What is asic-quality?

[Bakgrund]

Sitting here trying to overclock my brand new Sapphire Vapor-x 7950, so far i've reached 1150/1450 at stock volt and it seems stable, now i discovered Asic-quality??? What does asic-quality means? I've googled it but no-one seems to know exactly what it's meaning or expain good. My card had an asic-quailty of 71% which i think seems low, most people with 7950's are getting arouind 80 from what i have seen.

 

Thanks!

 

[SMURG]

ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit, and generally describes a computer designed for carrying out one specific set of calculations/instructions very rapidly - since all it does is that one thing, it can do it very quickly.

The best example I can think of is bitcoin miners. GPU mining is more effective than CPU mining because the GPUs have more computational power that they can bring to bear on the mining process. Ergo, they are able to come closer to 'ASIC-quality' - the quality of a machine designed specifically for that task.

I've never come across it used in that setting before, but that's what I think it means. As for the percentage, who knows. If 100% = ASIC quality, 70-80% strikes me as pretty good :)

[Bakgrund]

ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit, and generally describes a computer designed for carrying out one specific set of calculations/instructions very rapidly - since all it does is that one thing, it can do it very quickly.

The best example I can think of is bitcoin miners. GPU mining is more effective than CPU mining because the GPUs have more computational power that they can bring to bear on the mining process. Ergo, they are able to come closer to 'ASIC-quality' - the quality of a machine designed specifically for that task.

I've never come across it used in that setting before, but that's what I think it means. As for the percentage, who knows. If 100% = ASIC quality, 70-80% strikes me as pretty good :)

But does asic-quality measure performance or what does it mean in practice?

[SMURG]

But does asic-quality measure performance or what does it mean in practice?

I'd assume it's a measure of performance yeah, as in it describes how close you are to achieving the performance of an ASIC.

[xAcid9]

What is your default voltage man? Btw my 7950 ASIC quality only 57.8%.  :lol:

[TechFan@ic]

The lower the ASIC quality is, the higher the voltage leakage is, which results in better voltage response thus better overclocks.

[Giac]

The lower the ASIC quality is, the higher the voltage leakage is, which results in better voltage response thus better overclocks.

Not necessarily true. There are a billion threads about this already...almost all of them end up in heated arguments.

 

There is no evidence to suggest that ASIC quality has any bearing on overclocking potential. However I know a lot of people who would be willing to debate that.

[TechFan@ic]

Not necessarily true. There are a billion threads about this already...almost all of them end up in heated arguments.

 

There is no evidence to suggest that ASIC quality has any bearing on overclocking potential. However I know a lot of people who would be willing to debate that.

This was told to me by a graphics Engineer from XFX , I personally did not investigate it, but I would deem a graphics engineer trust worthy enough to take his word for it.

Also higher ASIC quality means the chip requires less voltage to run at the default specifications thus generating less heat, but it also means that the voltage limit is lower & voltage response is weaker.

[Giac]

This was told to me by a graphics Engineer from XFX , I personally did not investigate it, but I would deem a graphics engineer trust worthy enough to take his word for it.

Also higher ASIC quality means the chip requires less voltage to run at the default specifications thus generating less heat, but it also means that the voltage limit is lower & voltage response is weaker.

Possibly....here's what I found while browsing anantech (this applies to the 7970)

 

 

The ASIC Quality screenshot on the right can be evoked from GPU-Z's context menu and is individual for each graphics card and GPU. This feature has been developed for Nvidia’s Fermi (GX10x and GF11x) and AMD’s Southern Islands chips (Radeon HD 78xx and HD 79xx) and is supposed to indicate the quality of the specific GPU, in percent, based on electrical leakage data.

The GPU of our sample of the card has an ASIC quality of 76.6%. The higher this number, the lower voltage the GPU needs to work at the default clock rate and the higher overclocking results you can get with it by increasing its voltage.

According to Alexey Nikolaichuk (the author of RivaTuner and MSI Afterburner), the correlation between voltage and quality is like follows:

 

ASIC quality < 75% - 1.1750 V;

ASIC quality < 80% - 1.1125 V;

ASIC quality < 85% - 1.0500 V;

ASIC quality < 90% - 1.0250 V;

ASIC quality ≤ 100% - 1.0250 V.

 

 

 

Personally I'm still not sure wether ASIC quality has any bearing on OC ability. However I may be totally wrong. To me looking at ASIC quality to determine overclocking performance is like looking at a car tire to determine the top speed.

[Bakgrund]

What is your default voltage man? Btw my 7950 ASIC quality only 57.8%.  :lol:

 

1,168v in full load, 0.95 in idle. :p

[Arshdeep]

As if to be overclocking capabilities. Basically, how the card/chip die fairs... power consumption and overclocking. Higher is of course better. 

[imjustjamei]

ASIC is used mostly for bitcoin mining, most antminers you can't purchase fast enough to get one..so next step down using console video cards with ASIC video cards.  Smaller cryptocurrencies you don't even need a video card to mine currency.