DDR, GDDR2, GDDR3 what does it mean

Warmonger41

Warmonger41

Big Geek
I was just looking at vid cards at newegg and had wondered what the difference between DDR, GDDR2, GDDR3 were. Is it just a matter of compatibility or a matter of different speeds? help me out plz
 
well, DDR stands for double data range, i am not sure of the differences between the ram, well i dont think so anyway, but it seems like GDDR3 ram is capable of much much higher speeds than DDR ram same with GDDR 2 ram,, as you see the high end graphics cards with memory speeds of over 600mhz/1.2ghz, also DDR ram is quite bigger than GDDR ram.
also GDDR ram is just for graphics cards.
 
DDR is the standard memory used in most PCs and some graphics cards.

In a graphics card, the best type is GDDR3, GDDR2 and then DDR. GDDR is memory suited and optimized for graphics/matrix calculations. They also tend to run at higher speeds.
 
The G in GDDR3 as far as I can tell just denotes 'graphics' as you can't buy GDDR3 ram for your PC. GDDR4 is on it's way and it's basically just another league of good as you won't notice much difference speedwise between a card with GDDR2 and GDDR3 if they're at the same clockspeeds. The main difference is GDDR3 is capable of higher speeds, which is always a plus.
 
Well i guess my question is: Do I have to have a certain RAM type in order to use a vid card with GDDR3? and if so what is it?
 
No the video card RAM is independent of the system RAM, so you can buy any type you want. As long as you buy an AGP card for an AGP motherboard and a PCI-E for a PCI-E motherboard.
 
Just as a point of reference AGP cards usually don't use GDDR3 ram just as it's a new technology that most AGP cards didn't have time to adopt.
 
They do actually it just depends on how old the card is, I've got a 6600GT and it uses GDDR3 RAM - Got it running at 1200Mhz (stock speed = 1000MHZ) :)
 
I didn't say they didn't, just most cards that support it fall into the PCIe category. But your totally right, 6600GT's, 6800GS's, and 7800GS's all support DDR3.
 
Hi guys, I'm new here and I want to ask you one thing.


I still have my pirst pc:
Sempron 2200+, 1gb RAM pc3200, 160gb HDD, nvidia FX5500 GPU. I don't wanna throw it away. I was thinking to watch movies on this one - make small multimedia center :) Also sometimes I play old games like NFS, DMC3, Lineage2 and etc... So...

I was thinking. Is it possible to put Nvidia 6200 GPU on this PC? Mobo is Asrock (link --- motherboard)

Why I ask? 6200 gpu uses GDDR2 and FX5500 use DDR. So will my mobo will be able to use it?

The 6200 price is not high though, but I wanna consult first, and only then decide wether to buy it or not.

Thx in advance.
 
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