unlocking Tonga Grqphical Cards

[rabidz7]

Would it be possible to unlock the memory busses on the ATI Tonga graphical cards? The Tonga has 384 busses, but ATI limited the card to 256 busses, for unknown reasons. If unlocx was possible, it would probaby reduce cards to 1.5gb or 3gb of ram.

If the busses or controllers were not physically chopped up, they should be usable if the GPU's ROM is modified in the correct fashion.

 

[Ocellaris]

 

[rabidz7]

snip

What? People already are unlocking shaders on Tonga, Hawaii and FijI to mixed sucess. I rememer flashing an older nVidia card and unlocking the busses.

 

[xorbe]

What? People already are unlocking shaders on Tonga, Hawaii and FijI to mixed sucess. I rememer flashing an older nVidia card and unlocking the busses.

Even if you could unlock what appears to be 50% more mem controllers in that one die shot, it's unfathomable that they are actually connected to any i/o pins or idle vram. vram would have to increase, not decrease.

 

[Jedimindtriks]

you can open as many roads you want OP, but there arent enough cars on the graphics card to use all the roads.


do you understand what im saying?

 

[Riccochet]

you can open as many roads you want OP, but there arent enough cars on the graphics card to use all the roads.


do you understand what im saying?

He doesn't want cars, he wants buses.

The VRAM on the card isn't limited by the bus width. Opened up buses won't do anything without memory to utilize.

 

[limitedaccess]

Just to explain this a bit.

When a GPU has a 256 bit memory bus it doesn't actually have a 256 bit wide connection to every one of the GDDR5 chips, it actually really only has a 32 bit (or 16 bit) connection to each of them. The aggregate rating and maximum bandwidth is achieved via interleaving the data across all the chips.

You can think of Tonga as having 12 "gates" but with only 8 open that have roads. Even if you open the other 4 gates those won't have roads going anywhere on the existing graphics cards.

 

[4745454b]

Roads to no where are still cool though right?

 

[alxlwson]

Roads to no where are still cool though right?

Roads? Where we're going, we dont need roads.

 

[Yakk]

Actually, thinking about it, Full Tonga chips would've fit very well with higher tier Steam Machines.

Seems like a big missed opportunity IMO to have a foothold in ALL consoles.

 

[xorbe]

Actually, thinking about it, Full Tonga chips would've fit very well with higher tier Steam Machines.

Seems like a big missed opportunity IMO to have a foothold in ALL consoles.

This is my wild ass guess: AMD snagged all the consoles because Intel+NV wanted too much money. But Steam machines will be less price sensitive.

 

[a3venom]

Let's be honest, no one expects steam machines to sell more than a tiny fraction compared to actual consoles.

 

[Yakk]

This is my wild ass guess: AMD snagged all the consoles because Intel+NV wanted too much money. But Steam machines will be less price sensitive.

Selling expensive Steam Machines defeats their intended purpose in the game store spaces Valve negotiated IMO.

Let's be honest, no one expects steam machines to sell more than a tiny fraction compared to actual consoles.

I agree on the tiny market share for them. Although Valve did a good job getting developers onboard with ports, they also missed some big opportunities with not pushing Vulkan more to make thier console more competitive at launch. As it is, a lot of those extra expensive hardware resources are just being wasted in the Linux wrapper.

It's a mistake they may not recover from.

 

[xorbe]

Selling expensive Steam Machines defeats their intended purpose in the game store spaces Valve negotiated IMO.

The $300-350 price point is covered by xbone and ps4 already. Though I don't know the ideal price for a "premium" Steam box.

The one I looked at yeah seems a bit expensive. That Zotac NEN with the 970M ("960 OEM" aka 960 Ti) looks nice, but $900.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/353530/

 

[a3venom]

I love small pcs more than anything else, but i don't think they can compete because of being too expensive. This $900 thing looks sexy i'd love to have one but running steam OS takes the PC out of it i think, so its essentially a $900 PS4 with maybe 10% better graphics, don't see that selling for even 600$ to console gamers.

 

[cageymaru]

I'm going to think of it from the minds of gamers my age (40+) who have kids and still play games themselves. If the games on Steam are a lot cheaper than PS4 / XBONE then spending more up front for the Steam Machine makes sense in the long run. Now from a teen's mind begging for a console for Christmas, they just see $299 and that's cheaper than $350 so the Steam Machine is overpriced. The fact that many of the console games are $60 just whizzes past their head. Steam sales are beyond their comprehension. Not all but a great deal of this demographic.

That has been the crux of trying to convert console gamers to PC gamers since there has been PCs.

 

[xorbe]

so its essentially a $900 PS4 with maybe 10% better graphics, don't see that selling for even 600$ to console gamers.

I suspect 192-bit Maxwell with 3GB dedicated and 1280 cores is a great deal more than 10% faster than the console APUs? (I am not a console buff, so no sure.) Also, i5 vs AMD's slow small core, that's a slaughter. But yeah $900 is an impossible sale to the $400 and down console crowd, even $600 seems tough, I agree.

 

[a3venom]

I suspect 192-bit Maxwell with 3GB dedicated and 1280 cores is a great deal more than 10% faster than the console APUs? (I am not a console buff, so no sure.) Also, i5 vs AMD's slow small core, that's a slaughter. But yeah $900 is an impossible sale to the $400 and down console crowd, even $600 seems tough, I agree.

Specs wise its way more than 10%, but on a couch on a big TV, it will be nearly 10 - 15% of noticeable visual improvement for a big price premium. That card will surely not max out everything with AA, but the 60fps @ console settings might be better than 24-30 fps at max settings.

I think the 960ti will be in line with the 380x performance.

 

[Yakk]

The $300-350 price point is covered by xbone and ps4 already. Though I don't know the ideal price for a "premium" Steam box.

The one I looked at yeah seems a bit expensive. That Zotac NEN with the 970M ("960 OEM" aka 960 Ti) looks nice, but $900.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/353530/

Yeah, the pricing is just out of proportion to mainstream consoles. Even with less expensive games, it's a really, really tough sell. I don't see it working, especially in markets outside the US where prices are much higher due to the exchange rate.

Specs wise its way more than 10%, but on a couch on a big TV, it will be nearly 10 - 15% of noticeable visual improvement for a big price premium. That card will surely not max out everything with AA, but the 60fps @ console settings might be better than 24-30 fps at max settings.

Yup, those higher specs don't translate to much as I wrote earlier due to all that lost efficiency. I wanted to like Steam Machines, but right now they just don't make sense.