So i finally upgraded my old RX480 8GB, to give it to my Girlfriend for her new build and scored a Vega RX 56 Gigabyte OC 8GB card for $500CDN on black friday.
I have herd that you can undervolt these Vega and Polaris GPU's instead of over volting when you OC, Unlike everything ive ever known, seems so backwards to me. And since i got a launch 480, one of the first to get to canada, it undervolted very very poorly and overclocked very poorly(its a MSI OC card from factory, was pretty much maxed out in its stock form) so i thought all this under volting hype was just that, hype, and you needed a golden chip to get any real effect. Turns out i may have been wrong and just lost the silicon lottery with my 480.
So I install the Vega 56, leave it at stock settings to get a baseline(1500Mhz, 1.2V) and fire up the benchmarks and run unigine superposition benchmark for two hours to make sure its fully at temp and take a look at whats going on. Its pinned at 100% GPU usage so thats good. Its drawing around 460w total system power(this is close to 100w higher than my RX 480), cards running at 75c GPU temps with VRMs and Memory being a few degrees hotter, pretty much inline with the reviews of this card. It maintained average clocks of 1400-1425Mhz, disappointing really with a 1500Mhz max clock that it only maintained for first few mins until it heated up. It is quiet even with the fan at 3800-4000rpms, GPU is by far the most noise in the system but its not that bad, people complaining about vega being loud must be referring to the reference blowers.
So then i try my hand at under volting and mild OC, not expecting much at all.
Well after a few hours of working my way down the voltage scale i find my card will run with only 1V, totally stable, as well as boost the Turbo core clock to 1600mhz. This is a rather large reduction from its 1.2V stock voltage, and with a 100mhz clock increase to boot. I have no idea whay AMD would run these so over volted from factory, its insane, AMD dropped ball really bad on Vega voltage, making them look way worse in reviews than they actually are when you use sane voltage levels.
With its new voltage After 2 hours of unigine superposition its drawing only 395w total system power, a 65W reduction. Its maintaining 1550Mhz clocks, its running at 65-67c, 8-10C reduction in temps, and is much quieter with the fan running about 500-600rpms less than at stock voltage.
Im going to see how far i can push the clocks now, but honestly just lowering the voltage and a 100mhz bump has already given me great gains, much much more than i could ever accomplish with my RX480.
Must admit im pretty surprised AMD would push these so hard on stock voltage for no good reason, even if some chips do need the voltage, you would think they would build in some Voltage logic circuit or something to under volt the chips that can do it..
I have herd that you can undervolt these Vega and Polaris GPU's instead of over volting when you OC, Unlike everything ive ever known, seems so backwards to me. And since i got a launch 480, one of the first to get to canada, it undervolted very very poorly and overclocked very poorly(its a MSI OC card from factory, was pretty much maxed out in its stock form) so i thought all this under volting hype was just that, hype, and you needed a golden chip to get any real effect. Turns out i may have been wrong and just lost the silicon lottery with my 480.
So I install the Vega 56, leave it at stock settings to get a baseline(1500Mhz, 1.2V) and fire up the benchmarks and run unigine superposition benchmark for two hours to make sure its fully at temp and take a look at whats going on. Its pinned at 100% GPU usage so thats good. Its drawing around 460w total system power(this is close to 100w higher than my RX 480), cards running at 75c GPU temps with VRMs and Memory being a few degrees hotter, pretty much inline with the reviews of this card. It maintained average clocks of 1400-1425Mhz, disappointing really with a 1500Mhz max clock that it only maintained for first few mins until it heated up. It is quiet even with the fan at 3800-4000rpms, GPU is by far the most noise in the system but its not that bad, people complaining about vega being loud must be referring to the reference blowers.
So then i try my hand at under volting and mild OC, not expecting much at all.
Well after a few hours of working my way down the voltage scale i find my card will run with only 1V, totally stable, as well as boost the Turbo core clock to 1600mhz. This is a rather large reduction from its 1.2V stock voltage, and with a 100mhz clock increase to boot. I have no idea whay AMD would run these so over volted from factory, its insane, AMD dropped ball really bad on Vega voltage, making them look way worse in reviews than they actually are when you use sane voltage levels.
With its new voltage After 2 hours of unigine superposition its drawing only 395w total system power, a 65W reduction. Its maintaining 1550Mhz clocks, its running at 65-67c, 8-10C reduction in temps, and is much quieter with the fan running about 500-600rpms less than at stock voltage.
Im going to see how far i can push the clocks now, but honestly just lowering the voltage and a 100mhz bump has already given me great gains, much much more than i could ever accomplish with my RX480.
Must admit im pretty surprised AMD would push these so hard on stock voltage for no good reason, even if some chips do need the voltage, you would think they would build in some Voltage logic circuit or something to under volt the chips that can do it..