[HN Gopher] AMD's HD 6950 vs. RX 6900 XT: What Does Adding 50 Do?
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AMD's HD 6950 vs. RX 6900 XT: What Does Adding 50 Do?
Author : gautamcgoel
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-04-01 08:03 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chipsandcheese.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (chipsandcheese.com)
| Sakos wrote:
| > AMD should not continue to increase model numbers. Doing so can
| decrease performance across a variety of metrics, as data from
| the HD 6950 and RX 6900 XT shows. Instead, they should hold the
| model number in place or even decrease it to ensure future
| generations perform optimally.
|
| Lmao. This was a masterpiece of an article.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| yeah. labeling stuff will make your future products perform
| good or bad, depending how you label your current stuff,
| everything else being equal
| latchkey wrote:
| I've run over 120k AMD GPUs. They are ALL snowflakes. Even within
| the same model number, no two are the same and they can vary
| quite a bit in performance. It is actually kind of wild to see
| this at scale. We called it the 'silicon lottery'.
|
| I started to write code to gather data on location on the wafer
| that it was printed on to see if I could do a correlation there
| (as I heard a rumor that that the edges aren't as good), but
| sadly never got a chance to finish it up.
| tigeroil wrote:
| I've noticed this to some extent with their CPUs as well.
|
| From what I can tell this is, in part, because AMD run their
| chips much closer to their physical limits than say, Intel or
| Nvidia do. They're all redlining so to speak.
|
| As such this means that any differences in the silicon are much
| more likely to have an impact on performance.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I can't make sense of this. CPUs microarchitecture is run at
| their clock speed. If they're running close to their physical
| limits, either they don't fail in which case all's well, or
| they fail in which case it's a wipeout such as a blue screen,
| reboot, freezes, corruption or whatever. AFAICS they can't
| run correctly but somehow slower. Be good if you could
| explain where I'm getting it wrong.
| doubled112 wrote:
| > run at their clock speed
|
| The clock speed for a CPU is dynamic. Both Intel and AMD
| CPUs will boost their clocks to as high as possible given
| the current conditions.
|
| Some will boost higher than others, even in the same batch.
| They are even labelled "up to" like a cable internet
| connection.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| You're right, thanks.
| nimbius wrote:
| Depends on the customer I guess. For me I'll always choose AMD
| for its bulletproof Linux support.
| izacus wrote:
| What does that have to do with their performance variance?
| latchkey wrote:
| My comment wasn't intended as negative against AMD, just an
| interesting note about GPU performance measurements.
| damiankennedy wrote:
| The ones from around the edge (you can tell by the distintive
| curve on one side) are sold as 6900 AF's
| kevingadd wrote:
| Knew I was in for a ride when I saw "VLIW". Fun to see how a card
| that old still has competitive compute throughput for certain
| workloads (obviously, it falls short in many other areas)
| Aleklart wrote:
| "Some of this can be attributed to the process node too. On that
| note, TSMC's 40 nm process has a bigger number than their 7 nm
| process. But again, bigger numbers don't help."
| gaudat wrote:
| And for 6800 series you can compare to the GeForce one too.
| nayuki wrote:
| Note: AMD Radeon HD 6950 was released in year 2010 with 2.64
| billion transistors. AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT was released in year
| 2020 with 26.80 billion transistors.
|
| https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-hd-6950.c405 ,
| https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-6900-xt.c348...
| gibspaulding wrote:
| AMD's naming is rough. I upgraded from an FX 6300 to a Ryzen 3600
| a few years ago and it still hurts my brain keeping which one is
| which straight.
|
| Interestingly on paper the two chips look surprisingly similar -
| they're both 6 cores at ~3.5Ghz. Multi threading and modern IPC
| make a big difference!
| causality0 wrote:
| AMD's numbering scheme is probably the biggest reason I've bought
| a lot more Nvidia cards. It's just less work to figure out what
| I'm getting.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Nvidia has you covered too with the A6000.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's really interesting to note how much they kneecapped 64-bit
| performance on consumer cards to stop people from using them to
| run simulations.
|
| This was a very funny piece!
| doodlesdev wrote:
| LOL how the hell did they make this URL work?
|
| https://www.amazon.com/set-your-computer-on-fire/dp/B01DV1Z3...
| Tsiklon wrote:
| If I had to guess, the number at the end is the ASIN (Amazon
| Stock Indicator Number), this is unique among all items listed
| on the site.
|
| I suspect that as long as that number is in the correct
| location, the page will load the right item.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Amazon only checks the id after the /dp/. Stackoverflow does a
| similar where only-the-id matters url scheme so that posters
| can change the title.
| damiankennedy wrote:
| "Normally we don't look at first level cache bandwidth scaling,
| because it's boring"
|
| An informative, well written article to start the year.
| petecooper wrote:
| >Radeon RX 7900 Ti XTX SE Pro VIVO Founders Edition
|
| I love the absurdity of this _so hard_.
| s5300 wrote:
| The 6950 was my first powerful graphics card. It was a great card
|
| I bought it used on eBay & it had already been abused. One day it
| died, and the company that made it told me they had no
| replacements, so they sent me a brand new 7950 no questions
| asked.
|
| That company was MSI. I went on to recommend MSI to others for
| years because of that incident & one other good reason.
|
| Then in 2016 MSI dicked me on a $2200 laptop that had an ungodly
| amount of issues straight from the factory any decent company
| would RMA. The amount of reports on the internet about those
| specific models having issues were insane, & the company just did
| not care in the slightest.
|
| I've since denounced MSI after that. I presume MBAs had at some
| time taken over & ran customer service into the ground.
|
| I still have the old 6950 in storage somewhere.
|
| Some point about how to both gain and lose a customer in this
| text, I think. I mean, over-tightening a laptops hinges in the
| factory, to the point they one day suddenly & catastrophically
| fail, dropping your 1440p 120hz screen - knowing of the issue &
| not informing customers, let alone an RMA - is just fukt. and
| that was only one of the many, many issues (coil whine &
| completely inadequate cooling being some others)
| stevezsa8 wrote:
| That sucks. I bet it was stressful as heck having issues with
| $2200 worth of kit.
|
| I've started to treat all purchases as a bit of a lottery.
| Things vary so much between product cycles and support quality.
|
| Sadly, I resigned to buying tech that is cheap enough I could
| replace without losing sleep.
| doubled112 wrote:
| That's how I buy tech too, anymore.
|
| As cheap as possible while not frustrating to use doing the
| job.
|
| No matter what I pay, there's still a chance the thing falls
| apart in 3 months and catches fire anyway.
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