Poll: ** The AMD VEGA Thread **

[muon]

I was under the impression 1898mhz is the highest bin available from stock. What is you card?

The 1911mhz bin exists at 1.093v which is higher than stock voltage.

 

[TheRealDeal]

My 1070 boosts to 1911MHz out the box and mostly holds it though wanders down 1-2 speed bins at times - slightly nudging the voltage it largely holds around 2100MHz but drops back to 202xMHz at times - actual performance gain averages about 5%.

Not bad and as much as i like Overclocking when i test new hardware, i would much rather have out of the box performance compared to maintaining an OC. Seems the way Nvidia have gone with this round and i am pretty impressed with what they have on the market. If only the pricing was better i would be more impressed.

 

[Rroff]

I was under the impression 1898mhz is the highest bin available from stock. What is you card?

The 1911mhz bin exists at 1.093v which is higher than stock voltage.

Mine is the Palit Dual fan - its not the founders edition but its basically the stock card with a cheapy aftermarket cooler on it - kind of barrel scraping but I got it at a pretty decent discount as there is no way I'm paying nVidia the normal prices for what the 1070 is :s (I don't mind paying good money for cards but I'm not gonna be taken for a mug).

I believe this is 1.025 voltage bin BTW.

 

[chrcoluk]

stock pascal speeds are not 1.9ghz they around 1.6ghz or something, boost mode then auto overclocks the card, and it can be overclocked further by something like msi afterburner and as well as manufacturers shipping a custom bios.

My pascal out of the box hit 2ghz, I can get it up to 2088mhz with msi tweaks.

 

[akarypid]

1070/1080 do not overclock well anyway and I have had both. They hit ~1900MHz out of the box; when you OC to 2100MHz you do not even get 10% extra fps...

I've tested overclocks. Whilst it doesn't scale perfectly, it does scale reasonably.

1900mhz consistent boost on a reference car isn't likely. What you may be seeing is a result of factory OCd versions of the card which have power limits increased for you already over the reference version. That would be why you don't think it isn't scaling properly because it is boosting so high. Boost clocks is as much a function of power limits as it is actually setting higher clocks.

10%+ performance is easy to get on any Pascal card and should be pushing closer to 15% over reference for clocks.

My 1070 boosts to 1911MHz out the box and mostly holds it though wanders down 1-2 speed bins at times - slightly nudging the voltage it largely holds around 2100MHz but drops back to 202xMHz at times - actual performance gain averages about 5%.

Well, none of these testimonials seems like 'an overclocker's dream' to me.

It seems to me that both companies are leaving less and less headroom there... Very little performance's being left on the table.

 

[muon]

Mine is the Palit Dual fan - its not the founders edition but its basically the stock card with a cheapy aftermarket cooler on it - kind of barrel scraping but I got it at a pretty decent discount as there is no way I'm paying nVidia the normal prices for what the 1070 is :s (I don't mind paying good money for cards but I'm not gonna be taken for a mug).

I believe this is 1.025 voltage bin BTW.

Definitely not stock then if that exists at a 1.025v bin. That would make sense why it boosts so high out of the box as it is far less likely to hit the power limit. The power limit may also have been increased.

I'm pretty certain now the max boost possible is 1898mhz at 1.062v for a stock card (GTX 1070 and GTX 1080).

 

[Steampunk]

Well, none of these testimonials seems like 'an overclocker's dream' to me.

It seems to me that both companies are leaving less and less headroom there... Very little performance's being left on the table.

Surely that's a good thing? Customers get max performance out of the box without messing with voltages, cooling, etc. Some people act as if it's taking away their elite overclockers status, when really it's just making it standard with less hassle.

 

[muon]

Well, none of these testimonials seems like 'an overclocker's dream' to me.

It seems to me that both companies are leaving less and less headroom there... Very little performance's being left on the table.

10% real performance gain is pretty good.

I can't remember there being much more room historically (Maxwell was good, that was about it). The main benefit in the past was that cards were also segmented by clock speed rather than just number of shaders (similar to CPUs now). This meant you could for example overclock certain X850 cards to X850XT PE cards, 6800 to 6800 Ultra etc..

 

[Rroff]

Well, none of these testimonials seems like 'an overclocker's dream' to me.

It seems to me that both companies are leaving less and less headroom there... Very little performance's being left on the table.

The "auto overclock" of GPU Boost 3.0 is basically doing it all for me - the card's on paper boost clock is 1683MHz but it hits 1911MHz out the box

Definitely not stock then if that exists at a 1.025v bin. That would make sense why it boosts so high out of the box as it is far less likely to hit the power limit. The power limit may also have been increased.

I'm pretty certain now the max boost possible is 1898mhz at 1.062v for a stock card (GTX 1070 and GTX 1080).

Definitely no power limit adjustments on this card when it downclocks its usually due to hitting the power limit at normal levels - just watching it in action the behaviour is a bit weird at 1911MHz the voltage starts at 1.025 but sometimes wanders to 1.032 or 1.040 (or something like that).

Also just noticed something weird with Quake Champions - the voltage never went over 0.950 when playing at all and it started at 1911MHz but slowly dropped over time exactly correlating with temperature to the on paper boost clock where it stopped falling while showing burst of perfcap reason Pwr - weird - doesn't do that with other games. (Might just need a driver update as I'm currently on drivers that pre-date Quake Champions).

 

[Angilion]

He has a good point but nobody expected a 52% increase in single threaded performance from bulldozer to Ryzen.

They did after Ryzen was released and reviewed. Vega has been released and reviewed and the performance isn't there. There's a big difference between performance increase from one generation of processor to the next and performance increase from a new processor to the same processor a month later. Same processor at best, since the Vega RX cards will have to be far cheaper than the Vega FE cards.

Also, AMD announced before Ryzen was released that it would have at least a 40% increase in single threaded performance over Bulldozer. It was only a surprise because people thought AMD couldn't come through on their claims.

Either way RX Vega will be interesting either a total disappointment or a magnificent card.

I can't see how they could make Vega RX a magnificent card unless they've essentially broken Vega FE and can fix it for Vega RX. Which would be very strange indeed. The only other way it could be a magnificent card is if it's significantly cheaper than a Geforce 1070, which I wouldn't bet more than a pound on.

I do wonder, aren't AMD a little to calm with FE reviews. Seriously no significant attempt at damage control merely brushing it aside. There is an interesting storm coming.

That's also strange. AMD are essentially asking people to completely ignore the Vega FE release, as if Vega RX is something completely different to Vega FE despite supposedly being the same GPU, same memory (though probably less of it).

Could AMD really have released Vega FE seriously broken in a fixable way? Or are they just hoping they can ignore the problem to keep their share price up for a few more weeks?

 

[TheRealDeal]

Surely that's a good thing? Customers get max performance out of the box without messing with voltages, cooling, etc. Some people act as if it's taking away their elite overclockers status, when really it's just making it standard with less hassle.

It's always been a lottery if you get a good chip or not as far as overclocking goes but Nvidia have taken away some option's and made it a bit harder for those that want to push past the boundaries especially for those on water. No big deal to the likes of me and probably yourself as it's a benefit as i see it. Only need to look at the bench threads to see that there is not a real big variation on clocks like there used to be. Guess it takes a bit of the fun away.

 

[Armadillo]

I don't think there are any "good" options at this point - just make the one that seems least worst and hope for the best I'm quite happy with my 1070 but I'm holding my money now waiting for something that is actually faster than the 1080ti before upgrading again.

Well, I kinda need to do something, as I've been promising the 290 to family member for ages now, probably won't get away with much more "soon" .

Playing only at 1080/144, but even then 144 is reserved for online games/low power games like rocket league, single player, lower is fine. So 1070 is more than enough grunt.

I suppose the 1070 is the least worst, at least it's a known quantity. Vega seems to be anything from 1080ish, to the second coming of jesus. Even if vega is amazing, doesn't suddenly make the 1070 "bad".

Keep Calm and Hawaii On

Use the 1070 and choose between volta or Navi when it comes out, seems Vega is going to take forever to arrive, in hardware and afterwards in software development. Unless you need higher performance then 1070 or wanted some special feature of the Vega. I expect it to take till September for most people wanting vega to get a suitable card, worse case is HBM2 shortage and even further out into autumn

I don't need higher performance than a 1070. I don't need any special features of vega, don't even know what the "special features" are, just want more performance than my 290. Wouldn't buy any vega, if I waiting for vega I would at least want aib quality cooler of Sapphire tri-x/vapour or MSI twin fozr. Not reference or any of the cheaper "dual fan" sort of cards. I would guess that would be quite a wait as well and probably a premium. Might be sitting there thinking wait for volta then.

Had a look (box isn't sealed only contents inside are) and MSI do make a nice looking card, the silver and black of the quicksilver looks so nice.

Will probably open it, was happy with the choice when I bought it, doubt if it was the right thing only crept in after the money drained from my account .

 

[Steampunk]

It's always been a lottery if you get a good chip or not as far as overclocking goes but Nvidia have taken away some option's and made it a bit harder for those that want to push past the boundaries especially for those on water. No big deal to the likes of me and probably yourself as it's a benefit as i see it. Only need to look at the bench threads to see that there is not a real big variation on clocks like there used to be. Guess it takes a bit of the fun away.

But again, I think it's a good thing that you buy a card and you know what you're going to get. You're no longer relying on the silicon lottery because you're getting max clockspeed guaranteed from the manufacturer. I'd rather be using my card than endlessly tweaking it because I think there's some performance left on the table.

 

[TheRealDeal]

But again, I think it's a good thing that you buy a card and you know what you're going to get. You're no longer relying on the silicon lottery because you're getting max clockspeed guaranteed from the manufacturer. I'd rather be using my card that endlessly tweaking it because I think there's some performance left on the table.

Yep as far as gaming goes with out of the box performance. For the guys that love to tweak they took the fun away a little. It's a very small amount of the market but on here there is plenty. Me i usually push some voltage and do some runs at nearing what i see as still safe and be done with it. For some it's all about finding the max sweet spot well out of what i and most others would find safe. For instance i have seen some pushing stupid voltage under water and getting there 290's up to 1350. I was on my limits at 1200 and thought enough is enough. That's around 12% over my max. Nvidia Pascal seems to average around 5% possibly lower. My 1200 core was a decent overclock in the first place pushing 150mv more than stock where as there is no risk on the NV hardware.

We all know some love to gamble with whatever takes there fancy. No risk no fun.

 

[erazor51]

Still going to buy RX Vega.

 

[humbug]

Well, none of these testimonials seems like 'an overclocker's dream' to me.

It seems to me that both companies are leaving less and less headroom there... Very little performance's being left on the table.

Right, my 1070 also runs at 1911MMhz out of the box, and 8100Mhz instead of 8000Mhz on the memory, fully overclocked it runs at about 2080/9000, its a 9% overclock on the core and 13% on the memory, the actual performance gain is probably less than 10%....

 

[Beren]

I am really keen to see a couple of things on launch, two things have made Ryzen so awesome. IPC improvement and the Infinity Fabric. Infinity is supposed to be here on Vega, the thing that slowed down Ryzen was memory speed which wont be an issue with Vega using HBM2. Therefore we could be about to see genuine multi GPU for the prosumer being a real thing.

A month to wait for cards and then probably another month for drivers and we will know.

Honestly though I just got a 1060 as I am only gaming at 1080p currently so I will get to see what is best at Christmas and make a call then.

 

[Rroff]

Therefore we could be about to see genuine multi GPU for the prosumer being a real thing.

Unlikely if its the way I think you are meaning - despite the speed of IF and HBM it pales significantly compared to the bandwidth and latency you'd need to present multiple GPUs as if one to the system or similar techniques for gaming purposes though could be useful for "big data" compute type tasks where latency is less of an issue and/or easier to work around than the dependencies in a realtime game and bulk data despatched differently.

 

[TNA]

I've tested overclocks. Whilst it doesn't scale perfectly, it does scale reasonably.

1900mhz consistent boost on a reference car isn't likely. What you may be seeing is a result of factory OCd versions of the card which have power limits increased for you already over the reference version. That would be why you don't think it isn't scaling properly because it is boosting so high. Boost clocks is as much a function of power limits as it is actually setting higher clocks.

10%+ performance is easy to get on any Pascal card and should be pushing closer to 15% over reference for clocks.

Do people really still buy reference cards unless water cooling anymore? Founders Edition is a joke; pay more for less edition card. For cards with proper coolers, you won't likely get more than 10% extra performance from an OC unless watercooling or something.

10% real performance gain is pretty good.

I can't remember there being much more room historically (Maxwell was good, that was about it). The main benefit in the past was that cards were also segmented by clock speed rather than just number of shaders (similar to CPUs now). This meant you could for example overclock certain X850 cards to X850XT PE cards, 6800 to 6800 Ultra etc..

That is if you are lucky to get 10%. Plus as I recall I would get a hell of a lot more than that on my 8800 GTS back in the day.

7950 got a lot more boost from OC then 10% did it not? At least if you was lucky with silicon anyway.

 

[Rroff]

That is if you are lucky to get 10%. Plus as I recall I would get a hell of a lot more than that on my 8800 GTS back in the day.

7950 got a lot more boost from OC then 10% did it not? At least if you was lucky with silicon anyway.

Don't get the overclocks like we used to so often many of my older cards were decent clockers sadly my memory is a bit hazy on the details now - I've got screenshots showing my old GTX260s doing 25-30% higher framerates overclocked v stock (can't remember clock speeds), the 470s would overclock by around 40% on the core - going back to my older cards I had both a 6800 and 7950GX2 stable at ~30% overclocks on the core and my old 5900XT was a monster that managed both 50% memory and core clocks - though that still only made it competitive against the 9700 pro or whatever it was even with that amount of overclock while lacking the shader quality in advanced dx9 stuff heh.