Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 March 12

= March 12 =

Unique visitors to Wikipedia and popularity by region
Where can I find the stats on unique visitors to Wikimedia/Wikipedia etc.? Please don't direct me to Statistics, I am familiar with many of those tools, but I couldn't track dawn that particular stat. Also, any chance anyone here has access to Alexa stats on Wikipedia? I asked here but that's a low traffic forum and anyway, that's a low-popularity database... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:14, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Since we don't do browser tracking, we don't count unique visitors. Our best metric is 'unique devices'. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:11, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

What is the difference between DDR3 and GDDR3 and how to differentiate between them?
I already know DDR3 is the memory for the CPU and GDDR3 is the specialized memory designed for the GPU. However, even graphics card manufacturers usually mix these 2 terms together and cause a lot of confusions. I have a few questions:  Can DDR3 be used as VRAM? Or maybe all video cards with "DDR3" are actually GDDR3? I've seen quite a lot of cards with 128 bit DDR3 VRAM. Can DDR3 bus with be 128 bit wide? As far as I know the DDR3 bus should be 64 bit. What is the performance benefit of GDDR3 over DDR3? The formulas to calculate memory bandwith seem to be the same. (GDDR5 on the other hand has higher clock speed and 4x multiplier when calculating effective memory clock, instead of 2x.) Is there any reliable way to tell DDR3 from GDDR3? GPU-Z sometimes shows a DDR3 card as GDDR3. I am really confused.  Thank you for your time reading these questions. -- Livy (talk) 20:46, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * From our article GDDR3: It has much the same technological base as DDR2. So, there is little in common between DDR3 and GDDR3. Ruslik_ Zero 21:03, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * DDR3 can be used as VRAM (or maybe more accurately RAM connected to a discrete GPU). DDR3 is much more likely than GDDR3 nowadays (and probably for the last 6 years or so) as GDDR3 is a specialised product and provides limited advantage over DDR3. (As said above, GDDR3 is based on DDR2.) If you wanted faster memory, you'd use GDDR5 or 5x (which are based on DDR3). Frankly, I wonder if anyone is still even producing GDDR3 and in any case I strongly suspect the GPUs don't support GDDR3. There is no reason why you can't have 128 bit bus for DDR3. After all nearly all CPUs since the beginning of the x86 IMC (I think possibly only the Socket 754 CPUs had single channel, unless I'm missing some of the Atoms or other specialised products) have had dual channel or better so a minimum of either a 128 bit buses or 2 independent 64 bit buses, and this even predated the IMC or even DDR2. See also [//www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/explain-to-me-how-memory-width-128-192-256-bit-etc-is-related-to-memory-amount.170588/] and List of interface bit rates. As for GPU-Z, well what is this card or at least how old is the specific GPU and are you sure it's using DDR3? More like though GPU-Z is just wrong. While it's a decent product for certain things, as with many products like that it's far from perfect. And frankly given the amount of nonsense out there about DDR3, GDDR3, GDDR5 etc there may not be much demand to fix this particular aspect. Nil Einne (talk) 11:53, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have a lot of cards around and switch between them quite often. It is good to know their differences, but it is not really important anymore. Thank you for your answer. -- Livy (talk) 14:18, 15 March 2018 (UTC)