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