At the launch of the RX 9070 (XT), AMD sourced most of its memory chips from SK Hynix. Over time, however, a new challenger entered the fray: Samsung. More and more RX 9000s are equipped with Korean memory chips, but there’s a “but”: performance is declining. So we’re not talking about a significant difference, but there is a difference nonetheless .
RX 9070 XT: with Samsung chips, count on losses of up to 2.6%!
A Chinese tester had some “fun” comparing the performance of 22 graphics cards and analyzing the results. It’s clear that models equipped with Samsung chips systematically outperform those with SK Hynix chips, but these results need to be qualified, since the tests were conducted on a single synthetic benchmark: 3DMark Speed Way. What’s more, it turns out that overall, the difference in performance is 2.6% less than cards with Hynix VRAM, which is not very significant. So, on video games, you shouldn’t even feel the difference… or hardly at all. Given these results, of course, the tester contacted AMD to find out what accounted for the difference. According to the Reds, it’s down to the timing of Samsung’s chips, which are less stringent than those of SK Hynix. This information was subsequently confirmed by software such as Clamchower Cache Benchmark, which shows that each memory manufacturer has its own advantages and disadvantages. SK Hynix’s memory chips deliver better performance. In contrast, these tend to run hotter. On the Samsung side, we lose a little in performance, but the memory chips are cooler.
