that query results are immediately transferred from the MySQL Server to PHP and then are kept in the memory of the PHP process http://php.net/manual/en/mysqlinfo.concepts.buffering.php
resource while the data is still waiting on the MySQL server for being fetched. This uses less memory on the PHP-side, but can increase the load on the server.” http://php.net/manual/en/mysqlinfo.concepts.buffering.php