2nd hand RX 580 has higher memory clock than stock without any overclocking software

[Chris414]

Hi guys I might need some help to explain this weird things on my new pair of GPUs.

 

I just recently bought 2 2nd hand Power Color RX 580 4GB GDDR5 graphic cards for my family PCs. While both cards has been performing great without any issues, I noticed that one of the RX 580 has a significant higher FPS in benchmark (around 15% higher FPS in Furmark @122 fps compared to the other card @105 fps). When I checked the Radeon Adrenalin software, I noticed that the only difference between the two is in the memory clock where the higher performant card has 2000 MHz VRAM and the other card has 1750 MHz VRAM. From Power Color website, the stock VRAM clock should be at 1750 MHz. What leaves me confused is that I'm not running any overclocking software on the 2000 MHz VRAM RX 580 and I would like to know whether it is possible to change the default GPU VRAM clock within the RX 580 itself?

 

Thank you for your response

 

My higher performant RX 580 VRAM Clock

 

The stock Power Color RX 580 VRAM Clock from its website

[SupaKomputa]

Stock should be 1750mhz.

Maybe the previous owner is using custom firmware.

You can dial down the speed for daily use.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Very Likely that the VBIOS has been flashed to another model (For that Extra VRAM clock) so out of the box its pre-applied an Overclock in a sense...
The old user must have preferred this to having MSI running or something.. or used it for Mining and had a few VBIOS's laying around to use, and didn't go back to stock when sold.

Power color is the one you have, but IT internally has slightly raised specs from another model,..by the vBios changes.

[-rascal-]

The PowerColor RX-580 8GB versions have the GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 2000MHz.

I'm thinking the previous owner flashed / modified your RX-580 4GB vBIOS so matches the 8GB variants' speed.

 

The GDDR5 VRAM is able to handle those speeds, a it higher actually.

IMO, it's is stable, just leave it at 2000 MHz.

 

EDIT: 

Looks like the GDDR5 memory chips PowerColor used on this cards can reach 2250+ MHz (via overclock),  especially if equipped with the Samsung memory chips.

[Chris414]

On 9/29/2020 at 7:48 AM, SupaKomputa said:

Stock should be 1750mhz.

Maybe the previous owner is using custom firmware.

You can dial down the speed for daily use.

 

On 9/29/2020 at 7:49 AM, SkilledRebuilds said:

Very Likely that the VBIOS has been flashed to another model (For that Extra VRAM clock) so out of the box its pre-applied an Overclock in a sense...
The old user must have preferred this to having MSI running or something.. or used it for Mining and had a few VBIOS's laying around to use, and didn't go back to stock when sold.

Power color is the one you have, but IT internally has slightly raised specs from another model,..by the vBios changes.

 

On 9/29/2020 at 8:05 AM, -rascal- said:

The PowerColor RX-580 8GB versions have the GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 2000MHz.

I'm thinking the previous owner flashed / modified your RX-580 4GB vBIOS so matches the 8GB variants' speed.

 

The GDDR5 VRAM is able to handle those speeds, a it higher actually.

IMO, it's is stable, just leave it at 2000 MHz.

 

EDIT: 

Looks like the GDDR5 memory chips PowerColor used on this cards can reach 2250+ MHz (via overclock),  especially if equipped with the Samsung memory chips.

Thank you for the reply guys. After tinkering with the RX 580 for a week, I found that the Power Color Red Dragon RX 580 4 GB GDDR5 variant has VBIOS switch which can be set to either the stock VBIOS or the non-stock VBIOS. It seems that the previous owner has indeed altered the VBIOS in someway to overclock the card and I can change the VBIOS to stock just by toggling the switch. However, as suggested by -rascal- I will use the overclocked VBIOS because there are no drawbacks that I'm aware of and the performance boost is quite significant

 

Thank You very much guys