Graphics card RAM

[super gnu]

ok that makes perfect sense. ahh well.. roll on GPUs with the same amount of ram as the cpu!

[Alan Iglesias]

ok that makes perfect sense. ahh well.. roll on GPUs with the same amount of ram as the cpu!

I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more RAM on GPU boards.

The problem is that on these "game boards" that many of us are using, the amount of RAM is really to satisfy gamers' needs, and not so much ours. That is why they are so inexpensive. If the gamers do not need more RAM (and I'm not sure exactly how that is going these days), then we may see substantially more RAM only on the "professional" boards, which can be much more costly. I'm hoping that the game developers keep upping the ante RAM-wise in their titles so that we will see plenty of inexpensive boards with more and more RAM!

-Alan

[super gnu]

yes and unfortunately with many of us using 12+ gb of ram in our day-to-day work, even the current $3000 pro boards dont look so great (6gb max) ! im not sure if the gap is getting bigger or smaller.

[renderfarmer]

Game card manufacturers will slap more RAM onto a board when it's cost effective. If for no other reason, than to differentiate their product from their competitors'.

What I'm curious is whether OpenCL really requires the kind of stupid fast RAM that gaming boards have - GDDR5 costs a lot more than DDR3. With the comparatively large number of parallel cores on a CUDA GPU, it's possible that it's really needed. Maybe someone with some programming knowledge can chime in? Could there be a future for Quadros with 1-2GB GDDR5 and DDR3 SO-DIMM slots for OpenCL/CUDA?

[renderfarmer]

I may be late to the party, but I found a free app that shows, among other things, GPU RAM usage. It's called GPU-Z (google it). Under the sensors tab, you can see every vital stat of your graphics card in real time - GPU Load, GPU temp, clock speeds etc... Very helpful for diagnosing performance issues and monitoring RAM usage.