Why not sell GDDR5/6 as gamer RAM?

[williamcll]

As the Chinese game console video show, the whole windows environment can be run on just graphic ram. Why don't people sell motherboards and ram sticks with GDDR? 

[Ross Siggers]

As long as it isn't marketed as 'GaMEr RaM' like in the thread title. A top tier of fast memory maybe, but the G-word is just asking for a huge markup.

Also it's possibly to do with manufacturing costs...I don't know honestly, sounds interesting

[Ashleyyyy]

i kinda think the gamer thing has worn off. it's way too overused.

 

i think if you market stuff as professional it would be way more successful.

[Dujith]

8 minutes ago, williamcll said:

As the Chinese game console video show, the whole windows environment can be run on just graphic ram. Why don't people sell motherboards and ram sticks with GDDR? 

GDDR is build with bandwith in mind and does not care that much about the timings/latency. While your CPU does care about low latency and such.

The GPU will push large blocks of memory while you CPU is more like a precision strike.

 

In the past the gap was alot bigger and you would never use GDDR on a motherboard for the CPU. But i think were getting to a point where we will get 1 type of memory for everything.

[Sakkura]

GDDR5/GDDR5X/GDDR6 is more expensive and less power-efficient than DDR3/DDR4/DDR5, with much higher bandwidth and higher latencies.

 

That makes it clearly inferior as system memory, but superior for VRAM.

[porina]

I'd put a big "it depends on what you do with it" if bandwidth or latency is more interesting. I'd take bandwidth over latency any day. Also the ram itself isn't necessarily that fast, in part how they get massive bandwidth is by making it more parallel, effectively more channels. You could simply do that with regular ram also. IMO CPU core counts are increasing far faster than the ram is able to feed it.

[Mister Woof]

Isn't gddr5 less reliable than conventional ddr ram?

[Fasauceome]

A board with gddr built in can't be upgraded, so that sort of defeats the purpose of a consumer motherboard. Also, a ram dimm with gddr modules on it would just be regular ddr because the ram slots on motherboards have limited bandwidth. Not to mention, CPU workloads aren't optimized for astronomical bandwidth yet, even quad channel on HEDT is hardly useful.

[Drak3]

10 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Not to mention, CPU workloads aren't optimized for astronomical bandwidth yet, even quad channel on HEDT is hardly useful.

That really depends on what you're doing. AVX workloads, like encoding/decoding with programs like handbrake, benefit from more bandwidth.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Drak3 said:

That really depends on what you're doing. AVX workloads, like encoding/decoding with programs like handbrake, benefit from more bandwidth.

So far the use cases are rather slim, despite quad channel being around for a few years, not to mention things like 6 and 8 channel for servers (but since those are purpose built they are taking advantage of it).

Hopefully gaming comes to use more bandwidth, people like to spend lots of money for really fast ram kits without getting any real benefit, a game that can leverage DDR4 3666 and higher would be pretty awesome

[Nena Trinity]

Less reliable calculations tough it worked fine for the PS4!

[LukeNukem9]

10 hours ago, Dujith said:

GDDR is build with bandwith in mind and does not care that much about the timings/latency. While your CPU does care about low latency and such.

The GPU will push large blocks of memory while you CPU is more like a precision strike.

 

In the past the gap was alot bigger and you would never use GDDR on a motherboard for the CPU. But i think were getting to a point where we will get 1 type of memory for everything.

Is that how I-GPUs get there V-RAM? 

[Sauron]

10 hours ago, williamcll said:

As the Chinese game console video show, the whole windows environment can be run on just graphic ram. Why don't people sell motherboards and ram sticks with GDDR? 

There are no benefits to using GDDR as system memory in games, it's just DRR ram that's optimized for the highly parallel access typical of a GPU. The only reason it's used in consoles is that those have integrated gpus that share memory access with the CPU, so they benefit from having GDDR system memory. Could you do that on a PC? Sure, but there would be no point when you can use a dedicated graphics card.

[N1NJ4W4RR10R]

Doesn't VRAM typically run at much slower frequencies? 

 

You'd absolutely murder CPUs using it as RAM.

[Sakkura]

On 2/23/2019 at 6:56 AM, N1NJ4W4RR10R said:

Doesn't VRAM typically run at much slower frequencies? 

 

You'd absolutely murder CPUs using it as RAM.

Not really. Almost the other way around, though it depends on the type of VRAM; GDDR6 runs much higher clocks than HBM2, for example.

 

But there is a tradeoff between bandwidth and latency. VRAM is optimized for bandwidth, system RAM is more optimized for low latency (as well as low power consumption and cost).

[Stefan Payne]

On 2/20/2019 at 9:21 AM, williamcll said:

As the Chinese game console video show, the whole windows environment can be run on just graphic ram. Why don't people sell motherboards and ram sticks with GDDR? 

Because:

a) its not possible to put that on a Stick

b) its not designed for that

c) it would be really expensive and at least double if not tripple the cost of DDR4.

[Stefan Payne]

On 2/23/2019 at 6:56 AM, N1NJ4W4RR10R said:

Doesn't VRAM typically run at much slower frequencies? 

No, its much higher.
GDDR5 was up to around 2GHz Clock

DDR-4 SDRAM that works reliable is like 1600MHz (DDR4-3200).

 

On 2/23/2019 at 6:56 AM, N1NJ4W4RR10R said:

You'd absolutely murder CPUs using it as RAM.

No, you wouldn't.

As Latency is more important for the CPU than bandwith for many cases.

 

[Homelessscootalo]

Market it as another reason to buy enthusiast GPUs? That's the only way you can get GDDR RAM right?