Quote Originally Posted by Bowtie View Post
@ Kej
Thanks for the explanation, is there a way around this design wise or are they stuck at doubling up?
the bitrate determines the number of chips, so 32bit per chip / 256bit bus = 8 ram chips for a 5870, if they put on a 384 bit bus, it would be 12 chips, and be 1.5GB, its very possible, but would add more heat and use up more space, and is needed for bigger chips, or for using slower chips, like the 480 uses.

ATI was fast ram smaller bus, nvidia was slow ram bigger bus and they both come out near the same.

going much higher than that is probably a bad idea though, the 2900 was 512bit and power hungry, and had a bandwidth of over 100GB/s, and was never really used effectively.