5970 shows 1gb of memory !?

hobib_ali · 12 Sep 2010 at 00:38

Hi all

I have a sapphire 5970 installed in today.

When I checked on my computer it shows that it has only 1gb of memory.
I checked 2 programes to confirm this.

When I bought the 5970 it clearly shows 2gb memory on the box.

Do I have to overclock the card so i can get the full 2gb of memory.

It clearly showed the card only has 1gb of memory, I think it was the ATI catylist 10.8 under information screen as below:

Adapter RAM 1.00 GB (1,073,741,824 bytes)

Also when I go to the graphics hardware tab it shows

memory size 1024mb
memory type gddr5

Please can someone advise me if I should return the card for a refund, or what I need to do to get 2 gb of memory ?

Am I wrong ? am I thick ? :mad:

Plz advise

franco_22 · 12 Sep 2010 at 00:41

You're not wrong. It should show 2GB of memory. I suggest you RMA it.

crackerman · 12 Sep 2010 at 00:49

The card itself has 2gb of memory, but each gpu is only given 1gb. So it is correct and doesn't need to be sent back.

chaotic_uk · 12 Sep 2010 at 00:50

i may be incorrect but is it not 1gb per core on the 5970 ? , i had this with a 3870x2 where gpu-z said it had 512mb . but it ment 512mb per core

Orcvader · 12 Sep 2010 at 01:14

crackerman said:
The card itself has 2gb of memory, but each gpu is only given 1gb. So it is correct and doesn't need to be sent back.

This. It's how dual GPU cards works.

toxicredcat · 12 Sep 2010 at 01:54

It's 1Gb per GPU so there's only 1Gb effective vRAM for the card.

gareth170 · 12 Sep 2010 at 12:25

it's 1Gb card

it's a marketing thing, they put 2Gb on the box so more people will buy it.

1gb + 1gb still = 1gb

it's same as 2 5870 1gb in crossfire = 1gb..

5970 card is crossfire, as it's effective 2 cards on 1 board.

Cycrow · 12 Sep 2010 at 15:35

gareth170 said:
it's 1Gb card

it's a marketing thing, they put 2Gb on the box so more people will buy it.

1gb + 1gb still = 1gb

it's same as 2 5870 1gb in crossfire = 1gb..

5970 card is crossfire, as it's effective 2 cards on 1 board.

but the card does have 2gb on board, doesn't matter how the ram is used, and that in practice its only 1gb, there still is 2gb of physically ram on the card.

so its not really just a marketing thing, but listing whats actually on the card

kedge · 12 Sep 2010 at 15:52

hobib_ali said:
It clearly showed the card only has 1gb of memory, I think it was the ATI catylist 10.8 under information screen as below:
Also when I go to the graphics hardware tab it shows

memory size 1024mb
memory type gddr5

Catalyst Control Centre \ Information Centre \ Graphics Hardware - Primary Adapter and Linked Adapter, just scroll down in Graphics Hardware to see the specs of the Linked Adapter. The 5970 sports two of the Cypress GPUs that power the Radeon HD 5870. Each GPU has its own 1GB bank of GDDR5 memory.

Primary Adapter

Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series
Device ID 689C
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID 034A
Subsystem Vendor ID 1043

Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16

BIOS Version 012.013.000.002
BIOS Part Number 113-C00001-202
BIOS Date 2009/11/18

Memory Size 1024 MB
Memory Type GDDR5

Core Clock in MHz 725 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 1000 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 128.0 GByte/s

Linked Adapter

Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series
Device ID 689C
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID 034A
Subsystem Vendor ID 1043

Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16

BIOS Version 012.013.000.002
BIOS Part Number 113-C00001-203
BIOS Date 2009/11/18

Memory Size 1024 MB
Memory Type GDDR5

Core Clock in MHz 725 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 1000 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 128.0 GByte/s

Flanno · 12 Sep 2010 at 20:07

Or just run GPU-Z.

In the graphics card tab, in the memory size box it should say 1024MB.
Tha'ts for the 1st gpu.

To select the 2nd gpu, click the down arrow in the drop down box at the bottom left of the screen (the box that says ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series). Now select the 2nd ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series in the list.

Information for your 2nd GPU will now be displayed. That should also say 1024MB in the memory size box.

So both GPU's each have 1GB ram but the way Crossfire works the same data is shared accross both sets of ram so you effectively have 1GB framebuffer memory.

TAC4U · 12 Sep 2010 at 20:13

It's worrying to see people spending £500 on a graphics card without even knowing the basics.

Flanno · 12 Sep 2010 at 20:35

I know 2 people with 2 x GTX 295's in quad sli who are convinced they have 1792meg per gpu. I know one guy who is running 3 x GTX 295's and is convinced he can use all 6 gpu's for gaming and an additional card for physx. There's plenty of people on hardforums and xs who make references to wanting to run 3 5970's or 4 GTX 295's and we are not talking about folding here. Let them off I say.

Regarding this thread, I suppose someone buying a 2GIG 5970 card would expect a program to report 2GIG ram if they were not familiar with crossfire or how these programs work.

cainer · 12 Sep 2010 at 21:04

Flanno said:
I suppose someone buying a 2GIG 5970 card would expect a program to report 2GIG ram if they were not familiar with crossfire or how these programs work.

for the first few weeks of owning my 5870's i thought 1gb + 1gb = 2gb

sad panda is sad

Flanno · 12 Sep 2010 at 21:10

How do you think I felt. I thought i had 8GB Vram

nshire · 12 Sep 2010 at 23:07

So if I'm getting this right 2x5870 you can only use 1gb. OR am I being totally stupid now....

no_1_dave · 12 Sep 2010 at 23:12

nshire said:
So if I'm getting this right 2x5870 you can only use 1gb. OR am I being totally stupid now....

Yes
Because the second card just mirrors the first so even though there is 2Gb physical memory, both 1Gb cards hold exactly the same information in the vram.

This is basic stuff from back when SLI was first launched ages ago.

Flanno · 13 Sep 2010 at 01:29

Or you could buy 2 x 5870 with 2gig ram each if you want the full 2gb

Only useful for eyeinfinty res or 2560x1600 with max eye candy in certain games e.g. Crysis

Cycrow · 13 Sep 2010 at 02:29

nshire said:
So if I'm getting this right 2x5870 you can only use 1gb. OR am I being totally stupid now....

it will use the 2gb on both cards.
but one will be a copy of the other, so u get 2 copies of 1gb, so only 1gb of unique usage, 2gb of actual usage

drunkenmaster · 13 Sep 2010 at 02:54

Each card uses the memory it has on the physical pcb, because the bandwidth is something like 150gb's for a 5870 gpu. If both cards could use each others memory and you could have a total 2gb, then every time gpu 1 had to use info from gpu 2's memory, it wouldn't be accessing it at 150gb's, but more like, 5gb's, and you'd get 0.5fps and want to kill yourself due to the horrible performance.

While a 5970 has everything on one pcb, each core has a 256bit interface, each chip connects to one part of the memory bus, ie theres 8x32bit connections, one to each of 8 chips. The gpu's still only have 8 connections and can only connect to 8 chips, to speak to the other 8 from the other gpu it would still have to use a ridiculously slower connection and wouldn't work, at all.

Each gpu needs every bit of data the same for xfire/sli to work.

This is ignoring the fact that 1gb offers next to no performance improvement until you get to some very extrem res/aa settings that in general most xfire/sli setups don't have the power to actually generate a good framerate on anyway.

Also, 1gb is signfiicantly more efficiently used on AMD cards than Nvidia, massively higher compression I assume is how they deal with that in general, so the 1gb limit is a lot less "limiting" on AMD cards than Nvidia right now.

Martini1991 · 13 Sep 2010 at 08:23

1GB on a 5870 will handle 5760x1080 without dying tbh..