HyperMemory
Encyclopedia
HyperMemory is ATI Technologies
' method of using the motherboard's main system RAM as part of or all of the video card's framebuffer
memory on their line of Radeon
video cards and motherboard
chipsets. It relies on new fast data transfer mechanisms within PCI Express
.
However, to make up for the inevitably slower system RAM with a video card, a small high-bandwidth local framebuffer is usually added to the video card itself. This can be noted by the one or two small RAM chips on these cards, which usually have a 32-bit or 64-bit bus to the GPU. This small local memory caches the most often needed data for quicker access, somewhat remedying the inherently high-latency connection to system RAM.
The local and system memory areas are not noticeably separate to the user and often HyperMemory solutions are advertised as having as much as 1919 MB RAM when this is actually referring to the potential use of system RAM.
HyperMemory offers significant cost reduction to low-end video cards because of the reduction in trace complexity on the video card PCB
, and a reduction in the amount of RAM needed on the card. The solution offers excellent performance for 2D acceleration tasks while also maintaining adequate memory speed capable of playing some modern 3D game titles with reduced quality. A video card with hyper memory typically is slower in 3d benchmarks than a similar video card which has its own discrete video memory.
Video cards implemented with HyperMemory usually bore the HM or LE suffix, for further details, see ATI Video Card Suffixes article.
ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
' method of using the motherboard's main system RAM as part of or all of the video card's framebuffer
Framebuffer
A framebuffer is a video output device that drives a video display from a memory buffer containing a complete frame of data.The information in the memory buffer typically consists of color values for every pixel on the screen...
memory on their line of Radeon
Radeon
Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
video cards and motherboard
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
chipsets. It relies on new fast data transfer mechanisms within PCI Express
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...
.
However, to make up for the inevitably slower system RAM with a video card, a small high-bandwidth local framebuffer is usually added to the video card itself. This can be noted by the one or two small RAM chips on these cards, which usually have a 32-bit or 64-bit bus to the GPU. This small local memory caches the most often needed data for quicker access, somewhat remedying the inherently high-latency connection to system RAM.
The local and system memory areas are not noticeably separate to the user and often HyperMemory solutions are advertised as having as much as 1919 MB RAM when this is actually referring to the potential use of system RAM.
HyperMemory offers significant cost reduction to low-end video cards because of the reduction in trace complexity on the video card PCB
Printed circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
, and a reduction in the amount of RAM needed on the card. The solution offers excellent performance for 2D acceleration tasks while also maintaining adequate memory speed capable of playing some modern 3D game titles with reduced quality. A video card with hyper memory typically is slower in 3d benchmarks than a similar video card which has its own discrete video memory.
Video cards implemented with HyperMemory usually bore the HM or LE suffix, for further details, see ATI Video Card Suffixes article.
External links
- ATI's HyperMemory Page
- Gasior, Geoff. A new battle in budget graphics: ATI's HyperMemory and NVIDIA's TurboCache collide at TechReport.Com, June 2, 2005.