I was wondering...

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imzjustplayin

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 24, 2006
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Does a video card with a 128bit bus and 600mhz memory run hotter than an pretty much identical card but with a 256bit bus and 300mhz memory? Cause I was wondering how ATi and Nvidia were going to fix their problems with heat consumption and was thinking that increasing the #of bits for the bus may be part of alleviating this issue or not..
 
As far as I'm aware, heat generated by the memory is a non-issue. If you're talking about card temperatures then the GPU itself is the only thing you're considering.
 
i suppose that with half the clock you could have the memory controller run at half the pace as well, also allowing you to run less voltage through the memory controller, compensating for the fact that your memory controller needs more transistors, resulting in a small power saving.

you have to consider though, for this to work you need to have the memory controller in a different Vcore domain unless you are also willing to significantly drop the core clock.

and then there is the fact that power isnt a real problem with the 128 bit cards, the real flagships are the ones with power and heat problems. Then take into acount that double buswidth requires more ram ICs, more PCB lanes/layers and a larger silicon die for the GPU itself, and you come to the conclusion that equiping midrange cards with 256 low speed memory isnt all that interesting.

What is an option if you are after power savings is taking a very wide core (lots of shaders/rops) and underclock/undervolt the thing like mad. underclocking a 64 shader part to half the clock of a 32 shader part would theoretically give equal power usage, and then take into acount the lower Vcore, and you end up saving power at the cost of extra transistors
 
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