Thursday, January 23rd 2020
MSI Says not all Radeon RX 5600 XT GPUs Can Hit 14 Gbps Memory Speed
Just before the launch of AMD's latest Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards, AMD released a vBIOS update that boosts the GPU clock speed by a few percent margins and increases the GDDR6 memory speed from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps, which is almost a 17% performance increase in memory bandwidth. However, despite the release of these new firmware updates, AMD's add-in-board partners like ASUS and MSI have been cautious about applying the new vBIOS to the existing cards. A YouTube show called the MSI Insider, which is hosted by MSI employees, explains the situation. Due to the GDDR6 memory, which was originally meant as a 12 Gbps chip, when applying the new firmware update to the card can lead to RMA issues with customers.
While some cards are capable of hitting 14 Gbps speeds with the GDDR6 chips, others are not as they were not certified to work at that frequency. Silicon lottery (not the company) of the memory chips plays a big role as the quality of the onboard DRAM will have a large impact on the ability to overclock to new frequencies. That's why MSI released an RX 5600 XT GAMING Z variant with 14 Gbps vBIOS already applied out of the box. ASUS also joined the party and launched the ASUS ROG STRIX TOP graphics card, which is the only 14 Gbps enabled cards in ASUS'es whole lineup. By launching GPU SKUs with 14 Gbps speeds out of the box, manufacturers can guarantee these speeds and not depend on silicon lottery which may cause them a few RMA troubles down the road.
Source:
VideoCards
While some cards are capable of hitting 14 Gbps speeds with the GDDR6 chips, others are not as they were not certified to work at that frequency. Silicon lottery (not the company) of the memory chips plays a big role as the quality of the onboard DRAM will have a large impact on the ability to overclock to new frequencies. That's why MSI released an RX 5600 XT GAMING Z variant with 14 Gbps vBIOS already applied out of the box. ASUS also joined the party and launched the ASUS ROG STRIX TOP graphics card, which is the only 14 Gbps enabled cards in ASUS'es whole lineup. By launching GPU SKUs with 14 Gbps speeds out of the box, manufacturers can guarantee these speeds and not depend on silicon lottery which may cause them a few RMA troubles down the road.
86 Comments on MSI Says not all Radeon RX 5600 XT GPUs Can Hit 14 Gbps Memory Speed
no surpise
Sure, some if the higher end models came with 14 gb/s memory, but those were designed with even higher overclocks in mind.
As someone else alluded to, Nvidia could have just pushed a 16gb/s memory bios on 2070s and 2080 cards which would have really put the hurt on the 5700xt making their higher end stack look better. It would have probably worked 95% of the time, but again, it would have screwed over the vendors in the event that it did not.
Edit: damn I'm too tired...
I almost think these board partners could build 12 gb/s 5700 cards for cheaper than a 14 gb/s 5600xt judging by some of these high 5600xt prices. The former would be faster with more vram.
AMD knows exactly what memory is supposed to be shipped with these cards, therefor they should know if this would work or not. I'd imagine they must have issued this BIOS change on a strong basis of knowing what the hardware can do so the question is did the manufactures fail to meet AMD's spec or did AMD fail to properly validate what memory chips they can use.
In case of RX5600 XT, AMD's own specs say 12GBps - @jabbadap linked above to AMD specs page: www.amd.com/en/products/specifications/graphics
Anandtech has details about the last-minute BIOS changes: www.anandtech.com/show/15422/the-amd-radeon-rx-5600-xt-review/2
Basically the official line is that original specs (1375/1560MHz and 12GBps GDDR6) are correct and newer faster BIOSes are OC models.
AMD is selling cards at high prices, cards which don't innovate in anything and which only merit is finally reaching a level similar to its competition. Plus rushed shit like this.
And NVIDIA is selling a badly implemented early trick at high prices and oversaturating the market with pointless models.
What exactly are AMD recommendations? Cards have spec and RX5600 XT spec clearly says 12Gbps.
If end user update BIOS they may damage their cards due to pushing GDDR6 out of spec
And AIB partnets get all the blame when either one of the above happens
What a scumbag move. Get your shit together RTG. This is getting worse and worse
Which could have been a little off perhaps.
I find it hard to see how any of this would not have been foreseen by anyone involved.
There are alot of cards that pass that validation on higher clocks. They proberly stick to what AMD recommended.
There's got to be some differences in that, but I agree it's all been brought out in a turd way, could be leak's putting such a bad light on it but it should have been handled before the rumours.