Noob Question

[ShadowDeity]

Heyo,

 

I have something I never understood about graphics cards.  What makes one graphics card better than another (Specs wise)?

 

I also don't understand this... Are more Ghz better?  Or less? 

 

So confused

[Mohenjo]

more ghz IS better, but not always. like my 770 is 1200mhz but it outperforms a 950 which can get up to something like 1500mhz. its like CPUs. The 9590 has 5.0 ghz doesnt mean the i7 3.2 ghz doesnt outperform it. 

[Moonzy]

for comparing GHz, unless its the same exact GPU, comparing GHz is meaningless, since the amount of data one GPU can process in a single clock differs from the other

 

as for comparing specs, if its the same architecture, u can say that more cores = better, but also depends on clock speed

 

best way to see which card is better or worse, run games on it (or professional applications if you're getting gpu for professional uses)

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, ShadowDeity said:

Heyo,

 

I have something I never understood about graphics cards.  What makes one graphics card better than another (Specs wise)?

 

I also don't understand this... Are more Ghz better?  Or less? 

 

So confused

Couple things play into it. Yes GHz do matter but so does power efficiency, architecture, driver support, bus width, PCB and a few others. Depending on what you're looking for in a GPU (gaming, editing, general browsing, etc) will determine which factors you should care about.

[S7117]

7 minutes ago, ShadowDeity said:

Heyo,

 

I have something I never understood about graphics cards.  What makes one graphics card better than another (Specs wise)?

 

I also don't understand this... Are more Ghz better?  Or less? 

 

So confused

The difference in graphics card makers are really the drivers they output for their hardware... Sometimes AMD beats NVIDIA and vise versa. 

 

Hardware wise the number of graphics cores has a good deal in how well a gpu handle tasks like rendering that requires more graphics cores.

 

Another difference is in the VRAM, VRAM like regular RAM helps a processor perform tasks. However VRAM is allocated so only the graphics processor may use it. The more VRAM the more efficiently the GPU can do its task using more VRAM to do more. Like regular processors the speed matters but not as much as the number of cores. 

 

The best way to find the right gpu for you is looking at real performance in games and rendering that meet your demands, not necessarily the specs.

[Ryoutarou97]

10 minutes ago, ShadowDeity said:

Heyo,

 

I have something I never understood about graphics cards.  What makes one graphics card better than another (Specs wise)?

 

I also don't understand this... Are more Ghz better?  Or less? 

 

So confused

Let's compare a 980 and 970. Each GPU is basically a lot of really weak cores and some other stuff which we'll ignore. The 970 has 1664 while the 980 has 2048. There are other things that matter, but if each of those can do one thing per clock the 970 is doing 1,664,000 things per ghz while the 980 does 2,048,000. Other things like VRAM, thermals, and OCing can affect the performance which is why you can't just straight up compare the number of cores on each either. 

[ShadowDeity]

24 minutes ago, Ryoutarou97 said:

Let's compare a 980 and 970. Each GPU is basically a lot of really weak cores and some other stuff which we'll ignore. The 970 has 1664 while the 980 has 2048. There are other things that matter, but if each of those can do one thing per clock the 970 is doing 1,664,000 things per ghz while the 980 does 2,048,000. Other things like VRAM, thermals, and OCing can affect the performance which is why you can't just straight up compare the number of cores on each either. 

Okay, so I have a GTX 660 right now, thinking of upgrading to either a 970 or 980...  Looks like 980 is better.

 

So what is 'Ti' ?  Does it make a difference?

[Kryptyx]

12 minutes ago, ShadowDeity said:

Okay, so I have a GTX 660 right now, thinking of upgrading to either a 970 or 980...  Looks like 980 is better.

 

So what is 'Ti' ?  Does it make a difference?

TI is Nvidia's way of re-branding a card without coming up with a new number scheme. Think of it like a refresh. The 980TI is actually very different than the 980. The 980TI is based on the Titan X making the 980TI a much better card than the 980.

[ShadowDeity]

4 minutes ago, Kryptyx said:

TI is Nvidia's way of re-branding a card without coming up with a new number scheme. Think of it like a refresh. The 980TI is actually very different than the 980. The 980TI is based on the Titan X making the 980TI a much better card than the 980.

Okay, thanks for this!!  I understand better now, actually.

[Ryoutarou97]

9 hours ago, ShadowDeity said:

Okay, thanks for this!!  I understand better now, actually.

I'm not a huge fan of the naming scheme, but if I might explain further (because I don't want to do my homework. Expect this to be long winded. ) about card binning to explain what the 980ti is...

 

The 980 is a full core chip. Some of those chips when they're made don't turn out too great so only maybe 4/5 of the billions of transistors on the thing are good because with that small a scale some are bound to mess up. the worse one is put in a worse bin (not really a bin, I assume) for worse chips. Since it doesn't have enough functional bits to be a 980, it is instead locked to the number of cores that a 970 has and sold as a 970. This helps to use up the worse chips, and since designing such a card is so expensive it saves a lot on not having to design a spereate chip for the 970. The 960 and 950 use the GM-206 core, GM 204 for 970 and 980. The titan x is the full "big maxwell" chip, or the GM-200. The 980ti is basically a slightly cut down version of this (like, 10% or so). It's really much closer not only in design but in performance to a titan x than it is a 980 which is why I don't like the naming scheme.

[ShadowDeity]

On 2016-03-02 at 10:55 PM, Ryoutarou97 said:

I'm not a huge fan of the naming scheme, but if I might explain further (because I don't want to do my homework. Expect this to be long winded. ) about card binning to explain what the 980ti is...

 

The 980 is a full core chip. Some of those chips when they're made don't turn out too great so only maybe 4/5 of the billions of transistors on the thing are good because with that small a scale some are bound to mess up. the worse one is put in a worse bin (not really a bin, I assume) for worse chips. Since it doesn't have enough functional bits to be a 980, it is instead locked to the number of cores that a 970 has and sold as a 970. This helps to use up the worse chips, and since designing such a card is so expensive it saves a lot on not having to design a spereate chip for the 970. The 960 and 950 use the GM-206 core, GM 204 for 970 and 980. The titan x is the full "big maxwell" chip, or the GM-200. The 980ti is basically a slightly cut down version of this (like, 10% or so). It's really much closer not only in design but in performance to a titan x than it is a 980 which is why I don't like the naming scheme.

So what you're saying is, the 970 is basically the same as the 980?

[Ryoutarou97]

1 hour ago, ShadowDeity said:

So what you're saying is, the 970 is basically the same as the 980?

Not at all. I'm saying it has the same core design, but more of it is locked down. The 980 is like a group of 100 people working to peel chestnuts. The 970 is the same except 25 of the people are dead. Obviously the 980 will work faster and do more, but the 970 uses the same structure as the 980.

 

...also the last  eighth of the the 970's chestnut store distributes them more slowly. #RAMGATE