# Swap ROPs and TMUs for easier understanding?



## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 26, 2021)

I've got a little idea. How about swapping the positon of ROPs and TMUs in our GPU-Z software? I think it's better for taking in the information since nowadays we have been used to TMUs in front and ROPs at the back.
Or is it just designed like that for a certain purpose? Well, I don't know lol. I just hope our GPU-Z to be better to use.
Thanks!


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## W1zzard (Jul 26, 2021)

RidiculousOwO said:


> Since nowadays we have been used to TMUs in front and ROPs at the back.


Source?


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## pavle (Jul 26, 2021)

ROPs and then TMUs is sensible, since the dawn of 3D accelerators (3Dfx Voodoo). First you got pixels and then texels that color those pixels.
3Dfx Voodoo 2 had 1 PixelFX and 2 TexelFX processors.


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## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 26, 2021)

W1zzard said:


> Source?





pavl3 said:


> ROPs and then TMUs is sensible, since the dawn of 3D accelerators (3Dfx Voodoo). First you got pixels and then texels that color those pixels.
> 3Dfx Voodoo 2 had 1 PixelFX and 2 TexelFX processors.


Sorry, my bad. Maybe it's just me that tend to put larger number in front and smaller number behind. Just ignore me instead. Delete this thread if possible please. I'm sorry for the trouble.


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## mtcn77 (Jul 26, 2021)

RidiculousOwO said:


> Sorry, my bad. Maybe it's just me that tend to put larger number in front and smaller number behind. Just ignore me instead. Delete this thread if possible please. I'm sorry for the trouble.


Rasterizer, rop, tmu. This is the correct pipeline.


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## W1zzard (Jul 26, 2021)

RidiculousOwO said:


> Just ignore me instead. Delete this thread if possible please. I'm sorry for the trouble.


No worries, this is actually an interesting discussion, let's see what people think


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## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 26, 2021)

W1zzard said:


> Source?


Actually our TPU database has been putting TMUs in front of or above ROPs, and so do many media (most of them I think) when covering specs of cards. I don't know why, either. But it seems like a smoother and more natural sequence in the order of Stream Processors, TMUs and ROPs. e.g. Navi 23, it's 2048, 128, 64, the numbers going from large to small.
I just sometimes kind of only focus on the numbers for a quick lookup and need a second look to know it's ROPs in front of TMUs. Lol.


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## W1zzard (Jul 26, 2021)

@T4C Fantasy your thoughts on this?


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## Deleted member 212040 (Jul 26, 2021)

I agree tbh, I'd rather have TMUs/ROPs


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## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 26, 2021)

Looks like few people care about this? Don't even bother casting vote...


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## agent_x007 (Jul 26, 2021)

ROP number is the fastest and universal way to tell how fast a card can be (regardless of shaders/uarch inside).
^Why I don't count TMUs here ?
Because there is too much difference in speed when TMU value is the only one you look at.

In short : ROP is important value to me, so it should be first for GPU-z (I read from left to right).
Databases can do this however they see fit, it doesn't matter to me (active databases are best though [set up colums/rows however you want]).


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## animal007uk (Jul 26, 2021)

leave it as it is don't see the point in changing things that have been the same for years.


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## Deleted member 212040 (Jul 26, 2021)

Change bad


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## mtcn77 (Jul 26, 2021)

I won't obsess since I'm an amateur enthusiast, but I always considered gpus the same as a hobby. The same as people liken to racing cars eventhough they don't daily drive them, so it is something you surf the internet to develop on.
The most consistent paraphrase will come from *Nvidia* for this instance imo, since they deliberately state on chip communication is 32 times more efficient than off chip communication to memory modules. That makes ROPs 32 times more dedicated than TMU performance which sets clear boundaries between hardware tiers. Rops do, indeed, mark the flagship of the line up; eventhough performance comes from harnessing the frontend better like Nvidia does, generally.
TL;DR: That Cores:TMU:ROP order comes from the frontend backend differentiation of the gpu pipeline, not anything else.


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## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 26, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> TMU:ROP order comes from the frontend backend differentiation of the gpu pipeline





agent_x007 said:


> ROP number is the fastest and universal way to tell how fast a card can be





agent_x007 said:


> ROP is important value


Since TMUs:ROPs comes from the frontend and backend in the pipeline, I think TMUs in front of ROPs is a more natural and more logical way to show specs of a card, following the way how modern graphics cards work. As for the importance, as long as we know that ROP is more important, we can just simply directly focus on the number of ROPs, in which case its position becomes less important.
In conclusion, I'd like to put things in a more logical way if it's part of how things work.
Thanks.

Imagine this everyday life scenario:
There're a couple of things that have nothing to do with each other. Then I tend to put the most important or the most expensive/valuable/precious one in their centre.
DVDs of Fast and Furious. I tend to put them in their own order, instead of how I think it's good or bad.
And also, contents such as in a textbook are written in their logical order, and the important ones are often marked bold.
That should make my points clear.


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## mtcn77 (Jul 26, 2021)

RidiculousOwO said:


> In conclusion, I'd like to put things in a more logical way if it's part of how things work.
> Thanks.


There is nothing wrong with your train of thought, only that it is a software computer engineer's point of view, imo. Not a hardware computer engineer's which is, if you attended any presentations on the subject, is what they talk about as a hard line approach distinction between them.
PS: it is a running joke people who design hardware have no frame of reference how it is meant to work. 

TL;DR: it is the 'formal' way to do so, not practical.

2nd PS: one analogy,
Hardware engineers are like the Renault engineers who invented turbo manifolds in F1 racing in 1970s. In 1980's they were synonymous with engine fires, but if it weren't for Renault we wouldn't have turbo... Same with hardware folk...


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## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 26, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> PS: it is a running joke people who design hardware have no frame of reference how it is meant to work.
> TL;DR: it is the 'formal' way to do so, not practical.


I get your idea. Thanks. Actually I don't mind ROPs in front at all.


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## mtcn77 (Jul 27, 2021)

RidiculousOwO said:


> I get your idea. Thanks. Actually I don't mind ROPs in front at all.


Lol, now that we are settled, let me diverge with more boring details.
It is rational to assume what works and what doesn't at each generation has proper communication channels in the company and is properly addressed. That might be so, in a more practically sensible company, but not for AMD. They do it by the engineering rulebook.

For the longest time AMD resisted calling their shaders deferred rendering optimised and insisted calling them forward rendering optimised which has the resounding name of a frontend oriented architecture. *It is not. *They have a backend first architecture with ROPs galore. Until Nvidia handed them with the new +500MHz gpu interconnect, they never had enough hp to run a fully utilised deferred rendering pipeline as it is supposed to be a frontend first pipeline(fast gpu, slow vram).


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## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 27, 2021)

Current vote result: 3 Yes (including me) / 8 No. It seems that there's really no need to swap...


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## T4C Fantasy (Jul 27, 2021)

W1zzard said:


> @T4C Fantasy your thoughts on this?


I agree to keep it Shaders / TMUs / ROPs

its the media standard and our database standard.

the issue is space in GPU-Z if it had room to move around i would prefer it show all 3 configs in 1 line


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## W1zzard (Jul 27, 2021)

T4C Fantasy said:


> the issue is space in GPU-Z if it had room to move around i would prefer it show all 3 configs in 1 line


The thing is that the shaders field is used to show Pixel & Vertex shaders on older cards, so it needs more space


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## Яid!culousOwO (Jul 28, 2021)

T4C Fantasy said:


> the issue is space in GPU-Z if it had room to move around i would prefer it show all 3 configs in 1 line





W1zzard said:


> it needs more space


Well then, just leave Shaders where it is maybe?


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