Graphics card architecture question

[James Orme]

Hi all!

This may be very obvious, but I have often seen that Graphics cards and CPU's tend to have a full, unrestricted version, and then a lower performance, yet still performance version with sections of the hardware physically disabled. (see picture)

picture not working: Link http://imgur.com/tZ8DDKc

I was just wondering (and sorry if it's a stupid question, I have always wondered, but not sure exactly how to search what I mean) how is it that people don't just enable these sections? How are the sections disabled?

Any information will be great!

Thanks,
James

 

[galeener]

Some are physically altered at the manufacturer others it is a bios change thats why sometimes flashing a lower ebd same card with the higher bios will enable more performance . You have to be careful though some of these are tested and wont run at the higher performance level tthats why they were restricted. If a manufacturer has super high yields though sometimes they just restrict the performance to cover all market areas.

 

[James Orme]

Hi Galeener,

Thanks so much for your answer, I was thinking that was it. I just think it's interesting like the picture (1070GTX) that that, and the amount of RAM is how they lower the specifications, and you think people would buy 1070 and try to enable these sections, but I can see why if, for example, they sever the links between them.

 

[galeener]

On the 1070 the amount of ram is the same it is just 170 uses gddr5 and the 1080 uses gddr5x which is faster. This has happened before on some other models that used gddr5 and the lower end was gddr3