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The first commercial product to claim using the "DDR2" technology was the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 graphics card. However, it is important to note that the "DDR2" memory used on graphics cards (officially referred to as GDDR2) is not DDR2 per se but an early midpoint of DDR and DDR2 technologies. In particular, the (very important) doubling of the I/O clock rate is missing. It had severe overheating issues due to the nominal DDR voltages. ATI has since designed the GDDR format further, into GDDR3, which is more true to the DDR2 specifications, though with several additions suited for graphics cards.

After GDDR2's introduction with the FX 5800 series, the 5900 and 5950 series reverted to DDR, but NVIDIA's old mainstream card, the 5700 Ultra, used GDDR2 clocked at 450 MHz (compared to 400 MHz on the regular 5800 or 500 MHz on the 5800 Ultra).

ATI Technologies's Radeon 9800 Pro with 256 MiB memory (not the 128 MiB version) also used GDDR2, but this was because it required fewer pins than DDR. The Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MiB only runs its memory at 20 MHz faster than the 128 MiB version, and primarily to counter the performance hit caused by higher latency and the increased number of chips. It is speculated that the GDDR2 used on ATI's 9800 Pro 256 MiB was actually supposed to be used on the GeForce FX 5800 series, but ended up unused after NVIDIA decided to halt the 5800 line's production. The 9800XT that followed reverted to DDR, and later on ATI began to use GDDR3 memory on their Radeon X800 line.