GHG
Gold Member
Hmm, interesting. I assumed the higher clocked chips would be harder to hit big yields with because the silicon quality needs to be better to ensure the clocks can be reached and maintained as expected.
Overall I think on the APU front Sony and MS basically cancel each other out WRT costs; larger chip will cost more wafer budget but higher-clocked GPU will similarly eat away more due to needing better silicon "quality" therefore tighter yields.
I know people take the report of Sony increasing PS5 production to 10 million as evidence the yields are better than expected and maybe they are, but that figure's been in reference to the run up to the fiscal year's end right? Which originally was 6 million. Dunno if production capacities for the launch batch or end-of-2020 units is really jumping up to scale the revised production numbers or if the bulk of those extra units are for 2021 shipments.
I've always been under the impression that faulty compute units or cores at the time of manufacturing are a much bigger concern. They will be tested up to certain clock speed but as long as everything is within tolerance levels at lower clock speeds then it's cooling that becomes the primary concern. As long as the cooling is up to scratch then the cores/units should also perform as expected at higher clock speeds. A situation like the GTX 780 vs the Titan springs to mind. Some Titan chips had faulty shader units, so those were disabled, they boosted the clocks and then then GTX 780 was born.
That's my understanding at least. But like I said that's based on the assumption that the manufacturing process is the same.
Edit: assuming what

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