jmke

As you can see, it´s all correct and the clock rates are 470/1300 MHz, as promised. However when we tested the reference card we noticed that RivaTuner tool (by A. Nikolaychuk aka Unwinder) indicated some other clock rate that was about 40MHz higher than nominal (430MHz reference + 40MHz = 470MHz). The matter is that at that time Rivatuner determined the maximal clocking value.

Together with the developer of this utility we started to investigate the matter testing the card with ±5MHz steps and dumping register reports. We found out there were THREE clock rates at once! Now there´s information in the Web that NVIDIA privately mentions more clock rate values as the GPU itself consists of multiple unit, each of which is able to work at its own clock rate. This makes it obscure which clock rate should be considered primary and be placed on package boxes, etc. It would be logical to consider rasterizer and pixel pipeline clock rate primary, but now it turns out this unit is also divisible, as there´s at least ROP and Shader unit.

In other words, this is still not clear, but since both of these sub-units work at the same clock rate, it can be taken as the base. Exactly this value is declared 430MHz of the reference card and 470MHz of this Gainward´s product.

But then what was that 40MHz higher clock rate? Well, it´s geometry unit clock rate. And since it consists of vertex pipelines, we can say they are operating at 470MHz. Right after the G70 announcement ASUS informed that its card will work at this very rate. We haven´t examined this product yet, but can assume that company´s marketing team decided to name 470MHz of the geometry unit as primary. Thus we guess the SmartDoctor utility will indicate this clock rate like the RivaTuner 15.6. Again, these are just our assumptions and, perhaps, Asus, like Gainward, will change the base clock rate as well.

http://www.digit-life.com/news.html?119317#119317

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