Sapphire Outs an RX 570 Graphics Card with 16GB Memory, But Why?

[btarunr]

Sapphire has reportedly developed an odd-ball Radeon RX 570 graphics card, equipped with 16 GB of GDDR5 memory, double the memory amount the SKU is possibly capable of. The card is based on the company's NITRO+ board design common to RX 570 thru RX 590 SKUs, and uses sixteen 8 Gbit GDDR5 memory chips that are piggybacked (i.e. chips on both sides of the PCB). When Chinese tech publication MyDrivers reached out to Sapphire for an explanation behind such a bizarre contraption, the Hong Kong-based AIB partner's response was fascinating.

Sapphire in its response said that they wanted to bolster the card's crypto-currency mining power, and giving the "Polaris 20" GPU additional memory would improve its performance compared to ASIC miners using the Cuckoo Cycle algorithm. This can load up the video memory anywhere between 5.5 GB to 11 GB, and giving the RX 570 16 GB of it was Sapphire's logical next step. Of course Cuckoo Cycle is being defeated time and again by currency curators. This card will be a stopgap for miners until ASIC mining machines with expanded memory come out, or the proof-of-work systems are significantly changed.



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[eidairaman1]

Hmm like the 9700 Pro then.

 

[dj-electric]

A tweet made by Sapphire's VP of marketing earlier today was already deleted after a bunch of negative comments

Here's a link to the article he wrote:
https://medium.com/@philipwynnjones...g-is-making-a-comeback-with-grin-7a85ecfef840

 

[silentbogo]

Crypto or no crypto, it'll still make a great "FirePro on the budget" for those into GPGPU compute or memory-intensive CAD / 3DModeling.
I'm sure it'll be a very limited batch, so even if it's not for general public and won't sell well - it won't stay on store shelves for long and eventually will be sold out.

 

[ExV6k]

Can someone please explain how this is possible? I mean, there are 8 32 bit controllers on the GPU (for a total bus width of 256 bit), how come?

 

[dj-electric]

Can someone please explain how this is possible? I mean, there are 8 32 bit controllers on the GPU (for a total bus width of 256 bit), how come?

Tracing more memory for the same channel was never an issue. Cards have being doing it for many years.

 

[GoldenX]

Can someone please explain how this is possible? I mean, there are 8 32 bit controllers on the GPU (for a total bus width of 256 bit), how come?

Higher density RAM chips.

 

[silentbogo]

Can someone please explain how this is possible? I mean, there are 8 32 bit controllers on the GPU (for a total bus width of 256 bit), how come?

GDDR5 also supports clamshell config (just like GDDR5x or GDDR6). You are still using 8x32 bit wide bus, but the address lanes are shared between paired chips, while data is transmitted 16-bits each. Just think of it as RAID, only with memory chips.

Higher density RAM chips.

16Gbit GDDR5 chips do not exist (at least not yet).

 

[IceShroom]

Whenever AMD has a competative chip mining craze starts. Strange!!!

 

[renz496]

Probably same reason as why low end GPU in the past have tons of VRAM even if the the GPU does not have the grunt to fully benefit from it. Because in marketing more must be better.

 

[xkm1948]

Awesome! Now we can game at 4K with this around 10FPS!

 

[R0H1T]

Or 20~30 fps with 2x 570 in CF, because why not

 

[wolf]

So they can be sold to unwitting 'noobs' who hear of a new 16GB AMD card, thinking of Radeon VII, and end up buying this by mistake.

 

[stimpy88]

Does anybody still do this mining thing still? I thought the bottom had dropped off the market?

 

[Mescalamba]

Does anybody still do this mining thing still? I thought the bottom had dropped off the market?

Yea and crypto will never recover and it will fail completely so mining has absolutely no point. There is no future! /s

Altho point of RX 570 with 16GB is a questionable thing. RX580 would be interesting. 570? Eem.. no.

 

[sixor]

most normal people still think vram is what matters for gpc gaming, they dont know nothing about gpus chips

the same people with geforce 5200 6200 7100 8400gs 210