together. Because of its small form factor, HBM is also known as compact memory or layered memory. A typical HBM memory stack consists of four DRAM layers on a base die and has two 128-bit channels per DRAM die for a total of 8 channels, resulting in 1024 bits per memory interface stack. So a video card that has four 4-Hi HBM stacks has a memory bus width of 4 x 1024 = 4096 bits. HBM memory has an operating speed of 1 Gbps, but its memory bandwidth is much higher than that of GDDR5 memory. This is due to the much wider memory bus. HBM memory bandwidth can be up to 128 GB/s per stack. HBM can have a capacity of 1 GB per stack and supports 4 GB per stack.

HBM memory consumes less power than GDDR5 and GDDR5X memory. The first graphics card to use HBM memory was the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. It is also used in two graphics cards with Radeon Pro Duo GPUs.

HBM2 is a second generation HBM memory with all the characteristics of HBM but with higher speed and bandwidth. It can have 8 DRAM arrays per stack and transfer rates up to 2Gbps. With a 1024-bit memory interface, it can have a memory bandwidth of 256 GB/s per stack, which is twice that of conventional HBM or HBM 1 memory. The total capacity of HBM2 is also larger, and it can have up to 8 GB per stack. The first GPU chip to use HBM2 memory is the Nvidia Tesla P100. Nvidia's latest workstation graphics card, the Nvidia Quadro GP100, also features HBM2 memory. The HBM2 memory will be used mainly for VR games, augmented reality and other memory-intensive applications. The successor to the HBM2 will be the HBM3, which is scheduled to start production in 2019 or 2020.

You can always see a large selection of discrete graphics cards based on both GDDR3 and GDDR5. But "pure" DDR3 or DDR5 - no matter how you look - you can't find it. In fact, everything is very simple: DDR3 and DDR5 are RAM standards. Accordingly, video cards using GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory are also built on their basis.

Video memory and RAM

Although these two memories are similar in their functionality and even, as you can see now, use a similar standard, they do different things:

• RAM stores a set of frequently repeated instructions and processor commands for quick reference by the CPU. After all, RAM is very fast. Retrieving data from there is much more efficient than from external storage or a hard drive. Although it is possible to increase the amount of memory of a DDR3 video card, for example, at the expense of RAM strips;
• video memory also stores data for quick access by the GPU. Only this data concerns exclusively video - textures, results of shader and polygonal calculations, etc.

As "RAM" uses various interfaces to connect to the motherboard - DDR, DDR3, DDR5, etc., so does video memory - GDDR3, GDDR5. The difference between them lies in the technical features of each type of video memory, but if you explain it very simply, then GDDR5 is almost twice as fast as GDDR3. After all, GDDR3 is based on DDR2 SDRAM, that is, DDR2 memory with an increased effective frequency, and GDDR5 is based on DDR3 SDRAM.

An important difference between RAM and video memory lies in the fact that in order to expand video memory, it is physically soldered on the board, and not expanded with discrete strips, as is the case with "RAM".

Main differences between GDDR3 and GDDR5

Of course, confusion in markings may seem unnecessary to the average user. There are only a few main differences between these types of video memory:

• video cards with GDDR3 memory are almost twice as slow as GDDR5 video cards;
• the effective frequency of GDDR5 is higher than that of GDDR3, hence its high performance;
• GDDR5 refers to more modern standards. All top products must have a GDDR5 interface. But the devices of the middle and budget class - GDDR3;
• video cards with GDDR3 memory are cheaper;
• on the other hand, video cards with GDDR5 memory are less energy-consuming.

Of course, based on the above data, each user can choose a gaming video card to their liking. The final choice is always his.

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In addition to a fast GPU for games, the amount of video memory and how fast it is is also important. Giant textures and information for calculations must quickly come to the disposal of computational elements, otherwise it will come to “traffic jams” and a decrease in the frame rate on the monitor screen. Particularly high resolutions (greater than 1080p) with computationally demanding anti-aliasing quickly take over the memory resources of mid-range graphics cards. Current graphics accelerators usually use GDDR5 chips, more expensive NVIDIA models use faster GDDR5X memory.

Meanwhile, AMD's forthcoming Vega accelerators will use high-speed second-generation High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM2). So what are the main features of these types of memory?

Current graphics memory in comparison

	GDDR5	GDDR5X	GDDR6	HBM2
Transfer rate	up to 8 Gbps	up to 12 Gbps	up to 16 Gbps	1.6 to 2 Gbps
Bus interface
Voltage
Memory chip density		Up to 16 Gbps		Up to 16 Gbps
Memory
General speed	512 Gbps	768 Gbps	1024 Gbps	1024 Gbps

The above table shows the main characteristics of the four types of memory we are considering. According to the specification, GDDR5X supports up to 12Gb/s throughput and 512-bit bus width. In the final product, this could mean a data transfer rate of 768 Gbps. However, in graphic cards such performance that one can only dream of is not achieved.

The highest throughput of GDDR5X on the market models reaches 11 Gb / s. Although NVIDIA's Titan XP offers 12 GB of video memory, it uses "only" a 384-bit instead of a 512-bit memory bus.

SK Hynix shows GDDR6 data sheet at the 2017 GTC. (Photo: Heise)

GDDR6 vs HBM2

The GDDR6 data that SK Hynix presented at GTC 2017 is especially interesting to compare with that of another new graphics memory of the year, HBM2. At best, both types of memory provide roughly the same bandwidth. Differences are noticeable in volume. AMD has announced a "not for gamer" card with 16 GB of memory that is preparing to enter the market at the end of June 2017. Since the configuration of GDDR6 chips must remain identical to the configuration of GDDR5, graphics accelerator manufacturers most likely will not be able to overcome the 12 GB threshold on a single card.

HBM2 will have a 16 GB limit for a while, but this standard has the opportunity to raise the bar higher - and in the truest sense of the word, since 3D memory is still used in the version of only 4 GB per stack ("4-Hi Stack" ), but has the ability to stack up to 8 GB. Thus, the amount of HBM2 video memory on graphics cards can reach 32 GB.

AMD Unveils Radeon Vega Frontier Edition at AMD Financial Analyst Day 2017

When will GDDR6 reach gamers?

SK Hynix promises to complete the development of a new type of video memory in the fourth quarter of 2017. In addition, information was circulating at the GTC that mass production could be launched in 2018. There are no official partners yet. However, NVIDIA is the most likely candidate for this role.

The appearance of graphics cards with GDDR6 video memory before 2019 is unlikely. Recall that members of the JEDEC association, which include such memory manufacturers as SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung, agreed on the GDDR5X specifications in 2015. The first graphics cards with this type of memory entered the market only in 2016.