AMD Vega builders thread - rx 64 & rx 56

[Shmee]

Agreed with hearing that about the gigabyte card. I would honestly only recommend sapphire, asus or powercolor for the most part. They have great custom coolers.

 

[Paratus]

So is Vega 64 the card to get right now? Also I could be crazy here, but I could have sworn some one said there is a 16gb version? Would this be the best card or doesnt it matter?

It really depends.

Price is really first deal breaker because they perform close enough that it will be hard to see much difference outside of benchmarking or a few outlier games.

Some other condsiderations are what resolution are your planning to play at and how important is power use to you.

NV has much better power/performance metrics this generation. Vega 64 tends to run hot and use quite a bit of power.

I have a Powercolor Red Devil RX Vega 56 that runs fairly cool and quiet (especially when undervolted) and is in spitting distance of the 1080. But even undervolted it’s using a bit more power than the 1070Ti or 1080.

So if you definitely want to go Radeon I suggest best priced aftermarket RX Vega 56.

If you want the fastest Radeon then aftermarket Vega 64.

The only 16GB Vega I know about was the originally $1K Frontier Edition. But that was Prosumer card with some hybrid professional/gaming drivers.

 

[Paratus]

As an example in 3Dmark Timespy mildly OC’d and undervolted my card gets

• 7234 / 7025 - Overall / Graphics
• @ 208W

The 1080 stock is generally around 7200-7300 overall score.

 

[EXCellR8]

'Tis a say day but I've just sold off my RX Vega 64 LE, so I'm down to the one Sapphire reference card. The price on them has come down a lot so if you're still in the market for one it's much more forgiving now. I may actually scoop a liquid card at some point but I'll most likely hold off for a bit.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

First off, Thank you guys for the very fast replies!! Next, my Budget is $500 give or take $50 bucks. I plan on playing at 1080p for now but want to do 4k in the very very near future. I also watch a lot of movies so which ever card I get will have to be able to support up to 4k blu-ray standards and have HDMI 2.0.
I was all set to grab the Gigabyte or Red Devil Vega 64 but after watching a crap load of video reviews I am unsure what to do now. Everyone is trash talking the Gigabyte card and the other cards are like double the power consumption compared to Nvidia cards.
"Nvidia GTX1080 is 180w and AMD Vega is 300w". I was wanting to go Vega for the high shader count and way higher bit rate. its something like 2048-bit and 4096 Stream Processors vs nvidia's 256-bit and 2560 cores.
I was thinking that with AMD's higher spec's, it would be better future proofed and could be better adapted for future games?? Am I wrong?? I guess I have spec blindness.

 

[thilanliyan]

At stock the Vega cards will use more power than the equivalent nV cards, but it is relatively easy to undervolt the Vegas.

 

[EXCellR8]

The choice becomes easier if you decide to use 4K and either G-Sync or FreeSync...

 

[Justinbaileyman]

The choice becomes easier if you decide to use 4K and either G-Sync or FreeSync...

So what would that choice be?

 

[Paratus]

First off, Thank you guys for the very fast replies!! Next, my Budget is $500 give or take $50 bucks. I plan on playing at 1080p for now but want to do 4k in the very very near future. I also watch a lot of movies so which ever card I get will have to be able to support up to 4k blu-ray standards and have HDMI 2.0.
I was all set to grab the Gigabyte or Red Devil Vega 64 but after watching a crap load of video reviews I am unsure what to do now. Everyone is trash talking the Gigabyte card and the other cards are like double the power consumption compared to Nvidia cards.
"Nvidia GTX1080 is 180w and AMD Vega is 300w". I was wanting to go Vega for the high shader count and way higher bit rate. its something like 2048-bit and 4096 Stream Processors vs nvidia's 256-bit and 2560 cores.
I was thinking that with AMD's higher spec's, it would be better future proofed and could be better adapted for future games?? Am I wrong?? I guess I have spec blindness.

Vega does consume a lot of power, especially 64 when OC’d.

However the Red Devil has 3 separate BIOS’s which lets you tune the card without doing to much work other than flipping the switch. (This data is for my 56 not 64)

BIOS / Avg Core Voltage / Peak PWR /3DM TS score

• Cool and Quiet / 0.98V / 197W / 6773
• Standard / 1.04V / 220W / 7109
• OC Bios / 1.04V / 248W / 7123
• OC Bios OC’d Core & Mem / 1.07V / 271W / 7295

As for future proofing. AMD has historically been pretty good about improving performance on their older parts. (I’m still using a 7970GHz edition in my old rig. It still runs everything fine at 1080P and a few adjustments)

However it’s hard to say what will happen in the future. NV has a stranglehold on the current PC graphics market. AMD has the console market. What that means for performance of future games and console ports who knows.

 

[Paratus]

So what would that choice be?

Price based.

In general the same new monitor will cost $100-$200 more for G-sync (NV).

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I dont plan to do any overclocking at all and will run everything at stock settings.Don't mind under volting as long as it doesn't cause any problems.Should I go used or new if going Vega 64? Also what would a reasonable price be for a used Vega 64? Looks like new they are going for $500-$550 on good days.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I dont plan to do any overclocking at all and will run everything at stock settings.Don't mind under volting as long as it doesn't cause any problems.Should I go used or new if going Vega 64? Also what would a reasonable price be for a used Vega 64? Looks like new they are going for $500-$550 on good days.

Came out of lurk mode to address this post.

I have a Vega FE (aircooled reference design). I consider my silicon to be "bad" since I can't run the core voltage lower than 1100mV with any kind of stability. But that is still lower than the 1200-1250mV you will see on a lot of cards as the default. Obviously you will want to lower the voltage on any Vega 64.

BUT

Lowering voltage = overclocking, unless you also cap the clockspeed. Let me explain.

In the real world, a lot of Vega 64s/Vega FEs out there are running at 1350-1400 MHz if they are not tuned very carefully. You have to undervolt them, increase power limit to +50%, and then crank up the fan to prevent it from bouncing off the temp limit. On my Vega FE, I can make it run a full benchmark like Superposition at 1585 MHz if I use these settings and have a max/target temp of 85C. But I have to run the fan at 4000rpm to accomplish this. I might be able to get away with something a little slower, but not by much. In fact, here are some behavioral traits of my Vega FE that may help you understand what you're dealing with when running a Vega (all fan speeds are 4000rpm constant, using Vega FE reference air cooler, 1100mV core voltage, 1000 MHz RAM speed, 1000mV RAM voltage, Temp Target = Max Temp) while benchmarking Superposition using standard 1080p settings:

Pow Lim: 50% Temp Target 85C: 1585 MHz constant clockspeed, score of 15082
Pow Lim 50% Temp Target 65C: 1460-1515 MHz clockspeed, score of 14704
Pow Lim 0% Temp Target 85C: 1440-1510 MHz clockspeed AND RAM dipped to 800 MHz at a few points, score of 14343
Pow Lim 0% Temp Target 65C: 1446-1518 MHz clockspeed, no RAM dips, score of 14337

For reference:

Card running bone stock: 1318-1428 MHz clockspeed, multiple RAM dips as low as 167 MHZ (?!?), score of 13127. Also it hit 85C, while none of the above runs went above 73C!

So what is the takeaway?

Air-cooled Vega's default clockspeed is 1585 MHz. Default RAM is 945 MHz. Anything lower than that is throttling or underclocking. You may have to underclock your card (which you can do; more on this later) to hit power targets if you don't like what your card pulls from the wall. You will probably have to increase power limits just to get the card to run at its rated clockspeed, and you of course have to undervolt to help make that happen. The chip really wants to run below its temp target, or else it'll thermal throttle, and it will also engage in power-level-based throttling if you have the wrong combination of clockspeed and temp. Higher temps = less efficiency = more throttling, even if you are below your temp target.

So basically, the trick is to undervolt, overcool, and run up those power limits. If you don't run up the power limits, then you will get some limit throttling, but not a whole lot (see above). You will still never get the GPU running at full speed for any sustained workload.

Just undervolting the card and leaving everything else alone will have the effect of making the card run a little cooler, so it will throttle less. You're still leaving some performance on the table, of course. RAISING voltage will do you no good, unless you bring something like watercooling to the table. Vega is so temp-limited that it is not even funny. Regardless, you may find power consumption before and after undervolting to be about the same due to the higher clockspeeds. You would probably have to undervolt and limit GPU clocks to get real power savings; alternatively, you can cut down on the power limit.

Now on to the RAM speed: the RAM on Vega is kind of picky. If you do anything to limit GPU clock or lower power limits, it can/will encourage the card to throttle RAM speed, even when cooling is sufficient. RAM speed seems to throttle more from hitting power limitations than anything else. It will also throttle if you artificially limit GPU speed, even if you are within your stated power limits AND below your temp target. Typically it wants to throttle to 800 MHz, though as you can see from the stock run above, it can engage in some truly odd behavior if you don't tweak settings yourself.

For point-of-reference, I changed all settings in Wattman using the 18.4.1 "gaming" drivers. I haven't found a utility yet that supports VegaFE outside of Wattman. 18.7.1 is not yet available in "gaming" mode for Vega FE. Also, the base system is an 1800x @ 4.0 GHz w/ 16GB @ DDR4-3466 CAS/CL 14.

As far as used/new goes, keep in mind that most used Vegas were probably used for mining at some point. It might not matter. I almost like the reference cooler better than some of the aftermarket solutions, since it looks like the reference beast CAN keep an aircooled card @ 1585 MHz if you let it make enough noise. The aftermarket units? Hard to say . . .

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Came out of lurk mode to address this post.

I have a Vega FE (aircooled reference design). I consider my silicon to be "bad" since I can't run the core voltage lower than 1100mV with any kind of stability. But that is still lower than the 1200-1250mV you will see on a lot of cards as the default. Obviously you will want to lower the voltage on any Vega 64.

BUT

Lowering voltage = overclocking, unless you also cap the clockspeed. Let me explain.

In the real world, a lot of Vega 64s/Vega FEs out there are running at 1350-1400 MHz if they are not tuned very carefully. You have to undervolt them, increase power limit to +50%, and then crank up the fan to prevent it from bouncing off the temp limit. On my Vega FE, I can make it run a full benchmark like Superposition at 1585 MHz if I use these settings and have a max/target temp of 85C. But I have to run the fan at 4000rpm to accomplish this. I might be able to get away with something a little slower, but not by much. In fact, here are some behavioral traits of my Vega FE that may help you understand what you're dealing with when running a Vega (all fan speeds are 4000rpm constant, using Vega FE reference air cooler, 1100mV core voltage, 1000 MHz RAM speed, 1000mV RAM voltage, Temp Target = Max Temp) while benchmarking Superposition using standard 1080p settings:

Pow Lim: 50% Temp Target 85C: 1585 MHz constant clockspeed, score of 15082
Pow Lim 50% Temp Target 65C: 1460-1515 MHz clockspeed, score of 14704
Pow Lim 0% Temp Target 85C: 1440-1510 MHz clockspeed AND RAM dipped to 800 MHz at a few points, score of 14343
Pow Lim 0% Temp Target 65C: 1446-1518 MHz clockspeed, no RAM dips, score of 14337

For reference:

Card running bone stock: 1318-1428 MHz clockspeed, multiple RAM dips as low as 167 MHZ (?!?), score of 13127. Also it hit 85C, while none of the above runs went above 73C!

So what is the takeaway?

Air-cooled Vega's default clockspeed is 1585 MHz. Default RAM is 945 MHz. Anything lower than that is throttling or underclocking. You may have to underclock your card (which you can do; more on this later) to hit power targets if you don't like what your card pulls from the wall. You will probably have to increase power limits just to get the card to run at its rated clockspeed, and you of course have to undervolt to help make that happen. The chip really wants to run below its temp target, or else it'll thermal throttle, and it will also engage in power-level-based throttling if you have the wrong combination of clockspeed and temp. Higher temps = less efficiency = more throttling, even if you are below your temp target.

So basically, the trick is to undervolt, overcool, and run up those power limits. If you don't run up the power limits, then you will get some limit throttling, but not a whole lot (see above). You will still never get the GPU running at full speed for any sustained workload.

Just undervolting the card and leaving everything else alone will have the effect of making the card run a little cooler, so it will throttle less. You're still leaving some performance on the table, of course. RAISING voltage will do you no good, unless you bring something like watercooling to the table. Vega is so temp-limited that it is not even funny. Regardless, you may find power consumption before and after undervolting to be about the same due to the higher clockspeeds. You would probably have to undervolt and limit GPU clocks to get real power savings; alternatively, you can cut down on the power limit.

Now on to the RAM speed: the RAM on Vega is kind of picky. If you do anything to limit GPU clock or lower power limits, it can/will encourage the card to throttle RAM speed, even when cooling is sufficient. RAM speed seems to throttle more from hitting power limitations than anything else. It will also throttle if you artificially limit GPU speed, even if you are within your stated power limits AND below your temp target. Typically it wants to throttle to 800 MHz, though as you can see from the stock run above, it can engage in some truly odd behavior if you don't tweak settings yourself.

For point-of-reference, I changed all settings in Wattman using the 18.4.1 "gaming" drivers. I haven't found a utility yet that supports VegaFE outside of Wattman. 18.7.1 is not yet available in "gaming" mode for Vega FE. Also, the base system is an 1800x @ 4.0 GHz w/ 16GB @ DDR4-3466 CAS/CL 14.

As far as used/new goes, keep in mind that most used Vegas were probably used for mining at some point. It might not matter. I almost like the reference cooler better than some of the aftermarket solutions, since it looks like the reference beast CAN keep an aircooled card @ 1585 MHz if you let it make enough noise. The aftermarket units? Hard to say . . .

Thanks for coming out of lurk mode to share this info!!
Well I was gonna go for an after market card and not a FE style card, but all this seems like a great deal of work just to get the card up and running.Good grief I just want to do plug and play and be done with it.Really this is just to much to deal with for me. Now heavily considering going Nvidia and just getting a 1070 ti/1080 ti or the 11xx equivalent if it comes out quick enough or what ever I can get for my $500-$550.

 

[Paratus]

Thanks for coming out of lurk mode to share this info!!
Well I was gonna go for an after market card and not a FE style card, but all this seems like a great deal of work just to get the card up and running.Good grief I just want to do plug and play and be done with it.Really this is just to much to deal with for me. Now heavily considering going Nvidia and just getting a 1070 ti/1080 ti or the 11xx equivalent if it comes out quick enough or what ever I can get for my $500-$550.

For what @DrMrLordX wss talking about NV is no better. Both manufacturers have built in boost clocks that are governed by power delivery and temperature. You can literally ‘OC’ your card by getting a better case that delivers more cooling to the card. With better cooling the boost algorithm will increase the core clock. Conversely poor cooling will slow the card.

If you don’t want to deal with it (and at 1080P you won’t need to with any of these cards) just plug in and play.

At 4K your going to have to tweak to get playable frames in many games at high setting with any of these cards.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

For what @DrMrLordX wss talking about NV is no better. Both manufacturers have built in boost clocks that are governed by power delivery and temperature. You can literally ‘OC’ your card by getting a better case that delivers more cooling to the card. With better cooling the boost algorithm will increase the core clock. Conversely poor cooling will slow the card.

If you don’t want to deal with it (and at 1080P you won’t need to with any of these cards) just plug in and play.

At 4K your going to have to tweak to get playable frames in many games at high setting with any of these cards.

Oh ok I thought he was saying I had to adjust all kings of settings to get it to run even at stock settings. If that is the case then no thanks. I have been buying Gpu's of all sorts for the past 25 years or so never really had to do any messing around with power settings or memory or clock speeds unless I was trying to do overclocking. Its always been plug it in install drivers and go. I dont mind running at stock and undervolting to get lower power usage but thats it.I have really good air flow in my case so not to worried about heat issues within reason. I had bid on 2 cards for $450 + $45 for shipping on ebay but I got out bid and dont want to go over $500 for used electronics specially GPU's cause they could have been used for mining.

 

[DrMrLordX]

For what @DrMrLordX wss talking about NV is no better. Both manufacturers have built in boost clocks that are governed by power delivery and temperature. You can literally ‘OC’ your card by getting a better case that delivers more cooling to the card. With better cooling the boost algorithm will increase the core clock. Conversely poor cooling will slow the card.

If you don’t want to deal with it (and at 1080P you won’t need to with any of these cards) just plug in and play.

At 4K your going to have to tweak to get playable frames in many games at high setting with any of these cards.

That is essentially correct. I have no experience with competing NV cards like the 1070Ti or 1080, but I can say that cooling = overclocking for Vega.

Oh ok I thought he was saying I had to adjust all kings of settings to get it to run even at stock settings. If that is the case then no thanks. I have been buying Gpu's of all sorts for the past 25 years or so never really had to do any messing around with power settings or memory or clock speeds unless I was trying to do overclocking. Its always been plug it in install drivers and go. I dont mind running at stock and undervolting to get lower power usage but thats it.I have really good air flow in my case so not to worried about heat issues within reason. I had bid on 2 cards for $450 + $45 for shipping on ebay but I got out bid and dont want to go over $500 for used electronics specially GPU's cause they could have been used for mining.

AMD set an unrealistically high stock clockspeed. It will constantly try to boost to 1585 MHz (and fail). The "real" stock for most of these cards is somewhere in the ballpark of 1350 MHz GPU, and God-only-knows-what MHz RAM (usually 945 MHz but it dips).

If all you want is plug&play, it'll do 1080p no problem. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that we aren't dealing with Hawaii or even Fiji anymore. It's not like you can go into TRIXX or AfterBurner, do a global undervolt on the card, and expect clocks to stay about the same while it runs a little cooler. Now it wants to boost all over the place and do silly things on its own. Seems like NV is doing the same thing. And BIOS mods? Good luck with that.

Some extra data:

The best and worst runs I had in my previous post (~15000 Superposition 1080p medium vs 13127) had a power delta of ~110W as measured at the wall by a Kill-a-Watt. Total system power for the default was around 400W, while the 15082 run sat around 510W. Pushing Vega close to its boost clock of 1585 MHz comes at a price.

I also decided to do some testing with settings you might want to use with an RX Vega 64. I reset everything to stock, undervolted to 1100 mV (my lowest possible voltage) and let her rip with different temp targets. Results:

Default (auto fan control): 1420-1490 MHz clockspeed, score of 14024. Kill-a-Watt showed power draw trending towards 470W system power near the end of the run.
75C: 1419-1508 MHz clockspeed, score of 14006. Kill-a-Watt showed power draw trending towards 450W, though it stayed closer to 440W for most of the run.
65C: 1438-1515 MHz clockspeed,score of 14094. Kill-a-Watt showed power draw between 440-450W, with one "spike" of 470W.

Summary: Lowering your voltage will increase clockspeed and power draw over default. In my case, it brought power draw up by 40-70W depending on cooling. Lowering your temp limit will make the fan get more aggressive (if possible), and in some cases it will improve efficiency and performance. Performance also markedly increased. I also used HWiNFO64 to monitor average card power draw (in this case, "chip power") through the run and found that the lowest draw (~165W) came from the 65C run. Note that total card draw may be higher since "chip power" is nothing but GPU power + memory power, and those numbers themselves may not be entirely accurate.

Next I went back and reran the above tests with the exact same settings, only I reduced GPU clockspeed by 8.5%. Results:

Default: Lots of problems here! The fan control went wacky, letting the GPU overheat a lot. Also saw high RAM hotspot temps, which is bad. I had to nix these results since I could not figure out what was the problem.
Default, but forcing constant 2000 rpm fan speed: 1335-1391 MHz clockspeed, score of 13102. Kill-a-Watt showed ~440W power draw. Really bad run.
75C (still auto fan control): 1344-1404 MHz clockspeed, score of 13332. Kill-a-Watt showed ~430W power draw. Some improvement.
65C (auto fan control): Holy throttling Batman! The default fan profile could not keep the GPU below 65, causing massive throttling. Score of 10372, with Kill-a-Watt showing ~310W. Yeouch.
65C (4000 rpm fan): Stayed close to 1385 MHz clockspeed, for a score of just over 13400. ~440W power draw. Hmm.

Summary: Lowering your clockspeed only helps if you keep the GPU cool! And if you do, you still may pull more power than default. Also reductions in clockspeed seem to apply to whatever boost map they're using, so it throttles first according to the boost map, and then adjusts clocks according to your clockspeed percentage.

Then I reran the tests with -9% power limit instead of reducing clockspeed (clockspeed was default). Results:

Default: 1375-1445 MHz clockspeed, score of 13494. Kill-a-Watt showed 410-440W power draw, with ~425W being the apparent average. RAM throttled rapidly to 800 MHz.
75C: Bounced off the temp limit, resulting in throttling. Poor results (). The Kill-a-Watt showed ~360W power draw.
65C: Scratched, see above.

Summary: Lowering your power limit causes RAM throttling, which may result in some janky behavior depending on drivers or the application. There is some weird GPU clockspeed throttling behavior going on here, as in the case of GPU clockspeed reduction.

Finally I set everything to default, cranked the fan up to 4000 RPM, and set temp limit/temp target to 85C. Result:

4000 rpm + 85C: 1399-1445 MHz clockspeed, score of 13681. Kill-a-Watt showed ~470W pulled from the wall during most of the run (flux between 460-480).

Final Summary: Tweaking RX Vega 64/Vega FE is hard. Lower voltage, and it clocks higher and draws more power. Cool it more? It clocks higher and draws more power. Reduce clockspeed target and/or power limit? Invite funky throttling behavior.

I have yet to figure out how to get "free performance" from these cards like I could with Hawaii. With Hawaii, you could lower voltage, increase clocks, play with the BIOS a little if you felt like it, and get more MHz for less power. Hell all you had to do was lower voltage and let her rip. No need for higher clocks unless you really wanted them.

If all you want is 1080p, use the default. There's no real way to reduce power draw without hurting performance.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Thanks for the tests. Which version of card are you using?? I hope its a FE of some kind and not an aftermarket version. Still trying to snag a Red Devil or a Strix for around $400-$450.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Thanks for the tests. Which version of card are you using?? I hope its a FE of some kind and not an aftermarket version. Still trying to snag a Red Devil or a Strix for around $400-$450.

Mine is an aircooled FE. Hopefully if you get an aftermarket card, you will get something that will pull less power from the wall than mine.

 

[coercitiv]

Final Summary: Tweaking RX Vega 64/Vega FE is hard. Lower voltage, and it clocks higher and draws more power. Cool it more? It clocks higher and draws more power. Reduce clockspeed target and/or power limit? Invite funky throttling behavior.

My experience was much simpler once I stumbled upon the registry mods. I guess crypto miners have their positive use after all

I have a Sapphire Pulse 56 and I was looking to undervolt/underclock the core while raising memory clocks. I ended up spending some extra time to generate my custom registry profile and I'm currently running with something close to 1400Mhz/950mV for the core and 950Mhz/950mV for the memory. (voltage may be a bit lower, will have to check tonight) When performance starts to be an issue I'll raise clocks and loosen the voltage a bit, but until then I'm a happy efficiency camper.

Also, in the very limited testing I performed while playing around with different voltage values, the way Vega performs when running voltage very low is quite intriguing: run the voltage too low and the card will lower clocks as well to compensate. There's probably a limit to this, but as far as the increments I was using there was clear correlation between lower voltage and max clocks (they dropped progressively from 1380-1390 towards 1300).

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Mine is an aircooled FE. Hopefully if you get an aftermarket card, you will get something that will pull less power from the wall than mine.

Could these issues only be with FE cards and not aftermarket multi fan options?? How is the Gigabyte After market version?? I know some people on this thread said to stay away from gigabyte, but would that be the FE or the Aftermarket version or both?? Trying to do as much research and reading and watching reviews as I can before I go and spend $500 bucks on a gpu. That is a huge amount of money to me right now. So far almost all the video reviews I have watched but one, all claim to buy nvidia equivalent instead of Vega due to heat issues, throttling, power consumption, speed , and price. Problem is I dont know anything about the 1070 ti or 1080 or what ever the equivalent is. besides isn't the 11xx getting ready to release. Is this even a good time to upgrade to a top end GPU? I mean I am not trying to waist your guys time I just dont know what to do at this point and would really like to upgrade and have the option of playing games at 4k.

 

[DrMrLordX]

My experience was much simpler once I stumbled upon the registry mods. I guess crypto miners have their positive use after all

I have a Sapphire Pulse 56 and I was looking to undervolt/underclock the core while raising memory clocks. I ended up spending some extra time to generate my custom registry profile and I'm currently running with something close to 1400Mhz/950mV for the core and 950Mhz/950mV for the memory. (voltage may be a bit lower, will have to check tonight) When performance starts to be an issue I'll raise clocks and loosen the voltage a bit, but until then I'm a happy efficiency camper.

Also, in the very limited testing I performed while playing around with different voltage values, the way Vega performs when running voltage very low is quite intriguing: run the voltage too low and the card will lower clocks as well to compensate. There's probably a limit to this, but as far as the increments I was using there was clear correlation between lower voltage and max clocks (they dropped progressively from 1380-1390 towards 1300).

Interesting. I would look into that myself if I didn't have a decent mining profile already (-20% power limit, 1075 MHz RAM, 1100mV GPU voltage, 4000 rpm fan). For gaming I just make it run balls out at 1585 MHz. Works a treat.

Maybe I could do better on the mining but eh, I'm lazy.

Interesting note on the low voltage. If Justinbaileyman can get a sample that'll run with voltages lower than mine, maybe he can throttle card speed effectively without resorting to the methods I tested above. My card simply won't behave properly at voltages below 1100mV.

Could these issues only be with FE cards and not aftermarket multi fan options??

It could be that the aftermarket cards have different boost maps. See above about the Red Devil. I think all the reference RX Vega 64s exhibit similar behavior though. So you may wish to avoid those.

How is the Gigabyte After market version??

No idea.

but would that be the FE or the Aftermarket version or both??

FE cards only come direct from AMD. Sapphire probably made them.

Trying to do as much research and reading and watching reviews as I can before I go and spend $500 bucks on a gpu. That is a huge amount of money to me right now. So far almost all the video reviews I have watched but one, all claim to buy nvidia equivalent instead of Vega due to heat issues, throttling, power consumption, speed , and price. Problem is I dont know anything about the 1070 ti or 1080 or what ever the equivalent is. besides isn't the 11xx getting ready to release. Is this even a good time to upgrade to a top end GPU? I mean I am not trying to waist your guys time I just dont know what to do at this point and would really like to upgrade and have the option of playing games at 4k.

Vega can handle 4k, it can handle 1080p, it's just gonna use more power than a similarly-priced NV card. If your PSU can handle it then I see no real problem. Buying into NV-land walls you off from Freesync and may introduce other issues.

I don't know if now is a good time to get a high-end GPU. It's getting difficult for me to figure out exactly what AMD will release as a successor to RX Vega 64. Something in Q2 2019? I don't really know. NV has the 11xx series coming for whatever that's worth. I pay them little mind these days, since I do not like giving my money to JHH. That's just my personal agenda, though. No need to make it yours unless you think the same way.

On the plus side, now may be the first time ever that you have a reasonable chance at getting an RX Vega 64 at or below the original MSRP. Hell I was lucky to get my FE for $750, and that was a fluke.

 

[NomanA]

Price based.

In general the same new monitor will cost $100-$200 more for G-sync (NV).

Unless, you plan to use VRR (variable refresh rate) over HDMI 2.1, which new TVs will increasingly support, and in which case AMD Vega cards have the edge. The HDMI VRR spec is based on DisplayPort AdaptiveSync technology, which the upcoming drivers should support on Polaris/Vega cards, if they don't do so already.

 

[EXCellR8]

Hopefully prices continue to fall... I wouldn't mind having a RX56 for my Ryzen 5 box.

When 3rd gen 'ripper chips are released I'll probably move the Ryzen 1700 to that machine though so I can rebuild my main computer to HEDT; the Vega 64 will likely go with it if I still have it by then.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Still haven't bought anything, still bouncing back and forth between a GTX 1080 and the Vega 64.
I had went on ebay and bid on several cards but got out bid every time at the last second.
They are running a pretty darn good special for the Gigabyte GTX 1080 at newegg for only $450.
If i can get the Red Devil or Strix Vega 64 for $450 then I will hop all over it. I just dont see the point that they are charging $600 for Vega 64's right now with the GTX11xx series being released. you'd think they would drop the price asap to compete with the competition!! If anyone from AMD is reading this please drop the price $50-$100 bucks for us poor souls

 

[Feld]

Still haven't bought anything, still bouncing back and forth between a GTX 1080 and the Vega 64.
I had went on ebay and bid on several cards but got out bid every time at the last second.
They are running a pretty darn good special for the Gigabyte GTX 1080 at newegg for only $450.
If i can get the Red Devil or Strix Vega 64 for $450 then I will hop all over it. I just dont see the point that they are charging $600 for Vega 64's right now with the GTX11xx series being released. you'd think they would drop the price asap to compete with the competition!! If anyone from AMD is reading this please drop the price $50-$100 bucks for us poor souls

They likely will drop the prices since it will be their only option to remain competitive, but not until after the next Geforce lineup is released. Should happen in the next 3-4 weeks. Until then, AMD will try to make as much money as they still can.