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VRAM is aimed precisely at video performance, and you'll find it primarily on video accelerator cards or on motherboards that incorporate video technology. VRAM is used to store the pixel values of a graphical display, and the board's controller reads continuously from this memory to refresh the display. Its purpose is not only to give you faster video performance than you'd get with a standard video board, but to reduce strain on the CPU. VRAM is dual-ported memory; there are two access ports to the memory cells, with one used to constantly refresh the display and the other used to change the data that will be displayed. Two ports means a doubling of bandwidth, and faster video performance as a result. By comparison, DRAM and SRAM have only one access port.

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Published as Tutor in the 10/21/97 issue of PC Magazine.