GDDR4 HD 3850 Pictured

[Tatty_Two]

so what's diff between 512 3870 and 512 ddr4 3850, apart from the clock speeds?

Higher GPU clock + therefore higher voltage to the core. TBH GDDR4 does not make a huge differfence in performance terms over GDDR3, if you think about it, the highest performing mid ranged cards at the moment all have GDDR3. Even the 512MB version of the 2900XT (GDDR3) beats the 1GB versions (GDDR4) in some benches!

 

[btarunr]

Higher GPU clock + therefore higher voltage to the core. TBH GDDR4 does not make a huge differfence in performance terms over GDDR3, if you think about it, the highest performing mid ranged cards at the moment all have GDDR3. Even the 512MB version of the 2900XT (GDDR3) beats the 1GB versions (GDDR4) in some benches!

But that's because:

1. The benchmarks run never really needed a >512 MB framebuffer.
2. The memory banks used with the 1GB DDR4 variants had very high latancies defeating its very purpose.

 

[Tatty_Two]

But that's because:

1. The benchmarks run never really needed a >512 MB framebuffer.
2. The memory banks used with the 1GB DDR4 variants had very high latancies defeating its very purpose.

Yup....so why would anyone want to pay the extra for it?

 

[btarunr]

Yup....so why would anyone want to pay the extra for it?

But AMD fixed this issue, with the DDR4 banks on the HD 3870 having the expected low latency. So I'm talking about AMD stepping up the memory size. For games like Crysis to run with all its textures un-compressed, even 768 MB that the GF GTX/Ultra packs isn't enough, it needs a rated 960 MB of texture memory. Sorta like Doom 3, when it released, 256 MB was the highest a card could offer, but the game had an "ultra mode" where all its textures are uncompressed and requires 400 MB of texture memory as displyed in the warning.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

Yup....so why would anyone want to pay the extra for it?

because it sells for more on ebay?