Gddr4

What happened to GDDR4??
We have the 3 as a standard, but according to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDDR4 it has existed since 2006, and it is better and faster, but I know no GPU using it.

What happened?

 

GDDR4 just never picked up, except for a few limited GPUs. Possibly just having the wrong timing in entering the market...

 

But was it supposed to be any good?
Was it worth it?
It simply disappeared......?? WOW

 

I wondered the same, probably it turned out to be too expensive to manufactutre or it might have been sabotaged by companies witch developed GDDR3 to force us to buy the less effective one for a longer period of time....

 

I came acros this doubt since GDDR5 is getting standardized on high end GPUs, and GDDR3 on mainstream, but (pretty obvious) I noticed a lack of GDDR4 at all...and it got me into wandering what ever happened to it?

 

Well then let's just hope that they will skip GDDR4 right into the GDDR5 as mainstream soon

 

GDDR4 was tried to made mainstream back in 2007 AFAIK, but failed. Interesting enough is that nobody even knew it existed, and i dont think it will out of nowhere appear out of the sudden and become a standard. I rather go GDDR5. :wink:

 

yeah GDDR5 is best bet, since it's newer tech. Damn soon we will have GDDRBFG20 as standard, before we notice...or even more crazy stuff

 

HUH? <10char>

 

I put a radeon 4670 in my brother's desktop computer that uses gddr4. He just wanted a computer to play WOW at 1440x900 so I picked up a vostro desktop when it was cheap for about $450 and the 4670 was the fastest available card that didn't require external power. All but one 4670 uses ddr3 but for $10 extra and a giant heat-sink I chose to get the one with gddr4.

Here is a link to some benchmarks and it looks like for almost no cost to the consumer it provides 5-10% better real-world performance than the ddr3 card and even more if overclock-ability is considered.

http://www.elites.com/?option=com_content&task=view&id=677&Itemid=27
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeon_4670_gddr4_review/page3.asp

My guess is that it is a matter of cost and manufacturers don't think it makes enough of a difference. Truth be told I wish they offered gddr4 over ddr3 because memory speed does make a difference on the same card.

Edit: Sorry the first link doesn't work, took me a minute to figure out why and it is because the website is called elite-basterds albeit spelled the correct way and the filter here auto deletes it...

 

The 9600 GT won over the 4670HD??? interesting.
Oh, 5-10% increase is negligible.

 

I want it. I have stinky GDD2 mem...

would upping to 3 be worth it for me?

 

GDDR4 didn't pick up because the manufacturing cost + yields weren't and aren't worth the small jump over the already prevalent GDDR3.

Probably because the desktop 9600 GT is 256-bit, 64 shaders, and with minimum clock rates of 600/1500/900. Makes the "9600M" look like a joke.

 

Yeah the 9600gt is a more powerful card and at almost the same cost as the 4670 it provides more performance. This is because it utilizes a 256-bit memory interface but it also uses twice the power and requires an external power supply (think they have a version now that doesn't require it but its new). The 5-10% performance may be negligible and that is probably why it didn't catch on but I chose the card because of its non-reference cooler that is much quieter than stock while keeping the card cooler and its included hdmi port, the extra speed was just a bonus that I would appreciate on any card.

 

Thanks for the info. I had for a moment forgotten those were Desktop not mobile GPUs. lol

 

Only thing I know about why GDDR4 never took off was because ATi needed GDDR5 for their 48xx cards and accelerated development on it. Read it on a section of a story about ATi's backstory on the 48xx series: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3469&p=8