AMD Vega builders thread - rx 64 & rx 56

[krumme]

Disappointing undervolt tests last night. I started by trying for -50mv and my system froze within a minute of in game action. Then tried -25mv and lasted a little longer but froze up as well after a few minutes. I tried powersaver profile and it keeps clocks between 1400-1500 range.

Ultimately I'm not really concerned about power, so I put it back on balanced profile and upped the power limit 15% and this resulted in a locked clock of 1750 mhz in game which I am satisfied with. Good luck to everyone's undervolt attempts!

Are you still in 1750 with 17.8.2 drivers? Stock.
That pretty darn high. I get 1550 or so.
But i can underclock to what seems the bottom of 1030 or so.
What happens if you lower freq to 1550, how low can you set voltage then?

 

[Hitman928]

FYI, vega 56 can be unlocked. Check it out

They can't be unlocked that I've seen. They can be flashed with a 64 bios but it doesn't unlock shaders, it just gives you the 64 clocks which you can do manually.

 

[Hitman928]

OK, it seems - and its darn difficult to test and verify - there is a hard limit around 1000/1030 mV or so?, but anyway thats what the card can undervolt to, and where the benefits stops. I cant make it crash.
Pretty massive undervolt, but the power usage is still to much for my situation with the computer in a closet . Would like new drivers where there is no hard limit, and i can lower freq a bit more to take it even lower voltage.
There is tons of gaming perf in this card. With 50% power at 1030mV and standard freq, i get a 100% lock at 60fps in bf1 on normal - and the card stays at its max freq consistently (but i do use a framelimiter to reduce noise, so it dips a bit in freq from time to time but stays a 60fps). I guess some could game on ultra with that underclock - and perhaps 5-10% extra on the clock and memory, but i will take a few dips below 60fps. I cant see the difference from normal to ultra, and am more thermal limited so will not go there, but the benefit of 4k is really good - it makes you more compettitive. I would like to be able to play and 120Hz and would then select low to get rid of all the nonsense on the screen - lol but it removes some of the charm from the game.

I am having a pretty good feeling we are in for some solid improvements in performance and efficiency before end q4.

Hard limit is above 1030 mV, almost sure of it. I'd guess it's more like 1075 mV.

 

[krumme]

Hard limit is above 1030 mV, almost sure of it. I'd guess it's more like 1075 mV.

Did you hook up a wattmeter btw?

 

[Hitman928]

I was wrong on the lower limit of Vega voltage. It is 970 mV according to my tests with hwinfo. I found out that putting the power level at +50% puts the lower limit higher for some reason. After dropping the power limit down a bit I can get down to 970 mV.

I'm at 39.5 MH/s using ~100 W mining eth now.

 

[krumme]

I was wrong on the lower limit of Vega voltage. It is 970 mV according to my tests with hwinfo. I found out that putting the power level at +50% puts the lower limit higher for some reason. After dropping the power limit down a bit I can get down to 970 mV.

I'm at 39.5 MH/s using ~100 W mining eth now.

Ok. Keep up the good info!
Whats your powerlimit and freq setting then?

(edit: and still we need a powermeter to confirm those test - i dont think its 100w. No way i would say ! .)

 

[Ancalagon44]

I'll be getting either a vega 56 or 64, but I'm waiting for the ones with custom coolers.

Also, Vega 64 seems to be bottlenecked somehow - not sure if you guys have seen the reports that a Vega 56 matches a Vega 64 if you can get the clockspeed of the 56 equal to that of the 64 through a BIOS swap.

 

[Makaveli]

Was able to grab a rx56 for one of the kids at a price just so slightly below lowest priced 1070. Nice enough. Will have some interesting underclock ahead of us because we will run it on a 450w ps with 6 plus 8 pin. So bought 6 to 8 pin adapter. Noise will have to be lowered anyway and i will not pay for all that electricity so it all adds up.

Are you really going to run this on a 450 watt psu?

Even undervolted once you add up everything else in the rig aren't you going to be cutting it close?

 

[FIVR]

Are you really going to run this on a 450 watt psu?

Even undervolted once you add up everything else in the rig aren't you going to be cutting it close?

Vega 56 uses 130W when undervolted and overclocked. Why would he need more than a 450W PSU for that? He likely wouldn't even need it if he didn't undervolt. Unless he's running Skylake-X, in which case of course you need a 1000W PSU because of the astronomical power usage.

 

[krumme]

Are you really going to run this on a 450 watt psu?

Even undervolted once you add up everything else in the rig aren't you going to be cutting it close?

No probs. Its running a oc 7970 now.
I run a rx 64 with plus 50% on a 500w ps now in my own rig.
You know the ps rating is not worth much. Besides undervolting will make it safe. There is a lean stock hsw core i5 45w tdp model in the machine now and a ssd. Could even do it from a high quality 350w ps if needed.
450 is acutslly about right because you end at max 80% so you get good efficiency.

 

[Hitman928]

Ok. Keep up the good info!
Whats your powerlimit and freq setting then?

(edit: and still we need a powermeter to confirm those test - i dont think its 100w. No way i would say ! .)

Vega 56 uses 130W when undervolted and overclocked. Why would he need more than a 450W PSU for that? He likely wouldn't even need it if he didn't undervolt. Unless he's running Skylake-X, in which case of course you need a 1000W PSU because of the astronomical power usage.

Not it doesn't, that guy on reddit was mistaken. He was basing that off of hwinfo sensors which are wrong for Vega.

Running Vega 56 at 1275 MHz and 970 mV with -5 power level I get 205 W from the wall just from Vega. HWinfo told me it was ~100 W.

 

[tential]

Vega 56 uses 130W when undervolted and overclocked. Why would he need more than a 450W PSU for that? He likely wouldn't even need it if he didn't undervolt. Unless he's running Skylake-X, in which case of course you need a 1000W PSU because of the astronomical power usage.

You thought Vega 56 was one of the best GPUs ever released and we just missed it?
Come on man, that is so suspect you should know to take a double look at those results.

You base a recommendation off a sample size of 1 without any thought as to whether said sample is legit?

 

[krumme]

You thought Vega 56 was one of the best GPUs ever released and we just missed it?

This is a builders thread. Get out if your contribution is the usual trash and strawmen.

 

[krumme]

Not it doesn't, that guy on reddit was mistaken. He was basing that off of hwinfo sensors which are wrong for Vega.

Running Vega 56 at 1275 MHz and 970 mV with -5 power level I get 205 W from the wall just from Vega. HWinfo told me it was ~100 W.

Makes sense. Whats your results from your 470 using same measuring?

 

[itsmydamnation]

with vega 56 i cant seem to manage to break 1600mhz, up target clock , up voltage no improvement, lower voltage still no improvement.

right now im set at stage 6 1650 clk, 1040mv and stage 7 1670 clk and 1080mv

 

[EXCellR8]

BB finally came through and handed over a Sapphire Vega 64... $650 for the open box reference model. Not terrible but I would have liked to grab it cheaper.

Should be able to install it tonight and play some stuff; add my .02

 

[Hitman928]

Makes sense. Whats your results from your 470 using same measuring?

~100 W. The 470 is downclocked to 1090 MHz and undervolted to 870 mV (or 880 mV, one or the other, not at home to check).

 

[Hitman928]

with vega 56 i cant seem to manage to break 1600mhz, up target clock , up voltage no improvement, lower voltage still no improvement.

right now im set at stage 6 1650 clk, 1040mv and stage 7 1670 clk and 1080mv

I ran into the same thing. I believe, unlike the 64 LC variant at least, the Vega 56 has a hard coded tdp limit, no matter the power slider setting. I could be wrong but I think that might be part of it. I've also noticed that lowering voltage levels while maintaining the same clock settings actually slightly decreases real clock speeds as well. I'm assuming the dynamic voltage/frequency scaling is part of the problem as well.

 

[itsmydamnation]

I ran into the same thing. I believe, unlock the 64 LC variant at least, the Vega 56 has a hard coded tdp limit, no matter the power slider setting. I could be wrong but I think that might be part of it. I've also noticed that lowering voltage levels while maintaining the same clock settings actually slightly decreases real clock speeds as well. I'm assuming the dynamic voltage/frequency scaling is part of the problem as well.

Yep that exactly what i see.

 

[Magic Hate Ball]

I snagged a XFX Vega 64 LC today when it popped up ever so briefly on Newegg with no HW bundle @ MSRP (with games).

I was in such a hurry I used default shipping methods... hopefully it'll get here by Friday if I'm lucky.

 

[itsmydamnation]

i did the Vega 64 bios flash, from what i can see 56 is limited to 200 watts for the asic, flashing to 64 allowed me to start increases volts and clock, before i went to work i got to just under 1700mhz with around 250watt power consumption for the asic.

 

[EXCellR8]

what are you guys using to OC? previous beta version of AB that worked with 17.7.2 seemed to work but the fan profile kept resetting... was that due to not enabling the custom settings in Wattman? that would make sense actually.

 

[Hitman928]

i did the Vega 64 bios flash, from what i can see 56 is limited to 200 watts for the asic, flashing to 64 allowed me to start increases volts and clock, before i went to work i got to just under 1700mhz with around 250watt power consumption for the asic.

Yep, that's what I expected to see, good to have confirmation. The Vega 64 bios allows for higher power consumption and thus higher MHz

what are you guys using to OC? previous beta version of AB that worked with 17.7.2 seemed to work but the fan profile kept resetting... was that due to not enabling the custom settings in Wattman? that would make sense actually.

I've just been using Wattman as that's the only thing that has worked with the BETA driver for me. When I go back to a gaming driver I can try AB. You can also use a program called Watt tool. It's basically Wattman without the fancy GUI and you can actually save profiles. It doesn't work with the BETA driver though, but I tested it with 17.7.2 and it worked fine.

 

[krumme]

Get the new driver guys. 17.9.1 - a lot of important bug fixing - runs fine here.

 

[EXCellR8]

installed it this morning... no issues to report yet. Dirt 4, Prey, and Doom run absolutely flawlessly at maximum settings... buttery smooth like good enough that I'd never be able to go back. card's not a 1080ti but it's perfect for this ultrawide monitor. the reference cooler is also okay once it's dialed in; doesn't throw as much heat as I thought it would (will differ with load/ambient temps) and noise levels are acceptable.

I don't have any complaints so far aside from the few little software issues but those will be fixed. would I rather an aftermarket card? probably, but stock uses enough power as it is.