R9 290 series: why the low speed GDDR5?

magellan · Apr 18, 2014

In reading Lvcoyote's excellent review of the Visiontek Cryovenom R290 it seems the memory is rated at 1250 Mhz (the same speed as the memory on my old 6950). I can see why the R9 290 series might not need faster, more expensive GDDR5 because of the 512-bit memory bus, but if they did put faster memory on the
R9 290's would it make a difference in performance? Maybe at 8xSSAA or higher?
It there a big price differential between lower speed GDDR5 parts on the R9 290's and the higher speed stuff Nvidia uses on the 780Ti's?

Silver_Pharaoh · Apr 18, 2014

I dunno 512 is a very large bus width...

that's probably why the memory is clocked lower.

Supertrucker · Apr 18, 2014

On both of mine, memory speed is limited by the core, not the memory itself. With enough core voltage my hynix will do 1600mhz. And it doesn't seem to do much.

manu2b · Apr 19, 2014

magellan said:
In reading Lvcoyote's excellent review of the Visiontek Cryovenom R290 it seems the memory is rated at 1250 Mhz (the same speed as the memory on my old 6950). I can see why the R9 290 series might not need faster, more expensive GDDR5 because of the 512-bit memory bus, but if they did put faster memory on the
R9 290's would it make a difference in performance? Maybe at 8xSSAA or higher?
It there a big price differential between lower speed GDDR5 parts on the R9 290's and the higher speed stuff Nvidia uses on the 780Ti's?

NVidia and AMD actually use the same memory modules (Elpida and Hynix).

It seems that it is the AMD arch itself that limits the vRam speed.

EarthDog · Apr 19, 2014

Silver_Pharaoh said:
I dunno 512 is a very large bus width...

that's probably why the memory is clocked lower.

Ding ding ding! :thup:

It would make a difference in performance by adding faster vRAM, but not much as the memory.bandwidth wouldn't be saturated in your vague example. Now, if you mentioned 4k or multi monitor, and pouring on the AA, perhaps then. But not at 'normal' resolutions, I woukdnt imagine.

R9 290 series: why the low speed GDDR5?

magellan

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Silver_Pharaoh

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Supertrucker

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manu2b

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EarthDog

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