| disolitude said: GDDR5 is based on DDR3 and is essentially DDR3 memory optimized for graphics where they increased the clockspeed at the cost of timings. In fact, I think that they either made a mistake or this whole article is BS. Maybe they are using GDDR5 for graphics and then DDR3 for rest but I don't see how they would have any benefits from using GDDR5 for everything. More heat, more power usage, higher timings...makes no sense. |
No GDDR5 memory is optimized for "large memory chunk transfers", it can prefetch a lot more memory than conventional memory. This is done because graphics memory usually is addressed as "large chunks of contiguous memory". If you want to display 4k pictures, you have a lot of bytes to work on/transfer and you need a design the GDDR5 feature offers. If this (45683th) rumour is to be believed, the PS4 uses unified memory, so the designers have to decide on the memory type that they think is more important - either dram for the CPU (which DDR3 is completely sufficient) or dram for the gpu which calls for GDDR5 type memory.
The 8core-new-Jaguar bit is a bit a stretch of imagination, though. Component contracts were sealed mid-last year at the latest (that is just how the industry works). At that time, AMD had NOTHING to show to MS/Sony, and I highly doubt that either MS or Sony are building consoles now with technology that isn't out when the consoles are supposed to be out later this year. Same applies to the GPU rumours, thse new ATI gpus won't be out by the time the consoles appear. In both cpu and gpu cases, I see modified existing designs appearing in the next consoles (sure you can always rebrand the stuff as ATI 8xxx but it will be existing design stuff).
And for the "backward-compatible-folks": No cell chip - no compatibility, as simple as that.
