AMD Encourages Radeon RX 5600 XT Owners To Upgrade Memory To 14 Gbps

cfbcfb said:

Article also fails to mention that at least one card maker, MSI IIRC, put slower ram on their cards, out of spec, to save a couple of dollars. Those won't OC with stability.

The memory and the GPU are shipped as a package from AMD to the board partners, so there is no way for an AIB to "cheap out" on the RAM.

spongiemaster said:

The memory and the GPU are shipped as a package from AMD to the board partners, so there is no way for an AIB to "cheap out" on the RAM.

Why would you think that they are shipped as a package? EVGA regularly uses components out of spec - and some people view them as a top tier manufacturer, rather than a bargain basement product.

spongiemaster said:

The memory and the GPU are shipped as a package from AMD to the board partners, so there is no way for an AIB to "cheap out" on the RAM.

Eh...whoops....facts.

https://techreport.com/news/3468208/msi-rx-5600-xt-15-gbps-memory-speed/

"MSI is reticent to drop this update on all its cards, though; AMD specced the GDDR6 memory onboard the RX 5600 XT to run at 12 Gbps, and that the update could cause more RMAs for consumers. "

So no, AMD doesn't provide/ship anything other than the gpu, manufacturer chooses the dram and MSI cheaped out. Other, specifically small form factor 5600XT's can't do it either, as their cooling solutions called for the slower, cooler ram speed.

Deicidium369 said:

Why would you think that they are shipped as a package? EVGA regularly uses components out of spec - and some people view them as a top tier manufacturer, rather than a bargain basement product.

When these card were released, GamerNexus interviewed some board partners off the record about what they thought about the last minute spec change. One of the board partners stated that AMD ships the RAM and GPU as a package.

Alvar Miles Udell said:

Thing is, the EVGA 2060 KO can be found cheaper than an RX 5600XT, has more performance (or equal performance) than a 5600XT, has more features than a 5600XT, has much better drivers than the 5600XT...so why wouldn't you buy a 2060 KO? AMD's pricing structure for Navi is so FUBAR there's really no reason not to...

I'm not sure where you are seeing those prices, but the lowest-priced 2060 listed on PCPartPicker in the US currently starts at $300, while the lowest-priced 5600 XT starts at $260. That 2060 is priced around 15% higher, not less, and that goes when comparing the more premium models as well. It's also possible to get a 5700 for around the same price as a 2060, a card that's on average around 10% faster, and offers more VRAM. Sure, the 2060 offers a few additional features, but you are either paying extra or trading some performance for them.

I would, however, agree that the 5600 XT launch could have been handled better. Rather than having a last-minute BIOS update to increase stock performance, it might have arguably been better to simply leave performance the same and cut the price a bit. At the $280 suggested price, that leaves a rather large price and performance gap between the 5600 XT and AMD's next cards down, priced in the sub-$200 range. There's nothing to directly compete with the $230 1660 SUPER, a card that already made the 1660 Ti mostly redundant. The updated 5600 XT is roughly 50% faster than the 5500 XT, 580 and 590, but only about 10% behind the 5700. At the original clocks and a $250 launch price, it would have filled that gap much more effectively, especially since some models of the 5700 were already priced not much over $300.

I do get the impression that limited 7nm production might be holding AMD back from being more competitive though, perhaps limiting how low it makes sense to go in terms of pricing on these cards, as they are making their CPUs, GPUs and console APUs all on this node. I suspect they make significantly more profit per 7nm wafer off their CPUs, where up to an 8-core processor requires just a tiny 75 mm2 chiplet, and two of those at a combined 150 mm2 are enough for their 12 and 16-core parts. Sure, there's an additional 12nm IO chip that goes into the CPUs, but there are far more components, including things like GDDR6 VRAM and lots of other parts going into a graphics card, so the margins there have to be far lower. The size of the chip used for even a 5500 XT is over 150 mm2, requiring a similar amount of space on a 7nm wafer as the chiplets used for a $720 Ryzen 3950X or a $430 3900X. The 5600 XT, 5700 and 5700 XT use a chip that is over 250 mm2, not all that far behind the combined area of the chiplets used for AMD's 24 and 32-core Threadripper and Epyc parts. And of course, they are obligated to fulfill orders for those large console processors, also being made on 7nm. So, AMD probably doesn't care all that much about being super-competitive in the desktop GPU space at the moment.

Gamer's Nexus has a nice video about AMD and the ram speed. why some, MSI in particular shipped cards with the 12Gbps because of cost. pretty interesting story.