Does the memory type of a GPU and a Motherboard need to match?

Question

I'm on the edge of building a PC, and I have a question.

I want to buy the AMD Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8GB GDDR5 which has GDDR5 Memory in it, and I want to buy the MSI 970 Gaming which supports DDR3 Memory (my RAM is also DDR3). Will this be a problem?

Solution 1

No, GDDR is isolated to the Video card itself and is specifically optimized for use on the video cards integrated circuitry, whereas DDR RAM is used by the mainboard. DDR5 for general purpose use doesn't exist yet, and DDR4 is only just now becoming supported. Most modern systems will use DDR3 ram, and GDDR5 VRAM.

Solution 2

Nope, they don't. The ram on the video card is on the video card and soldered in. The ram on the desktop is well, on the desktop.

You can run anything from DDD3 to GDDR5 on a video card with a desktop that does DDR2 or 3, with a PCIe slot of suitable 'size'.

Video cards have different requirements from PCs and tend to use faster/different ram than PCs internally