WEBVTT

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The focal point of any graphics card, once you get past the RGB lighting of course,

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is the GPU itself, which does all the number crunching that pushes the frames of your favorite

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games to your screen. But an often overlooked component is your video memory, which typically

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takes the form of these small modules surrounding the GPU if you take off the cooler. The memory

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stores visual assets like textures and other information that the GPU needs to process to

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render a finished frame. And like GPUs, video memory, or VRAM, gets a boost in speed and

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performance every so often, and today we're going to tell you about the latest, newest boost,

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a type of VRAM called GDDR6X. GDDR6X is set to be the successor to GDDR6,

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and the older GDDR5 family on high-end graphics cards. Although plain GDDR6, without the X,

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is actually a fairly recent innovation with both the RTX 2000 series from NVIDIA and the RX 5000

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series from AMD using it, the new X revision was developed to keep pace with the ever-increasing

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demands on our GPUs. You see, the reason that video memory performance is so important is that you

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can have the most powerful GPU in the world, but in order to render your frames quickly enough,

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it needs something to work on. So if your VRAM can't get visual assets and other crucial data to

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your GPU quickly enough, you can experience slowdowns and even crashes. Generally speaking,

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higher resolutions and quality settings require more video memory in order to store all that

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extra information, which is why you often see recommendations that users choose a version

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of a card with more VRAM if they're trying to play at 4K. But you need high speed to move all

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that data to and from your GPU quickly enough, which is where GDDR6X comes in. Unlike typical

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data pathways called buses, which move data one bit at a time, GDDR6X uses a technique called PAM4,

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which isn't something you spray your skillet with, but rather a method that can send one

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of four discrete power levels at a time instead of two. This means that GDDR6 can move two bits at

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a time, dramatically increasing bandwidth. And as we demand graphic solutions that can pump out

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high resolution frames faster than ever, GDDR6X has made its way into graphics cards with the new

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NVIDIA RTX 3090 and 3080, which are aimed at 8K at 60fps and 4K at 120fps respectively.

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And based on how much each module of GDDR6X can store, the RTX 3090 will have nearly one

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terabyte per second of VRAM bandwidth, while the 3080 will deliver a still-staggering 760

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gigabytes per second. That's right, having more capacity actually gets you more bandwidth.

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And not only that, the PAM4 scheme is more power efficient since it can send two bits per clock

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cycle, meaning super high res gaming might not require as beefy of a power supply on desktop

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or suck as much power if you're using a gaming laptop. But hold on a second James, I thought

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HBM was going to be the way of the future. Well, high bandwidth memory or HBM did look like it was

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going to take the graphics market by storm not too long ago. But it was more complex to manufacture

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than various versions of GDDR and AMD, who developed the technology, moved away from it

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for their RTX 5000 series. However, that does not mean a future variant of HBM couldn't compete

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with GDDR, as the powers that be are still working on improving the technology, and it might become

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cheap enough at some point to appear in mid-range gaming cards instead of mostly in data centers,

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which are using GPUs for non-graphics applications such as AI. But for now, GDDR6X looks like it

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will be king of the hill for a little bit. I mean, it has an X in it and that makes it cool, right?