With today's workstations and gaming PCs demanding ever-faster imaging, graphics-card manufacturers need all the help they can get. Samsung Electronics is eager to oblige: The company has begun mass production of what it calls the world's fastest graphics memory -- GDDR-4, which processes images 33 percent faster than the swiftest memory on the market today.

Built with 80-nanometer process technology, the 512Mb GDDR-4 chips will be offered in a 32-bit data bus configuration. Samsung adds that the memory is not only faster than but also reduces power consumption compared to GDDR-3: When measured at the highest comparable speed (2.0Gb/sec), the new silicon showed a power saving of 45 percent. Both ATI and Nvidia have announced plans to use GDDR-4 with their next generation of graphics processing units.