DDR2 on new(ish) video cards?? wtf?

[Mizugori]

I was looking at video cards recently, just out of curiosity really because I would need to upgrade my mobo to even support pci-e x16 2.0, but I noticed a bunch of cards that have gddr2 memory on them... what gives? even my now old geforce 7600 gt has gddr3 on it...

???

 

[SlowSpyder]

What model card? There are a lot of low end cards out there that probably won't benefit from more bandwidth then they already have with DDR2 depending on the speed/width.

 

[error8]

Usually entry level cards, those used for HTPC or office systems, where no gaming is involved whatsoever, are equipped with DDR2 memory, since they don't need anything more to display a movie or your desktop.

 

[Denithor]

error8 +1

Yep, these are bargain basement cards, not intended for gaming (although the box will try to convince you otherwise).

Often used to fool the unwary: "Oh look, this one has 1GB RAM, that must mean it's better than that one with only 512MB!"

 

[nosfe]

well, palit has a couple of 3850 with ddr2(not gddr2, ddr2)

 

[DSF]

GDDR and DDR don't match up exactly anyway, right?

 

[nosfe]

no, but the performance is more or less the same while ddr2 is a lot cheaper than gdd2 right now and that's what they were thinking when adding ddr2 to those boards, make them as cheap as possible

 

[Mizugori]

can someone basically explain ddr vs gddr ?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Google can!

Type: "what is gddr"

Read. Be happy!

 

[nosfe]

back when ddr(1) was all the rage and ddr2 was still in development nvidia wanted faster memory for it's video cards(fx 5800) so they developed gddr2 based on ddr(1) technology and what development was already made into ddr2, so gddr2 was somewhere between ddr 1 and 2. ati then took this and developed it further making gddr3(it has nothing to do with ddr3). And so on and so forth until we reach gddr5

They're different technologies, it's just that some videocards memory controler is made to accept more types of memory. The cheapest memory right now is ddr2 so nvidia and ati made sure that their low end graphics cards are able to use it so as to lower the price of the graphics cards as much as possible

 

[soccerballtux]

wiki has wonderful articles on this.