AMD Locks Down HBM Frequency on Fiji Cards

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:06

VincentHanna said:
I don't ever bother overclocking my Titan X VRAM, you get much bigger gains from upping the core.

Plus RAM is far more sensitive to getting borked if you overclock it past its rated limits.

Anyway we will soon find out if the lack of VRAM overclocking is a "limit" in the next few weeks.

Silent_Scone · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:07

Kaapstad said:
Maybe AMD are concerned at the amount of heat generated even though the card is watercooled. There may be hot spots around the memory chips that will could cause problems with reliability if overclocked.

The last thing AMD want is a load of black screen stories like they got with some of the 290 series cards.

I think it's either one of two things. It will be to do with degradation, it will likely get warm as you suggest. That, or it is likely performance related. There is probably a great deal of error correction in HBM.

ubersonic said:
I'm fine with it.

Probably because overclocking the VRAM would give next to zero improvement and cause instability.

VRAM tweaking is such a minor performance thing it's basically not worth the agro there days hence why third party cards usually have stock VRAM or a slight boost

See above, it's subjective. You can't write this off on the premise there's no gain from memory bandwidth, if there wasn't - what is the point in HBM, it's not as great a deal faster as it's being made out to be. It is however the birth of something better.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:11

It has 33% higher bandwidth than even VRAM overclocked to its limits on a Titan X which has a competing core. So I really doubt having the highest amount of memory bandwith for any retail card upto now for a similar speed core,is going to be a big limitation.

We don't even know even if the core overclocks well enough to hit a VRAM bandwidth limit in the first place.

MichaelM · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:13

Honestly it never even crossed my mind until now.

Boomstick777 · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:25

Ha, yeah 512GB/s just isn't enough.

I mean my Titan X manages 336.6GB/s but 'limited' to only 512GB/s on Fiji. What a disappointment.

/s.

Ayahuasca · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:28

I doubt there'll be any real world gains from doing so anyway.

The only people this might annoy is the likes of 8pack and kingpin.

NexusK · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:28

And yet they described these cards brilliant overclockers during the presentation.

Ayahuasca · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:30

NexusK said:
And yet they described these cards brilliant overclockers during the presentation.

They still might be on the core?

Silent_Scone · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:31

Boomstick777 said:
Ha, yeah 512GB/s just isn't enough.

I mean my Titan X manages 336.6GB/s but 'limited' to only 512GB/s on Fiji. What a disappointment.

/s.

Hi,

This is the sort of comments i was trying to avoid Boom. You seem to be more partial to whichever card you're looking to buy at the time. You also don't really overclock.

ubersonic · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:34

Silent_Scone said:
Hi,

This is the sort of comments i was trying to avoid Boom. You seem to be more partial to whichever card you're looking to buy at the time. You also don't really overclock.

You misread his post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Silent_Scone · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:36

I understood it perfectly

pandem0nium · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:38

Joe macri: "

TonyTurbo78 · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:38

I find it slightly weird how they advertise the card in the AMD event at E3 as "an overclockers dream" yet now tell us they are locking down the memory so you can't overclock. Doesn't really bother me that much, it's already going to be the quickest memory we've seen, but still strange they would say that as a tag line at E3 then lock it so you can't overclock.

pandem0nium · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:39

It can't really be "an overclocker's dream" (Joe Macri) without being able to overclock the memory.

Boomstick777 · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:40

Silent_Scone said:
Hi,

This is the sort of comments i was trying to avoid Boom. You seem to be more partial to whichever card you're looking to buy at the time. You also don't really overclock.

Obviously I'm partial to whichever card I buy as I'm buying because I like it the best. That's literally the point.

Also I haven't tested Fiji yet and currently own and use the Titan X.

I don't overclock? That's some news to me as well. I'm learning a lot of new things today, thank you for telling me what I think.

Did you even know I was being sarcastic, am buying Fiji and using Titan X. Who is brand bias here?

Also here's some over-clocking scores that according to you I don't do. Thank you for setting me straight.

/s.

Silent_Scone · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:48

Hi, in terms of daily use you have been quite vocal on the fact you run your enthusiast platform at stock. Air benching for split runs un-competitively won't really affect your decision to purchase a GPU, it may however affect other peoples. So the sarcasm wasn't needed.

Boomstick777 · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:53

Silent_Scone said:
Hi, in terms of daily use you have been quite vocal on the fact you run your enthusiast platform at stock. Air benching for split runs un-competitively won't really affect your decision to purchase a GPU, it may however affect other peoples. So the sarcasm wasn't needed.

I don't need to overclock my PC for daily use. Have you seen the spec. It's pretty tasty.

I do overclock for benching etc. Where it matters. But thank you for telling me I don't overclock and despite your backtracking, message received. I now realise that you're right, and in fact those overclocking results clearly can't be mine as you told me I don't overclock. And obviously your right all the time. Thanks again for clearing that all up.

rtho782 · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:56

It's still accurate to say that HBM has brought nothing in terms of bandwidth that an 8GT/s 512bit GDDR5 implementation could not have given us.

Both of which are achievable with current hardware.

To hear people tell of it you'd think HBM gave you a 2-3x increase in memory bandwidth.

flopper · 19 Jun 2015 at 10:58

rtho782 said:
It's still accurate to say that HBM has brought nothing in terms of bandwidth that an 8GT/s 512bit GDDR5 implementation could not have given us.

Both of which are achievable with current hardware.

To hear people tell of it you'd think HBM gave you a 2-3x increase in memory bandwidth.

sounds good so why didnt nvidia do that then and why are they going HBM?
same reason as anyone else gddr5 isnt good enough anymore.

Silent_Scone · 19 Jun 2015 at 11:00

Boomstick777 said:
I don't need to overclock my PC for daily use. Have you seen the spec. It's pretty tasty.

I do overclock for benching etc. Where it matters. But thank you for telling me I don't overclock and despite your backtracking, message received. I now realise that you're right, and in fact those overclocking results clearly can't be mine as you told me I don't overclock. And obviously your right all the time. Thanks again for clearing that all up.

Hi, yes I have seen the spec, it's an enthusiast platform. Using auto rules can result in worse performance and power consumption when in tandem with overclocking the system memory which is what you are doing. But that's a story for another thread.

I asked that the thread be more aimed at people who are interested in overclocking as a general rule on this card - to which you responded against by sarcastically implying that Fiji already has ample memory bandwidth. Which in itself suggests so does the 390X, considering it has more bandwidth per SP than Fiji does.

Failing to understand why this isn't a worthy question to ask considering the card is advertised as an overclockers dream.