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Speed of GF3 Ti 500 memory???

A

ahsumdude

Senior member
The memory speed of the GF3 is 3.8 nano sec. This specs out to a maximum of 266 MHz (526 MHz DDR). However Nvidia inidicates 460 Mhz on their reference cards. Everyone who has a GF3 can run them at 500Mhz. Is Nvidia using faster DDR ram or are they simply clocking the DDR Ram closer to it max spec? Interestingly, every site that has benched a GF3 Ti 500 has not indicated what the Ram speed is. Hasn't anyone removed the Ram heat sinks?

The Radeon 8500 apparently is going to be released at 275 core and 275 Mhz ram. This equates out to at least 3.636 nanosec ram (550 MHz DDR). However I am certain the Ram is faster. I don't think you can logically think all 8 sticks of ram on the card will perform equally. There should be some headroom there.
 
The GF3 Ti500 has RAM that has a rating of 3.5ns. So they are using faster RAM, and not clocking it closer to its specification. However, as with many other cards, the memory clock is scaled back from what the RAM can run. That helps out with yields and stability.

The 8500 uses 3.6ns RAM in the previews. What shows up on store shelves is anybody's guess right now.
 
"Is Nvidia using faster DDR ram or are they simply clocking the DDR Ram closer to it max spec? Interestingly, every site that has benched a GF3 Ti 500 has not indicated what the Ram speed is. Hasn't anyone removed the Ram heat sinks?"

It will likely be up to the board vendors. I'd expect the lower tier companies to use the slowest they can get away with(4ns wouldn't shock me) while the higher tier companies will use 3.8 or possibly slightly faster and either Gainward or Hercules coming up with a 3.6 or maybe even a 3.5ns offering.
 
I depends on the board vendor as Ben said. Gainward put 5.0ns memory on their GTS, which made it essentially a Pro card when Pro's weren't even available. This is why I guess they had to put 4.5ns on their Pro card because the Pro should be faster. They even put 3.5ns and 4.0ns SDR memory on their MX400 Golden samples. Thats easily240-260MHz.

Although it depends upon the board vendor, I'm sure nVidia has their limits. If a GPU is to have a certain memory bandwidth, then vendors must have their boards at least meet that requirement. I am pretty sure the majority of Ti 500s will come with 3.5ns DDR memory, and the Ti 200 to come with 5.0 ns DDR memory.
 
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