Desktop GPU VRAM vs Laptop GPU

[Guest]

How come laptops have more VRAM than the desktop cards? For example a 6GB GTX 970m when the desktop card has "4gb"

Can anyone explain this?

[nsyedhasan]

Well laptops are weird, mostly because most consumers aren't a 100% informed. I would image the extra VRAM doesn't cost much extra so they can include more VRAM to up the VRAM number making the laptop more appealing.

[Boobies Sprinkle]

I know it have something to do with marketing. 

[RustyBaked]

Well if you think about it ? Laptops Usually Only have 1 At Most 2 Cards ! So the Vram Has to be at a higher level to handle the processor as well as the Drive is more of a handler to the cache to improve overall performance . So in short , The whole system is a compaq system that is not torrible to lower Vram . ( ? ) Just my oppinion , 

[NumLock21]

15 minutes ago, Eihcal said:

How come laptops have more VRAM than the desktop cards? For example a 6GB GTX 970m when the desktop card has "4gb"

Can anyone explain this?

Laptop manufactures can ask Nvidia or AMD to customize to their needs. One recent example would be MSI with its Vortex G65. Standard desktop GTX980 only has 4GB of vram. The GTX 980 in that MSI has 8GB of vram. Same with that GTX 970m that you've mentioned. The other is lack of upgradability, its easier to upgrade a desktop gpu, but really difficult to upgrade a laptop one. So they want to have as much vram as possible on the gpus. More vram means you more textures can be processed in a game. Does it make the card faster, no, that would be the speed of the gpu, ram, and the architecture of the card.

 

10 minutes ago, nsyedhasan said:

Well laptops are weird, mostly because most consumers aren't a 100% informed. I would image the extra VRAM doesn't cost much extra so they can include more VRAM to up the VRAM number making the laptop more appealing.

Your the ill-informed and your post make absolutely no sense.

 

9 minutes ago, Boobies Sprinkle said:

I know it have something to do with marketing. 

Do some research

[HPWebcamAble]

Follow up question: Why do discrete cards not get upgraded in the future? Why not make a 970 ti with 6 GB of VRAM?

[Moonzy]

1) it has to do with the amount of ROPs, each one have their own optimal amount of vram (this is what caused the gtx 970 3.5gb fiasco)

2) marketing

3) a gtx 970M might not be able to push games that require 6gb of vram, but it will cap 3gb of vram at some situations, and any gb between 3 and 6 is not optimal for the ROPs on the 970M i reckon (i didnt check and frankly im not very familiar with this myself, need to do more research)

[NumLock21]

3 minutes ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Follow up question: Why do discrete cards not get upgraded in the future? Why not make a 970 ti with 6 GB of VRAM?

Why?

Nvidia is going to release Pascal soon so no point of bring the old ones and adding more vram. And adding more vram isn't just putting them on, the entire card has to be redesigned. It's not that simple.

 

@Moonzy

Memory bus has nothing to do with the GTX 970 3.5GB fiasco. It has the same memory bus as the GTX 980.

Here is a detail explanation of it.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Follow up question: Why do discrete cards not get upgraded in the future? Why not make a 970 ti with 6 GB of VRAM?

its nvidia, not AMD, they dont rebadge a card, add more vram, and call it a new card

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

 

@Moonzy

Memory bus has nothing to do with the GTX 970 3.5GB fiasco. It has the same memory bus as the GTX 980.

Here is a detail explanation of it.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation

my mistake, i meant the ROPs

its hard to remember terms `-`

-goes edit post-

[HPWebcamAble]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

1) it has to do with the memory bus width, ie 128-bit, 256-bit or something, each one have their own optimal amount of vram (this is what caused the gtx 970 3.5gb fiasco)

I thought that had to do with binning where cards with a faulty memory controller thing had the faulty one disabled, leaving one controller to deal with 0.5 GB + the extra 0.5, slowing that extra 0.5

4 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Why? Nvidia is going to release Pascal soon so no point of bring the old ones and adding more vram

See the 980 vs 980ti

4 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

And adding more vram isn't just putting them on, the entire card has to be redesigned. It's not that simple.

Very true. I guess this is the main reason.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, HPWebcamAble said:

I thought that had to do with binning where cards with a faulty memory controller thing had the faulty one disabled, leaving one controller to deal with 0.5 GB + the extra 0.5, slowing that extra 0.5

yuh, my bad, i meant ROPs

i shouldnt try to answer questions while sleepy `-`

 

anyway, its not as simple as "just add one more gb" there are other things to consider when adding more vram, or else the 3.5gb thing will happen again

[Moonzy]

@HPWebcamAble, @NumLock21

yeah i remember about reading this lol

though i havent confirmed it, need to do self research `-`

[MMKing]

The desktop market is generally more informed, awful design decisions are called out. I know why the 390 has 8GB of memory, even though it doesn't really need it. It's because 512/1024MB GDDR5 chips is the new standard, and 256MB chips are on the verge of being discontinued. Which is why the 960/380 started out as 2GB chips, until supply dried up and they went over to 4GB. Nvidia and AMD don't really use the 1GB chips, partly because the 512MB chips are cheaper, but partly because the customers knows that it doesn't mean shit if a 390 graphics card has 8GB or 16GB memory. It's added cost that puts the competitor ahead on price per dollar benchmarks.

 

The laptop market is all about marketing. Awful and sensible design decisions are not identified by the customers, it's all about what nonsense information the marketing department can make the customer think matters. If the laptop you are selling has higher clock speeds than the competitor, you market the crap out of your computers CPU performance. If your laptop has more Vram, you market the crap out of that.

 

To put it in some sort of context. Laptop commercials appear on the TV, graphics cards commercials don't.

[NumLock21]

13 minutes ago, HPWebcamAble said:

See the 980 vs 980ti

Please do some research before spewing out stuffs that you have no idea what your talking about.

[MMKing]

Why does the 970M specifically have 6GB Vram, while the 970 have 4GB?

 

1. Chip diagram, the 970M has 1280 CUDA cores, 80 Texture Mapping Units, and 48 Render output units. Written as 1280:80:48, the 970 has 1664:104:56. The 970M also has 3*64 bit memory controllers, while the 970 has 4*64 bit memory controllers. 

 

A GM204 chip, used in a 970m should look roughly like this.

6 SMMs are turned off + 1 Memory controller. Why? Because of manufacturing impurities. It's unlikely that all the cores turned off were right next to each other, more likely they turned off the lowest quality ones.

Spoiler

2. The 970M uses 6*1GB GDDR5 Chips or 6*512MB, while the 970 uses 8*512MB chips. A memory controller, at least not the ones on the GM204 chip, cannot be connected to more than two GDDR5 chips at once. So the 970m has a cap of either 3GB or 6GB depending on which Vram you use, though you could go lower if you simply used fewer chips. The reason started to use 1GB GDDR5 memory instead of 512MB is because of marketing. Dell, Asus, MSI and Lenovo to name a few, wants to market their laptops as having a 6GB memory GPU. Marketing calculated that paying more for the higher capacity memory, will pay for itself when they can charge more for the laptop, or sell more laptops.

 

Why don't they use 1GB chips in the 970? 1GB chips were not available when the 970 was released, they cost more and there would be no performance increase. Nvidia don't think increasing the memory amount will increase sales, or allow them to sell an equal amount of cards at a higher profit per card.

 

Why does the 390 have 8GB of Vram? Because the 390 has 8*64 bit memory controllers and it has 16*512MB GDDR5 Chips. The reason it has more is for higher bandwidth, 256MB GDDR5 chips are practically discontinued which is the ones the 290 launched with, so a 512 bit 4GB card is practically impossible in volume.

[RustyBaked]

Ask a question and you get an answer !!! I think i will like it here !! 

[SLAYR]

9 hours ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Follow up question: Why do discrete cards not get upgraded in the future? Why not make a 970 ti with 6 GB of VRAM?

At rare times they do. AMD made the 8Gb versions of the 290x at a later date then the original 290x.

[roughavoc]

How has nobody mentioned that gaming laptops often come with 4k panels,

[MMKing]

2 hours ago, roughavoc said:

How has nobody mentioned that gaming laptops often come with 4k panels,

Define often.

 

Besides, it doesn't matter which resolution you run a 970m at. Outside of synthetic tests, you're gonna go bellow 30FPS allot sooner than you run out of memory.