AMD Responds to TechPowerUp Investigation, Issues Remedy

ulrik · Oct 25, 2008

Question: Is there already a discussion going on about possible energy savings by switching off a shader block? Since in techpowerup and computerbase.de test the unpatched amd radeon 4830 (having 560 shader count) seems to require less power than the powercolor 4830 having 640 shaders.

Could somebody try this out, please? Maybe this could be a new strategy for 4850/70 energy savings/Powerplay? Another interesting way would be to try rivatuner shader block bit masking.What's the real difference in the old and new amd bios?

theJesus · Oct 25, 2008

ulrik just gave me an idea. Would there be any way to "throttle" the amount of SP's enabled for extra power-saving during 2D mode?

eidairaman1 · Oct 25, 2008

how about you suggest that to wizzard for the next build of ATITool, if he will ever get around to deving that program anymore.

theJesus · Oct 25, 2008

meh, I wouldn't suggest since I would never use it (not my house, i don't pay the electricity bill :laugh:

)

[I.R.A]_FBi · Oct 25, 2008

its teh idle clock of teh amd bios that cuases teh power savings, ask whizzinator

Kreij · Oct 25, 2008

It's quite possible that AMD runs some additional tests to ensure that the review samples are working correctly (as opposed to doing partial batch testing for retail products).

It may be that they were using a variety of BIOS's to ensure that the shaders on the review cards were working correctly and accidentally sent the cards out in the final test configuration (minus one shader).

I really doubt it was any kind of deceipt on AMD's part as it simply does not make any logical sense for them to do that. Their quick response also points to a mistake, not a purposeful act.

[I.R.A]_FBi · Oct 25, 2008

teh news post is a quote from AMD's press release

iLLz · Oct 25, 2008

Awww man... You guys are defending AMD on this one, it makes me sick. If nVidia did this, you would be bashing the hell out of em. The point is they tried to get away with one and had a BIOS ready in case they got caught, that is why the "fix" came so quickly.:shadedshu

flclisgreat · Oct 25, 2008

iLLz said:
Awww man... You guys are defending AMD on this one, it makes me sick. If nVidia did this, you would be bashing the hell out of em. The point is they tried to get away with one and had a BIOS ready in case they got caught, that is why the "fix" came so quickly.:shadedshu

it has been said and said again, the cards have the SP's on them already, it costs AMD/partners the same to produce the card with all of them working or not. so what possible benefit could it bring to BIOS disable some of them?

Kreij · Oct 25, 2008

iLLz said:
Awww man... You guys are defending AMD on this one, it makes me sick. If nVidia did this, you would be bashing the hell out of em. The point is they tried to get away with one and had a BIOS ready in case they got caught, that is why the "fix" came so quickly.:shadedshu

Of course they had the correct BIOS availalbe. That is what the cards were supposed to be using. To mistakenly send out samples with the wrong (perhaps test) BIOS is an understandable mistake.

I've never bashed nVidia and have owned nVidia cards in the past and was pleased with them. It's true that at the moment I prefer ATI cards, but that is due to what I feel are more stable drivers and I also prefer their "once a month" driver releases (it's much less confusing than nVidia's method).

If nVidia release review samples with a similar issue, I would give them the benefit of the doubt until it was proved otherwise. I, personally, believe in "innocent until proven guilty".

Just my 2 cents.

p_o_s_pc · Oct 25, 2008

kreij you are with ATI because you feel more stable drivers and i am with Nvidia because IMO i feel the drivers are more stable. I have seen so many threads about driver issues with ATI (as with Nvidia) that is what turned me away from ATI for now

Kreij · Oct 25, 2008

p_o_s_pc said:
kreij you are with ATI because you feel more stable drivers and i am with Nvidia because IMO i feel the drivers are more stable. I have seen so many threads about driver issues with ATI (as with Nvidia) that is what turned me away from ATI for now

LOL ... that just goes to show you that we each perceive things differently.
I am thankful that there is an nVidia (and ATI) so that we as consumers have a choice, and the competition is good for us all.

We have seen what happens when there is no competition and a company justs sits back and does nothing new (no, I'm not naming any names

)

roofsniper · Oct 25, 2008

iLLz said:
Awww man... You guys are defending AMD on this one, it makes me sick. If nVidia did this, you would be bashing the hell out of em. The point is they tried to get away with one and had a BIOS ready in case they got caught, that is why the "fix" came so quickly.:shadedshu

what? that doesn't even make any sense? why would amd release a card and pay money to have the sps on there but not use them? thats completely idiotic. thats like amd releasing a cpu that is supposed to clock at 3.0ghz but they clock it at 2.0ghz. because then people will get it and see that it sucks and go to intel. same with ati people might get it then return it and buy the nvidia offering. it would confuse me greatly as to why amd did this on purpose. especialy when they send the same exact versions to reviewers who should the performance of the card. and ontop of that what are the chances of every single person that reviews and buys the card to think that it has the correct number of sps? gpuz shows the sps right there and everyone knows what they are getting. i don't understand why anyone could possibly think that amd did this on purpose. to me it just seems like people wanting to start something to bash amd. :mad:

Steevo · Oct 25, 2008

Nvidia has been called out on things, often. Such as the Crysis driver tweaks, and the 16bit vs 24bit. None of their cards untill the late 8800 series had the true precision ATI did.

ATI made a mistake, not overpromising hardware and underdelivering, but with a faulty BIOS, perhaps the man in charge of it placed a wrong character in the BIOS. What this does tell us is that a BIOS hack could be possible.

roofsniper · Oct 25, 2008

Steevo said:
Nvidia has been called out on things, often. Such as the Crysis driver tweaks, and the 16bit vs 24bit. None of their cards untill the late 8800 series had the true precision ATI did.

ATI made a mistake, not overpromising hardware and underdelivering, but with a faulty BIOS, perhaps the man in charge of it placed a wrong character in the BIOS. What this does tell us is that a BIOS hack could be possible.

yea but nvidia was rigging things and this is a mistake that hurts the company. which just makes me so clueless as to how people can actualy think that amd is trying to pull a fast one when in no way at all it helps them.

Steevo · Oct 25, 2008

read
comprehend
post

btarunr · Oct 25, 2008

Just to add, AMD loses nothing by selling HD 4830 with its proper 640 SPs, just as they're not going to be upping profits/cutting mfg costs by cutting the SP count. This was an accident, it happened to be spotted on early, and AMD released a fix within 36 hours. Please don't make this a "if it were NVIDIA" discussion, don't play fortune-teller. Back to topic.

krisna159 · Oct 25, 2008

competition is good for market but cheating not included,thats illegal,i n this care indicated to "that",so let see who is right,who is wrong,lets wait n see

erb · Nov 11, 2008

Some guy on newegg posted a review saying he unlocked the 800 shaders. I noticed it when I was purchasing the card last night. He doesn't say how he did it though of course, just says google to find out. I did that, but I didn't find anything. Anyone else better at googling things want to give it a shot?

btarunr · Nov 11, 2008

He's lying. You can't bring 800 SPs for a HD 4830 by means of any softmod/bios. A HD 4830 is a RV770 with two ALU clusters (160 SPs) disabled by a physical method, not masked. After physically disabling the ALU clusters, they accordingly give out the BIOS. Some of the cards AMD sent out had 2 clusters disabled physically, but tables for three clusters were missing from the BIOS...hence the 560 SP HD 4830 anomaly. A simple BIOS fix solved, and enabled the extra ALU cluster that got disabled accidentally.

thoughtdisorder · Nov 11, 2008

Nice job W1ZZ and nice job AMD! I'd say that upped the "stock" of TPU with AMD. :toast:

System Name	Desktop\|\| Virtual Host 0
Processor	Intel Core i5 2500-K @ 4.3ghz \|\| 2x Xeon L5630 (total 8 cores, 16 threads)
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Memory	4x4gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 \|\| 12x4gb Hynix DDR3 1066 FB-DIMMs
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Case	Antec P280 \|\| Dell PowerEdge R710
Audio Device(s)	HRT MusicStreamer II+ and Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 \|\| Don't know, don't care
Power Supply	SeaSonic X650 Gold \|\| 2x870w hot-swappable
Mouse	Logitech G500 \|\| remote iDRAC KVM console
Keyboard	Logitech G510 \|\| remote iDRAC KVM console
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Benchmark Scores	Over 9000 on the scouter

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Processor	AMD FX 8350@ 5.0GHz
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Power Supply	Seasonic 1250 XM2 Series (XP3)
Mouse	Roccat Kone XTD
Keyboard	Roccat Ryos MK Pro
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System Name	Desktop\|\| Virtual Host 0
Processor	Intel Core i5 2500-K @ 4.3ghz \|\| 2x Xeon L5630 (total 8 cores, 16 threads)
Motherboard	ASUS P8Z68-V \|\| Dell PowerEdge R710 (Intel 5520 chipset)
Cooling	Corsair Hydro H100 \|\| Stock hotplug fans and passive heatsinks
Memory	4x4gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 \|\| 12x4gb Hynix DDR3 1066 FB-DIMMs
Video Card(s)	MSI GTX 760 Gaming Twin Frozr 4GB OC \|\| Don't know, don't care
Storage	Hitachi 7K3000 2TB \|\| 6x300gb 15k rpm SAS internal hotswap, 12x3tb Seagate NAS drives in enclosure
Display(s)	ViewSonic VA2349S \|\| remote iDRAC KVM console
Case	Antec P280 \|\| Dell PowerEdge R710
Audio Device(s)	HRT MusicStreamer II+ and Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 \|\| Don't know, don't care
Power Supply	SeaSonic X650 Gold \|\| 2x870w hot-swappable
Mouse	Logitech G500 \|\| remote iDRAC KVM console
Keyboard	Logitech G510 \|\| remote iDRAC KVM console
Software	Win7 Ultimate x64 \|\| VMware vSphere 6.0 with vCenter Server 6.0
Benchmark Scores	Over 9000 on the scouter

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Motherboard	Anus PQ5
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Case	El Cheepo
Audio Device(s)	7.1 Onboard
Power Supply	Corsair TX750
Software	MCE2K5

Processor	C2Q6600 @ 1.6 GHz
Motherboard	Anus PQ5
Cooling	ACFPro
Memory	GEiL2 x 1 GB PC2 6400
Video Card(s)	MSi 4830 (RIP)
Storage	Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB Perpendicular Recording
Display(s)	Dell 17'
Case	El Cheepo
Audio Device(s)	7.1 Onboard
Power Supply	Corsair TX750
Software	MCE2K5

AMD Responds to TechPowerUp Investigation, Issues Remedy

ulrik

New Member

theJesus

eidairaman1

The Exiled Airman

theJesus

[I.R.A]_FBi

Kreij

Senior Monkey Moderator

[I.R.A]_FBi

iLLz

flclisgreat

Kreij

Senior Monkey Moderator

p_o_s_pc

F@H&WCG addict

Kreij

Senior Monkey Moderator

roofsniper

New Member

Steevo

roofsniper

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Steevo

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

krisna159

erb

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btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

thoughtdisorder

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Power Supply	PCP&C SilentCool 750 Quad Black
Mouse	Logitech G500
Keyboard	Razer DeathStalker
Software	Windows 10 x64 Pro

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Motherboard	some Acer \| Asus P8Z77-V Pro \|Gigabyter GA-M61p-S3
Cooling	dual 80mm cooling fan \| WC'ing ) \|cheapo
Memory	2x2gb ddr3 \| 2x2gb Ripjaws 1600 \|4x512mb D9s
Video Card(s)	onboard \| 60 1GB(hd7770 ) \|8800GTS
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Display(s)	17in \| 42" 1080P HD 3D TV
Case	lappy case \| CM HAF XB \|none yet
Audio Device(s)	onboard \| onboard \| onboard
Power Supply	Dell brick w/ acer end end \| Antec EW 650w \|Antec SP 350w(upg.soon)
Software	Windows 7 Ult. 64bit---->------->

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Processor	7800X3D
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Cooling	Air for now.....
Memory	64 GB DDR5 6400Mhz
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Storage	Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
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Audio Device(s)	ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
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Processor	core i5 3570K
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Storage	6tb seagate
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