FP64 / Double Precision, R9 280x's... so high?

BloodyIron said:
Hey Folks,

This is regarding : https://www.geeks3d.com/20140305/amd-radeon-and-nvidia-geforce-fp32-fp64-gflops-table-computing/

Anyone have any idea why the R9 280x and similar cards have such high FP64/Double Precision performance? Seems higher than so many other far more "powerful" cards.
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More often than not, double prevision is disabled in consumer cards to help differentiate their workstation cards and bring in that extra load of cash. AMD chose not to disable it. nVidia and AMD commonly do this. It's one of the main features of workstation cards. In year's past, a simple driver hack was all that was needed to "enable" the feature. I'm not sure specifically what is being done now, but I do believe it is more than just driver magic anymore.
 
Okay but why is the R9 280x way more powerful at FP64 than even the Vega 56? Or RX 580?

alxlwson said:
More often than not, double prevision is disabled in consumer cards to help differentiate their workstation cards and bring in that extra load of cash. AMD chose not to disable it. nVidia and AMD commonly do this. It's one of the main features of workstation cards. In year's past, a simple driver hack was all that was needed to "enable" the feature. I'm not sure specifically what is being done now, but I do believe it is more than just driver magic anymore.
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Except the LINKED document says otherwise... Attack what I'm talking about, not my character, and we'll get along just fine. Attack me, and I have zero interest in what you have to say.

alxlwson said:
Boy, reading comprehension isn't your...

Double precision is disabled in the others that you mentioned.
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BloodyIron said:
Except the LINKED document says otherwise... Attack what I'm talking about, not my character, and we'll get along just fine. Attack me, and I have zero interest in what you have to say.
Click to expand...

No, he is correct. Hawaii (the 290/390x) was the last consumer AMD card that did not have completely nerfed f64 support (but it was cut compared to the 7970/280x)...

AMD has disabled it on Polaris and VEGA SKUs via a driver level lock, which is why they require signed BIOS roms that they did not require before.

The workstation verisons are the exact same chip with the full fp64 performance enabled.
 
Well then they were unclear on the scope then... interesting though.

I mostly started this thread to see if I was seeing things, or if this was true. Looks like it is true, hah! (that the 280x has such high FP64 capabilities).

ccityinstaller said:
No, he is correct. Hawaii (the 290/390x) was the last consumer AMD card that did not have completely nerfed f64 support (but it was cut compared to the 7970/280x)...

AMD has disabled it on Polaris and VEGA SKUs via a driver level lock, which is why they require signed BIOS roms that they did not require before.

The workstation verisons are the exact same chip with the full fp64 performance enabled.
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Yeah I'm not talking about gaming, I'm talking about tools that can leverage it, like certain video production stuff.

defaultluser said:
It was to compete with Nvidia Fermi, which had 2:1 fp64 on the top end (1:8 limited on consumer cards.)

Nvidia did this to jump-start the CUDA scientific compute market (which usually needs FP64),and was continued with the compute-designed Kepler GK110B.

Of course, that beefcake architecture was ditched with consumer Kepler, in order to bump clock speeds skyward. The FP64 accuracy is also not necessary for games,and thus only makes appearances in scientific compute designed parts.
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I have a R9 -280 Which can do 1.2Ghz if I remember right as I ran it on my 2200g and it really likes Ryzen as you guys need to try AMD vs Intel using Radon cards as see where AMD is at with chipset as all 3 Ryzen cpus and cards I have test ed really are stable if you don't push the ram to hard as my 1600 /290x are well balanced for gaming , it was my dream replacement for ageing x5660 as the stock 65watts is amazing for it's score .

This factory March 2015 release 290x was to be the 390x 4Gb card I do believe .

but love the balance of both at stock https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/28841235?
 
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crazycrave said:
I have a R9 -280 Which can do 1.2Ghz if I remember right as I ran it on my 2200g and it really likes Ryzen as you guys need to try AMD vs Intel using Radon cards as see where AMD is at with chipset as all 3 Ryzen cpus and cards I have test ed really are stable if you don't push the ram to hard as my 1600 /290x are well balanced for gaming , it was my dream replacement for ageing x5660 as the stock 65watts is amazing for it's score .

This factory March 2015 release 290x was to be the 390x 4Gb card I do believe .

but love the balance of both at stock https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/28841235?
Click to expand...


Dude... We need some punctuation. I can't make heads or tails out of that.
 
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