Why Graphics Matter
By Casey Gotcher – Director of Product Marketing at AMD.
From games to movies to photos—so much of what we do on the PC is visual and powerful graphics are needed to bring those to life on screen. The impact that a proper graphics processor can have on one’s computing or entertainment experience is often poorly understood and many misconceptions remain on what separates a so-so experience from a great one. One myth I hear all the time is that memory size is the best indicator of graphics performance and that more memory is better (e.g. 512MB vs. 1GB). Attributing graphics performance to memory size alone is like measuring a car’s performance strictly by the size of its motor (e.g. 5.8L). Related but by no means the only determining factor
When looking at GPU specs, note that there are different memory types (e.g. GDDR5 and DDR3). AMD was the first company to ship products using GDDR5 memory back in 2008. GDDR5 memory is the fastest and latest memory technology available to date. Compared to its predecessors, it delivers more speed, higher memory bandwidth (read: images will load faster on your multi-screen display), and can help reduce the impact on your battery life (read: more energy efficient). GDDR5 memory is the ideal graphics memory for the mainstream mobile user – not just for gamers – providing the right balance of high performance and power consumption. GDDR5 memory is purpose built for high performance graphics applications. DDR 3 is basically general purpose PC memory. It works, but by no means is it optimized for graphics.
While memory bandwidth doesn’t get as much credit for overall performance, as say the frequency of the part, it is often just as important. The best analogy I have heard for how to describe memory bandwidth is to think of a highway. There are two things that determine how fast you can travel in your car on a given highway. One is the maximum speed limit. For our comparison, think of this as being comparable to the frame buffer size or amount of memory that comes with your graphics card. In some cases, the maximum speed limit (or frame buffer in our case) determines how fast you can travel. That said, just like with a highway, the bandwidth of that highway (think number of lanes) is just as important as the speed limit. If you are traveling really early in the morning, or really late at night, the number of lanes are not that important, as there are usually not a lot of travelers at that time. The minute you change that to morning or evening rush hour, the whole equation changes. At that point, the number of lanes, or bandwidth of the highway, has more to do with your travel speed than the speed limit does. The more lanes there are, the more traffic can flow through, and the faster you go.
This is true in our graphics analogy too. The more memory bandwidth you have, the more work your graphics processor can do, Many graphics chores are memory intensive, and the more bandwidth or access to the memory you have, the faster and better things will turn out.
While there is nothing wrong with having a larger frame buffer (1GB or 2GB), it does you no good if your path to that memory is clogged. In other words, you will have a lot of memory sitting there doing nothing because it is starved for data, due to a traffic jam of information. What this means is, you want a balance between your frame buffer size and your memory bandwidth. In many cases, your money is better spent on faster memory (GDDR 5) than more memory. Once you reach a certain frame buffer size, you reach a point of diminishing returns, meaning you are no longer getting any benefit for the money you are spending. Here are some examples of how this affects your computing experience.
Memory bandwidth is important in almost every aspect of computing:
- For gaming: Helps improves image quality and performance
- For entertainment: Helps produces high quality video playback (e.g, especially when it comes to support for Blu-ray™, 3D and HD videos)
- For productivity: Helps maximizes performance and increase graphics load times
GPUs paired with GDDR5 memory enable significant performance improvements relative to GPUs equipped with a greater amount of DDR3 memory Take a look at the chart below for a performance comparison between two mobile AMD Radeon™ GPUs that are virtually identical in specifications except for the difference in memory type: one features 512MB of GDDR5 memory and the other has a 1GB of DDR3 memory. Despite having a smaller memory size, the GPU with GDDR5 memory easily outperforms the higher capacity card with DDR3 memory[i]:
Memory bandwidth affects every part of your everyday computing experiences that are increasingly becoming more visual. With social networking and file-sharing sites getting more popular each day, we all want to be able to share our latest and greatest home videos and photos with our family and friends. Today’s popular video editing software is optimized to take advantage of the power of your computer’s GPU for an overall better experience, so you can edit and upload photos and videos without lagging or stalling.
So what does this all mean for us? Now we can do things we never expected to be able to do on notebook PCs – even demanding tasks like watching HD video and gaming. Graphics is the component that brings everything to life, and it has important features, like GDDR5, to look out for when shopping for that perfect notebook computing experience.
Casey Gotcher is the Director of Product Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.
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