Why Not???

[FunkDaMonkMan]

Ok... a computer has Ram ... and a CPU

A graphics card has ram and a GPU


why not make them replacable/upgradeable, w/ extra slots for more ram? Sure would be nice to pop another 64 megs into my radeon 8500 64meg.

 

[Rav]

You used to be able to. The old Virge cards I use have memory upgrade connectors and so does my Matrox G200. I guess they want you to buy a whole new card instead of just RAM, which would be too easy

-Rav

 

[larva]

Once upon a time, ram was expensive. Because of this they always put less on the card then you really needed. Hence the ability (and need) to upgrade the ram. Nowdays ram is so cheap they put the amount you really need on the board to start with, eliminating the impetus for upgradeablity. The only reason there exist both 64MB and 128MB cards at this point is to create a tiered marketing stradegy. Economics would allow them to all be 128MB if the makers didn't wish to charge a premium for the 128MB version.

 

[FunkDaMonkMan]

yeh, but still.... I'd like to be able to upgrade my GPU also....

another idea...

Why couldn't they design cards to run on regular CPUS?

get the card for 100 bucks... pop in a 1 ghz duron or something and ... wow!

The gpu just calculates info like a regular processor right?

 

[funnyperson1]

yeh, but still.... I'd like to be able to upgrade my GPU also....

another idea...

Why couldn't they design cards to run on regular CPUS?

get the card for 100 bucks... pop in a 1 ghz duron or something and ... wow!

The gpu just calculates info like a regular processor right?

i thought this would be an interesting thing for intel to try (on their integrated boards) but i realized that a cpu uses far more juice than a gpu...

 

[cack01]

My guess would be, it just isn't practicle. We will treat a GF3 like a PIII and a GF4 like a P4. You can't put a P4 in a P3 board and vise versa. New video cards come out once a year almost. So say the GF3 has been out a year and now the GF4 is out. You can't take the faster gf4 GPU and put it in the GF3. Realistically GPU speeds go up about 50 Mhz a year. Does 50 MHZ justify buying a whole new GPU, when a ti4200 can easily o/c 50Mhz, and by the time that faster GPU comes out it will be on a different board and your won't run it. Plus this lets the companies force you to buy what they want you to buy, and also it could potecially lead to 3rd party people making their own GPU's and taking the original maker's money.

But..I do see a need to be able to add more ram. I think that would be awsome.

 

[larva]

Why couldn't they design cards to run on regular CPUS?

get the card for 100 bucks... pop in a 1 ghz duron or something and ... wow!

The gpu just calculates info like a regular processor right?

No. Not even close. The CPU of a machine is a general purpose device, meaning it it programmable to do nearly anything. The GPU is a purpose built processor whose design and construction is slanted entirely towards the needs of the graphics card. As such it is many times more efficient at this task than any CPU. If the CPU where any good at these calculations there wouldn't be a GPU in the first place (and at one point there wasn't).

 

[Bigsexy]

I used to have a Matrox Mystique (one of the first 3D-like card, I think) with 2MB (!!!) stock - you could buy extra ram for that card - I got mine up to whole 4MB !!!

 

[BaldHeadedDork]

Something else to consider about plugging in a DDR DIMM:

The slowest GF4 Ti (the Ti4200/128) uses 4ns memory.

The fastest Ti4600 uses 2.8ns DDR.

The latest and hottest DDR400 (from Corsair) is 6ns.

Seeing the difference less than one ns has on performance with the 64mb cards, I suspect that using system memory on a Ti would be like whacking it in the knees with a baseball bat.


BHD

 

[Zeus]

As this is a bit of a fantasy thread, I have always likedthe idea of somehow connecting your AGP slot to a whole seperate computer.

The only drawback would be the noise from both computers.



Speaking of upgrading ram though, that is a good idea. The thing is you can share system ram with most agp boards but its whether transfering data from the card through the agp slot to the ram chips would slow it down. The agp slot wont work anywhere near the speed onboard ram would. In fact it doest. AGP4x only transfers at only 1.02gbs

If top nothch rd only transfers at 4.2gbs onboard will be much quicker.

Does anybody know of a program which tells you how much ram you have remaining on your card? Suppose you