Prepping the world for the next generation of graphics cards, Samsung has started to ship GDDR4 memory chips in quantity. Originally sampled late last year, the parts are 80nm-process based and operate at 1200MHz, with a DDR rate of 2.4GHz. They can theoretically process 9.6GBp/s per chip, which is not exactly a miracle:
That's some way below the 12.8GBps, 3.2GHz part Samsung showed off in February this year. And, for that matter, the 11.6GBps, 2.9GHz chip Hynix demonstrated in December 2005. However, it shows where the technology can go. Indeed, Hynix said it plans to ship a 14.4GBps, 3.6GHz GDDR 4 chip in the second half of 2006
Overall, GDDR4 will be able to push graphics cards to even higher performance levels, but likely in the same small steps we've seen for quite some time. At the very most, we can hope for a drop in existing video card prices as manufacturers look to moving to newer technologies.