Ask GN 58: What is Memory Bandwidth? Vega Voltage Validation

By Steve Burke Published September 12, 2017 at 8:05 pm

Hardware

This episode of Ask GN is the last of our GamersNexus content from the combined PAX West & Whistler trip (with other videos still uploading to the GNSteve side-channel). Episode 58 is something of a special episode, having been shot in the “Peak 2 Peak” Gondola, and provided a unique time trials element to answering the questions.

We tackle topics of memory bandwidth (“what is memory bandwidth?”), Vega voltage validation and undervoltage issues, and daisy chained PCIe cable topics.

Episode below:

Timestamps:

00:33 - Enigma_One: "What's the latest on HardwareLuxx's Vega 56 undervolt validation?"

1:39 - Fore1gn: "I have a question regarding memory bandwidth in GPUs - different graphics cards can have different bandwidth, like 200-300- 400 Gbps, what does that specifically mean? How much data the GPU can move per second or something else? Because higher bandwidth doesn't necessarily mean faster card."

4:26 - Streetguru: "Should AMD add an automatic Undervolt Utility To Wattman? Where in the GPU would reder a scene at a user specified frequency, say 1600 mhz for Vega, then gradually scale down the voltage until it sees instability where it hopefully stops itself to prevent a crash? All of the data could then be output to a file where the user could set the states in wattman accordingly. Or could someone write a script to do this with current free software?"

5:44 - Contractor316: "Do you know if there’s any qualitiative performance and/or power consumption difference between using a single, split PCI-e cable or two separate PCI-e cables to power a graphics card? And what's the effect on the PSU?"

7:56 – Vega Voltage checkpoints

Host: Steve Burke
Video: Andrew Coleman

Ask GN

Last modified on September 13, 2017 at 8:05 pm

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.