I'm shopping around for a new video adapter and I notice that often the same
chip, such as the ATI x1300, will be available in DDR, or DDR2, etc.
Presumably DDR2 is faster than regular DDR, and so on, but how much
difference does this make to performance?
In general, DDR2 can be clocked higher. It might matter
most if you're overclocking, but some cards now, or rather
card manufacturers, have been given the nod by ATI (and
nVidia for that matter) to push card clocks a bit, so if all
else were equal, two cards with the same model designation
but one refitted with a faster memory than the original spec
(reference design called for) would tend to be faster. Hard
to put a % on it, that's up to the manufactuer, what
specific chips they choose. I wouldn't pay a premium for
memory chips though, while memory performance IS important,
pay much more and you could've just gotten the next faster
card instead.
So the generic answer is, how much difference it makes
depends on whether the memory or GPU are the bottleneck. In
mid-range cards, the memory usually is the bottleneck but it
also depends on what resolution you run, FSAA level,
particular games too... in the end the easiest way is to
just seek benchmarks of your preferred games or at least
other games using same engine.
If performance really matters, you ought to consider a
different card. nVidia 6600GT has come down in price in
recent months, that would be a better alternative.
