Whatever happened to VRAM and WRAM?

[sirfergy]

I was just thinking about this the other day. I remember when video cards used to boast about having VRAM and WRAM. Now they all use SDRAM. Is there any advantage to those over current SDRAM?

 

[ET]

VRAM and WRAM had two ports, so were able to read from memory for display while at the same time having data written to them. This was important in the days of slow memory and small busses. These days, the actual output to the screen is but a small fraction of the memory bandwidth of the card, with most of the bandwidth being used for 3D. While this kind of memory could theoretically help speed even in the current conditions, it will be too expensive and possibly slower than other types of memory, due to its complexity.