Friday, September 11th 2020
NVIDIA GeForce RTX Ampere Chips Feature Three Binning Tiers, Mostly Good Dies are Present
Chip binning is a process of sorting out the manufactured silicon by quality. That means that each chip that comes from the silicon wafer is tested and sorted by different features. For example, a chip is tested for how much voltage it takes for operation, how cool it runs, and of course how it overclocks. By putting their chips through various testing, manufacturers often create binning tiers, where they can differentiate good and bad chips, so they know where to send, and if they should send the chips. The biggest and most complex approach for sending chips is for graphics cards. As there are different AIBs, manufacturers like NVIDIA and AMD need to send them chips of various qualities to incorporate in their products. It is a rather time-consuming and complex process to find out the bin type and the tier of chips, however today we are getting some information from Igor's Lab.
According to their sources, it is said that NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX Ampere lineup features three binning tiers. There is "Bin 0" which represents an okay chip that can perform as intended, "Bin 1" chips which are good processors, and "Bin 2" processors which represent the best quality chips with the highest performance characteristics. These "Bin 2" dies run cooler compared to the rest and achieve higher overclocking speed. In reality, the binning represents coordination between the chip designer (NVIDIA in this case) and the manufacturer (Samsung with its 8N 8 nm process). It is said that from the complete pilot run of Ampere chips, Samsung ends up with 30% of the "Bin 0" dies, 60% of "Bin 1" dies, and only 10% of "Bin 2" dies. The production period was quite short and these numbers are good for Samsung, as they probably didn't have much time to work on it, so we can expect these numbers to improve.
Source:
Igor's Lab
According to their sources, it is said that NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX Ampere lineup features three binning tiers. There is "Bin 0" which represents an okay chip that can perform as intended, "Bin 1" chips which are good processors, and "Bin 2" processors which represent the best quality chips with the highest performance characteristics. These "Bin 2" dies run cooler compared to the rest and achieve higher overclocking speed. In reality, the binning represents coordination between the chip designer (NVIDIA in this case) and the manufacturer (Samsung with its 8N 8 nm process). It is said that from the complete pilot run of Ampere chips, Samsung ends up with 30% of the "Bin 0" dies, 60% of "Bin 1" dies, and only 10% of "Bin 2" dies. The production period was quite short and these numbers are good for Samsung, as they probably didn't have much time to work on it, so we can expect these numbers to improve.
66 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce RTX Ampere Chips Feature Three Binning Tiers, Mostly Good Dies are Present
- Which die are we talking about?
- What exactly do tiers represent - is Tier 0 something like Turing's non-oc cores that run at or slightly above spec?
- There is no comparison with binning results of some other die or some other manufacturing process.
60% bin 1= AIB stock speeds+ min. OC
10% bin2 = high OC version
???
Bin 2 chips, the best of the best, sent to reviewers.
A 72/76/80CU chip prob tops out at around 2ghz with good binning.
Numbers or all this talk is just emotion likely because the FE is considered special for unknown reasons.
If Turings FE was a great bin, explain to me why they needed a 10W higher TDP budget?!
Bin 0 - $1500 'cheap' OEM
Bin 1 - FE and up to $1700 AIB
Bin 2 - >$1700 AIB
The non-a had a 280W power limit even with BIOS modding, while the A chips could go upto 380W with BIOS modding. That's another 100W of headroom for overclocking, which was huge for watercooling. If we're talking air, it's not relevant as you'll face thermal restraints way before power, but for those of us who put them under water the A chips were definitely worth the premium, and thus the FE cards were a good bet as they were cheap and virtually guaranteed to be the A chip.Because they performed better out of the box as they had the superior A chip?
And it's been like that since FE was established. Usually FE cards are the ones that eat less power with the same settings. Occasionally some AIBs offer better effieciency, cause manufacturers also try to bin what they get and sometimes they also strike a jackpot, but usually FE cards get the best chips.
This procedure is well known, always has been like this.
If NVIDIA wants to put better-binned chips on their FE cards to justify the price premium, it's their prerogative. If other graphics card manufacturers are willing to pay more to get access to better bins and put a price premium on cards with those chips, again, their prerogative.
Nobody is forcing you to buy the better-binned cards, and you aren't getting ripped off by buying a baseline-binned card, because everyone else is getting that same baseline. And of course the baseline will improve as the chip yields improve, so newer cards should clock better than older ones - are people going to start complaining about this too?
As for reviewers, do you really think that NVIDIA or AMD is going to be stupid enough to send binned silicon in this day and age of easily-manufactured reddit outrage?
God damn it people, use your brains.Instead of posting unsubstantiated nonsense, why not try not posting at all? To save us from having to read it?Because you're more qualified at choosing a foundry than NVIDIA, who has been doing this for decades?
Hater gonna hate man... HGH. Studies show. lololol