video card question

[Porter21]

Hey guys, just a quick question. I am starting to oc my ati radeon x850xt to platinum speeds. And when I was looking around on the net I saw most of them labeled as 1080mhz for the memory clock,a nd 520 for the core clock. Then on some webistes it said 520 for the core clock and 540 for the memory clock. Why is it that sometimes the card is labeled at having twice the memory speed. I didn't know if the number needed to be doubled or what. Sorry this sounds noobish, but I had to ask.

Thanks.

 

[dfuze]

From what I have heard, in short, the higher number is when they count the memory going in both directions.

 

[Atheus]

It's because it's DDR I expect. Double Data Rate memory sends data more efficiently at the same clock rate, so the numbers are often doubled for advertising purposes, even though the actual 'memory clock' is still at the lower number.

Originally posted by: dph1077
From what I have heard, in short, the higher number is when they count the memory going in both directions.

{o,o}
|)__)
-"-"-

O RLY?

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

Actually, in simple terms, it means that data is tranmitted twice per clock cycle. So, for example, the 850XT is running at 540 memory bandwidth twice per clock. Therefore, in one clock cycle we have 540 X 2 = 1080, making it double the data per clock.

 

[Porter21]

Thanks for the clear up guys. Sounds like a stupid question, but I figured I would go ahead and try to figure out the true reason. Great to know.