AMD 6950: What does a Fifty Get You in a GPU?

[c-o-pr]

AMD’s HD 6950 vs RX 6900 XT: What Does Adding 50 Do?

Note the publish day of this article. There will be a proper one on Terascale 3 later on, don’t worry. But for now, happy April Fools Day! Prestige is everything for computer hardware manufac…

chipsandcheese.com

This writeup is a great litany of architecture changes that attend a superficially minor model number change.

And for hackintosh cognoscenti, clues will be supplied as to why the inadvertently-bought XTX version of a RT6600 isn't going to work in your hack without help from Apple.

I wouldn't bother to post this, however worthy it's technical merits, because it's so esoteric.

But the conclusion is a pleasant surprise, calling out the absurdity of the marketing:

...But that changes with RDNA 3: If all of the WGPs are loaded, clocks drop by more than 15%. Clock drops are not a good thing. If RDNA 3 could hold 3 GHz clocks across all workloads, it would compete with the RTX 4090. In the same way, the Ryzen 9 7950X would dominate everything if it could hold 5.7 GHz regardless of how many cores are loaded. This clocking behavior is definitely because of the higher model number.

While superficially tongue-in-cheek, the author rolls on to eloquently call out the total disconnection between product marketing and the technical implications:

If AMD went with a lower model number, RDNA 3 would be able to maintain high clock speeds under heavy load, just as the 6950 and 6900 did. Unfortunately, AMD used 7950 for their top end RDNA 3 card. If they didn’t, a 15% clock increase might let them compete directly with the RTX 4090.

In the big picture none of this is news, but it's fun is to see a highly technical breakdown of product traits conclude by lamenting the product's marketing with cargo-cult complaints.

Note to AMD gaming customers: Things don't get better even with a massive model# increase of 1000!

It's a joke.

But the author isn't just berating the marketing, they're explaining the situation in technical terms that will help us understand the enormous complexity of the designs and appreciate that there's a analytical dimension of these products that is beyond the capacity of their own marketing divisions to make sense about.

To repeat, fair warning, this stuff is for nerds, but anyone who likes hackintosh may get something good from clear writing about system technology, even if the takeaway is only "My god this stuff is complex"

Ok BRB I've got to order some power-connectors.

 

[etorix]

My favourite part:

For their next generation, AMD should release a Radeon RX 7900 Ti XTX SE Pro VIVO Founders Edition in order to get the suffix advantages, without the model number increase disadvantages.

However, AMD should be cautious about adding too many suffixes. Going from the 6950 to the 6900 XT increased the number of power connectors from two to three. A hypothetical Radeon RX 7900 Ti XTX SE Pro VIVO Founders Edition may have eight power connectors. Consumers running budget supplies may not be able to use the card, unless they make ample use of six-pin to eight-pin adapters, and eight-pin to dual eight-pin adapters after that. On an unrelated note, always make sure you check the link target before you click and buy.

Now back to regular reading…