When NVIDIA announced that its new Pascal consumer GPUs wouldn't be using
HBM2 video memory, some folks were left
feeling a little confused. However, that isn't to say that they didn't change
anything about their VRAM, as these cards are using the also newly released
GDDR5X. So, what's special about it other than the fact that it has an X in
its name, which might be trying to remind people of words like exciting,
extreme, or expensive? Well, that might depend on
who you buy your components from. So, instead, let's talk about what GDDR5X
actually is. It's a type of video RAM
which does things like hold textures, store images in frame buffers, provide
the GPU with lighting information. In short, it holds the data that your GPU
actually has to process so that your computer will display your game
properly. But the arisen question is what's special about GDR5X in
particular, and is it going to make your games look any better or run faster?
Well, usually VRAM tends to matter more the higher the resolution your games are
running at, making it especially important for multimonitor setups or if
you're trying to run things with aggressive anti-aliasing or high-res
texture settings. As these things require more stuff to be held in memory.
And with games becoming ever more detailed and higher resolution monitors
becoming more common and cheaper, quicker memory is also becoming more
important. Graphics memory has placed an emphasis on wide bandwidth for a long
time, but GDDR5X improves upon the existing GDDR5
standard by allowing twice as much data to be accessed at one time, 64 bytes
instead of 32. And while this may not sound like much, we should see overall
transfer rates of around 10 gigabits per second or even higher per pin and nearly
450 gigabytes per second of overall
bandwidth while drawing less power than its predecessor. Pretty sweet. But slow
down just a minute. What about that fancy new HBM that AMD came out with?
Why is GDR5X a big deal then? While it's
true that HBM, which you can learn more about here, has higher throughput and
has a smaller footprint, which are both great things on your graphics card
specifically, than GDR5X. GDR5X should be quite a bit
easier, not to mention cheaper to implement than HBM since it's still
quite similar to the ubiquitous GDDR5.
And although both NVIDIA and AMD are heavily rumored to be moving towards HBM
2.0 O for some of their upcoming architectures. GDDR5X might appear on
more mid-range future graphics cards as well as the greater accessibility of
high-res displays and the growing interest in virtual reality headsets
will make high throughput VRAM increasingly important. Currently, GDR5X
is only available on NVIDIA's new flagship, the GeForce GTX 1080, but
don't be surprised to see it paired with more GPUs down the road. And whether
you're going for GDDR5X or HBM, pay
attention to what kind of VRAM is in your next card if you want to get into
surround gaming, hook up an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, or just really, really like
things with X's in them. The MTO DSA
sci-fi keycap set is available over on Massrop. It's a customizable keycap set
that is set in the theme of the first person shooter game that you've never
heard of, Counter Strike: Global Offensive. You'll have to pick whatever
like kit and build you want to fit the layout and theme and schematic and
whatnot of your keyboard, but that is very easy to do on their website and it
supports tons of different layouts, even non-standard ones from various
companies. So, you should be covered. You're also find even if you have like
Nordic, German, UK, US layouts, all that kind of stuff. And additionally,
Blizzard's Overwatch inspired novelties will be available as well. The base
price is $39.99, but varies widely based on different options that are selected
in the checkout as we just discussed. And we'll be launching the morning of
June 13th. So go to
draw.tequicky-mito and you can check all that kind of stuff out. Thank you guys
for watching. Don't forget to like it, dislike it, subscribe, all those common
things that you're used to by now. If you have ideas for future techie
episodes, put them in the bottom. And if you like X's, go over to channel Super
Fun because I don't know why an X has anything to do with that name, but just,
you know, whatever. Don't forget to subscribe. I'll see you next time.