Special Q+A: Ed from Sapphire on the Pulse RX570 RX580 Graphics Cards | Level One Techs

Be sure to checkout our review of the Sapphire Pulse 570 and Pulse 580! We had a blast interviewing Ed, and we got some answers on changes between RX400 and RX500 series cards -- at least as far as Sapphire is concerned.



This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://level1techs.com/video/special-qa-ed-sapphire-pulse-rx570-rx580-graphics-cards

Wolf, wolf...
That's pretty...
I'm dead...
And I never stopped laughing ever again...

The thumbnail makes me think ED is laughing all the way to the bank because of this last crypto coin boom

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Cool video guys,
and thanks to ED for being a part of the show answering some questions regarding the cards.

yeeeeah, about the last 5 seconds of that video?

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Patreon Link in the "Listen to this as a Podcast" section still wrong cough (I still believe it may get changed at some point)
/edit it links to: https://www.patreon.com/level1techs :slight_smile:


About the RX400 to RX500 BIOS Flash... I get that he's technically not allowed to endorse this but come on... Couldn't most RX400 Cards be easily clocked to the speeds the 500 cards have? I'm not all that much into overclocking but I think I remember having read that...


About the cooler swapping issue. He kinda sorta states it himself, they use wording that basically says unless you throw that card in a fire you're pretty much good to go. A german site recently specifically asked them about this and their response was just that, unless you physically damage the card/PCB when swapping you're good to go.
This all still not under warranty, but rather sort of goodwill.

Now there's swapping the cooler and just replacing the thermal paste. Of which I've done twice to my 290, and once to my 390. I have yet to do it to my Fury, but every two years I reapply thermal paste.

Yeah, not sure how they handle that since TIM replacement is technically maintenance, but you're still getting the cooler of... so the procedure is very similar. But I guess unless you damage the card somehow... same story. Because you can just as well damage the card when just swapping TIM.

@wendell, think you could ask Ed from Sapphire this question? Would replacing the thermal paste count as voiding warrenty, since he said that taking the cooler off voids it?

Mh... Ed @27:55 ... That's not how this works... that's not how any of this works. Do you even physics? ._. It's a real common misconception tho. As wendell said "It's still producing the heat, it's just better at carrying the heat away"... "The heat gets away before it's produced"... nooo, just.... no.

29:45 "As you increase the framerate, you're also increasing the speed at which everything is taking place"... what is this? The 90s when gamespeed was still based on FPS? Good lord :smiley:

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8:23 - We had a thread about this.

It's unfortunately the case not only with terminology but everything else...

If it's a term that's evolved to have a positive response with the community, the marketers will use it, abuse it, make it their b*tch until it loses its meaning completely.

If it's a good idea, a quality product, a well written piece of software or anything along those lines, someone will try to make a business around it, make a lot of money and then the moment it touches the "semi-corporate" world, money becomes the central motivation and shareholders take priority. It has to grow as much as possible no matter what. Stagnating is like telling the competition "steal this thing and overtake us cause we don't know what we're doing".

Sorry for the rant, good interview. :smiley:

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thats true for emulators. They just lock at 60 fps now and if you unlock it it goes shooooooommmmmmmmm into the hundreds and gamespeed if nuts.

still a good interview though.

Yeah true, didn't think of emulators. But that's mainly because Console games were and still are designed with a specific framerate in mind (just like it was for PCs way back). Doesn't really apply to PCs nowadays tho (unless you're Ubisoft cough).

I love these types of videos where we get some inside knowledge from the creators of hardware or software in question. MORE!

I don't care much for aesthetics and I'm definitely not an enthusiast. I just get whatever has the raw horsepower that I need. And I want it to be of very high quality so that it would last. Sapphire fits that description. Stuff like ASUS ROG doesn't.
And I consider it a victory if I can assemble a PC to my exact needs using as little money as possible. I'm still proud as shit that I found an i5-4590 (that I'm still using) for 160 euros less than 6 months after it has been released.

He was probably going to say "I know we had an ... NDA to sign or we'd never get an AMD chip again".

No need to apologize, Ed has been known for his rants streamed online daily.

heh...

Where might I find those?

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Well i kinda agree with Ed on this item exally.
What he says is true for certain cards, the power delivery is spec´d up,
for some RX580 cards.
This means if you flash such a RX580 bios on a RX480 card that has a diffrent vrm,
you might easally end up bricking the card.
Or even worse you could potentially burn out the vrm at some point,
if it turns out to be working luckally, but overvolting.
Especially If you have a crappy RX480 card like the Powercolor for example.

Till now i have only seen a succes flash of a XFX RX580 GTS bios onto a XFX RX480 GTR card,
this because they seem to share the same pcb.
This should basiclly also count for the HiS RX480 ICEQ2 Roaring turbo,
since that particular card is basiclly the same as the XFX RX480 GTR with a diffrent branding on it.
But then its very important to use the lowest clocked bios you could find.
Otherwise you could still run into potential issues with getting the card to work.
Still i cannot really recommend it to anybody doing this,
if you not know what are doing, and if you dont have any knowledge about pcb's and vrm implementations.
Diffrences in memory clocks is also a thing that you should be aware of.

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It's kinda sad that Pre-UEFI machines aren't supported anymore and they don't support half height. I have a 775 machine that can be upgraded to a core 2 quad with 8GB of RAM with a half height slot.

I kinda miss the half-height form-factor, it's a cheap little engine that could at LAN Parties and no, I don't want to swap the case, it kills the benefit of the compact size. I like having cheap garbage looking computers that can game. I hope Vega will mark a release for 75w half-height GPUs that can at lease work with an UEFI machine that performs better than a GTX 285.

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