| Bofferbrauer2 said: Knowing you, I'm sure you are aware that to connect the RAM sticks with a 512 bit bus would need many more layers on the motherboards, thus making them hugely expensive, so not exactly an economic solution. It's after all also the reason why we're still stuck with just dual channel, quad channel would help iGPU/APU a lot but make the boards much more expensive. |
Hence why I said it would be more economical to choose another technology anyway. :P
| Bofferbrauer2 said: However, what I could see as possible would be reintroducing the sideport memory, in this case as a 2-4GB HBM stack, functioning as a LLC. But for that I would have expected special boards for APUs, like a 540G and 560GX, similar to the 760G/790GX during the HD 4000 series. Just with a very fast sideport this time, please. |
Ah sideport. I had the Asrock M3A790GHX at one point with 128MB of DDR3 Sideport memory. - But because it clocked at only 1200mhz, it only offered 4.8GB/s of bandwidth verses the system memories 25.6GB/s of bandwidth... So the increase in performance was marginal at best. (I.E. Couple of percentage points.)
On older boards that ran with DDR2 memory that topped out at 800mhz (12.8GB/s of bandwidth) the difference was certainly more pronounced.
On that Asrock board I got more of a performance kick from simply overclocking the IGP to 950Mhz than from turning on Sideport memory, but that is entirely down to the implementation.
In saying that, GPU performance has certainly outstripped the rate of system memory bandwidth increases... I mean heck... The Latest Ryzen notebooks are often still running Dual-Channel DDR4 @ 2400mhz, which is 38.4GB/s of bandwidth, not really a big step up over the Asrock's 25.6Gb/s of bandwidth is it? Yet the GPU is likely 50x more capable overall.
Sideport is great, if implemented well and not on a narrow 16-bit bus. - And you wouldn't even need to use expensive HBM memory to get some big gains.
GDDR5 is cheap and plentiful and on a 32-bit bus could offer 50GB/s which combined with system memory (I assume by a striping method) would offer some tangible gains.
GDDR6 would be a step up even again where 75GB/s should be easy enough to hit... Ideally you would want around 100-150GB/s for decent 1080P gaming.
If they threw it onto a 64-bit bus, then that would double all of those rates, but I would imagine tracing would become an issue, especially on ITX/mATX boards, forcing the requirement of more PCB layers.
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--
