A MYSTERY GPU?
I asked Nvidia about this. An exchange with PR revealed that the Super line
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months that we’ve had Turing, we’ve been working to improve Turing. Tuning
faster memory clocks, improving processes and yields. This has allowed us to
increase the core count on RTX 2070 Super and 2060 Super.”
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real. I suspect, though, that a well-known process known as “binning” may be
behind at least some the Super line’s magic. (Mind you, that’s not a bad thing.)
When a GPU or CPU die is “baked” (that is, etched) into silicon, the process
doesn’t yield perfect results every time. Rather than getting 100 GPUs that all
perform identically, the chip maker might get 25 that underperform, 50 that
perform on spec, and another 25 that can perform above spec.
The dies that perform above spec can be put in the “bin” for cards where
overclocking is done at the factory or encouraged right out of the box, while
those within spec might make it into reference versions instead. The
underperforming die might have one of several fates: It could be discarded
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overperforming and on-spec dies might be pitched as the premium product (in
our made-up example, 75 percent of the yield), while the underperformers
make their way into the “standard” version.