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GDDR2 Emerging As A Real Standard
An anonymous reader writes "I noticed here that EE Times is reporting that the GDDR2 standard is finally becoming a reality. Both NVIDIA and ATI's latest chips offer support. ATI helped spearhead the initiative to develop the standard. The significance of this is great, since it may very well mean that every 18 months or so a new graphics memory standard will be released."
Well, if they could get the number of vendors that offer this type of memory to increase, then they could lower the price enough to make it cost effective. Also, this would make it great for sites that benchmark various video cards - making all of the video cards have the same/very similar types and speeds of memory would be excellent for comparison.
Gotta get me one of these!
I've always wondered this, since those two patterns are the ones I've fallen in and out of for the past few years.
I still think this is why console gaming is more mainstream, either way. With a console, you might not get the best quality in graphics, but hell, you pay $200-300 and the machine lasts 5 years, and you get quite a nice selection of quality games (that's really a bias, I started out on the NES...).
"Doesn't this defeat the purpose of "Standard"?"
No because the lowend is the bulk of the market and there every penny counts.
"A new standard means the old one isn't..."
No it just means that they get the benefits of a new standard for high end and high margin devices while reaping the prior standard as well.
"Or am i missing something?"
You are missing the fact that the bulk of graphics chips sold are at the low end. This low end bulk is good for 18+ months which is an eternity in the graphics business due to the rate of change (which seems to still be at a rate of preformance doubling every six to nine months). Standardization on this low end will allow lower prices while meeting the need for faster and more specialized RAM than is required compared the more stable CPU markets. In addition the standards will insulate all parties from lawsuits or patent claims lending more stability to their ventures. Finally it may herald a change from the bad old days where a great deal of R&D had to go into reinventing the wheel for memory or relying on exclusive vendors who may not even have the capacity when the need came. I'm thinking in particular of the year with the semiconductor fire that ratched up certain graphics card vendors highend cards.
Even in this market standards are good.