The Radeon VII Owners Thread

nashathedog · 12 May 2019 at 00:24

Tom B said:
Stable at 1975mhz GPU, 1150mhz HBM2 @ 1115mv which isn't bad. Was hoping to keep junction temperature in the 60s though.

Despite being set to 1975 in wattman, it only actually boosted to 1966. Perhaps I'll shoot for 1950mhz and see what I can get there as really it will only lose 16mhz.

When testing to fine tune for the highest possible overclock there's a tipping point where even though you're able to continue pushing higher clocks you start to see your peak performance dropping.
I took me ages to get the right balance with my Vega 64, I haven't got around to doing the testing with my VII yet.

bakes0310 · 12 May 2019 at 10:59

How does this card compare my evga 1080 hybrid?

Vince · 12 May 2019 at 11:35

bakes0310 said:
How does this card compare my evga 1080 hybrid?

It should hand it a fairly thorough spanking in pretty much all areas. Both overclocked I estimate (without looking at any benchmarks etc) that 7 is something like 30/40% or more faster than a gtx1080. I mean given my old Vega 56 with some tuning was mixing it with 1080's and 64 generally soundly beats a 1080 when both are overclocked. So yea a decent bump in performance imo.

bakes0310 · 12 May 2019 at 14:01

Vince said:
It should hand it a fairly thorough spanking in pretty much all areas. Both overclocked I estimate (without looking at any benchmarks etc) that 7 is something like 30/40% or more faster than a gtx1080. I mean given my old Vega 56 with some tuning was mixing it with 1080's and 64 generally soundly beats a 1080 when both are overclocked. So yea a decent bump in performance imo.

That's not a bad increase for a 600 quid card especially when I can get a few hundred quid off selling the GPU and free games.

Dicehunter · 13 May 2019 at 02:43

On my 3rd R7 now after the other 2 had major instabilities at stock clocks/volts, I have never seen a card that has so many issues out of the gate, Definitely my last AMD GPU considering I also had problems with my Vega64 that I had to RMA multiple times until I eventually got a decent one.

Vince · 13 May 2019 at 17:42

Dicehunter said:
On my 3rd R7 now after the other 2 had major instabilities at stock clocks/volts, I have never seen a card that has so many issues out of the gate, Definitely my last AMD GPU considering I also had problems with my Vega64 that I had to RMA multiple times until I eventually got a decent one.

I must be lucky or mine passed through the hands of Jensen Haung as mine "Just works". That is properly unlucky though.

xtremedetailz · 13 May 2019 at 18:29

Dicehunter said:
On my 3rd R7 now after the other 2 had major instabilities at stock clocks/volts, I have never seen a card that has so many issues out of the gate, Definitely my last AMD GPU considering I also had problems with my Vega64 that I had to RMA multiple times until I eventually got a decent one.

Maybe its your PSU ?

MeddlE · 13 May 2019 at 21:06

Dicehunter said:
On my 3rd R7 now after the other 2 had major instabilities at stock clocks/volts, I have never seen a card that has so many issues out of the gate, Definitely my last AMD GPU considering I also had problems with my Vega64 that I had to RMA multiple times until I eventually got a decent one.

Have you seen the 2080Ti RMA threads?

Illuminist · 14 May 2019 at 09:47

Vince said:
I must be lucky or mine passed through the hands of Jensen Haung as mine "Just works". That is properly unlucky though.

My first one was kissed by Donald Trump, but my second one came from the "special occasion" underwear draw of Lisa Su

Jesaul · 15 May 2019 at 08:05

Regarding Alphacool Eiswolf GPX-Pro AiO Radeon VII cooler defect:
support has send me this picture, telling capacitors may be damaged:

pmc25 · 15 May 2019 at 18:27

I note that Barrow now have a Radeon VII block available.

What do people think of its design relative to the Bykski, EK and AlphaCool? I know that the AlphaCool in its current iteration is not recommended, and that the Bykski appears to be getting better temperatures than the EK. How do you think this compares? To my uneducated eye it looks more similar to the Bykski design than the EK one.

http://www.barrowch.com/index.php/article/1220.html

FordneyMcCumber · 16 May 2019 at 17:10

Regarding the Fullcover Block from Alphacool.
This thing is trash, do not buy it. It costs much the same as EK's block but has dire quality control. I am getting temps that are barely any better than the stock cooler. Can't overclock more as the junction temp hits 110 easily.
To make things worse they can't even make a backplate properly. This is how the backplate fits (holes are lined up correctly with the PCB):

Looks like whoever machined this put the wrong numbers in as everything is offset by 1cm. Even if the holes were machined correctly, a standoff was fitted wrongly and broken, was like this in the sealed bag but they sell it anyway! Zero QC from what I can tell. I removed the LED strip from mine as this is known defective and can destroy cards.

Suffice to say that Alphacool are running a cut price operation and it's clear that they were trying to rush these blocks out. They even failed at that as mine was delayed for two weeks and EK released theirs sooner without problems.
The cause of poor temps is likely poor design combined with rough machining. The actual machining marks are very visible over where the die makes contact so I might be able to improve things by sanding it down.

I would recommend buying the EK block from OCuk now that it's available. I very much regret being impatient and buying this. Especially considering that I only just found time to fit it, I should have just bought from OCuk when I wasn't busy.

eeii · 16 May 2019 at 17:16

Blimey that’s really bad

arc@css · 16 May 2019 at 17:19

Illuminist said:
My first one was kissed by Donald Trump, but my second one came from the "special occasion" underwear draw of Lisa Su

Vince · 16 May 2019 at 17:20

eeii said:
Blimey that’s really bad

We (myself and Tim) did mention in this thread early on that alphacool stuff would be utter junk. Looks like our experience on Vega and the shocking quality control is still a very real concern. Sorry your having issues lads, I hope your cards are not too damaged.

Chud_Jenny · 16 May 2019 at 17:25

FordneyMcCumber said:
Regarding the Fullcover Block from Alphacool.
This thing is trash, do not buy it. It costs much the same as EK's block but has dire quality control. I am getting temps that are barely any better than the stock cooler. Can't overclock more as the junction temp hits 110 easily.
To make things worse they can't even make a backplate properly. This is how the backplate fits (holes are lined up correctly with the PCB):

Looks like whoever machined this put the wrong numbers in as everything is offset by 1cm. Even if the holes were machined correctly, a standoff was fitted wrongly and broken, was like this in the sealed bag but they sell it anyway! Zero QC from what I can tell. I removed the LED strip from mine as this is known defective and can destroy cards.

Suffice to say that Alphacool are running a cut price operation and it's clear that they were trying to rush these blocks out. They even failed at that as mine was delayed for two weeks and EK released theirs sooner without problems.
The cause of poor temps is likely poor design combined with rough machining. The actual machining marks are very visible over where the die makes contact so I might be able to improve things by sanding it down.

I would recommend buying the EK block from OCuk now that it's available. I very much regret being impatient and buying this. Especially considering that I only just found time to fit it, I should have just bought from OCuk when I wasn't busy.

I've today had a refund on my alphacool block after a long battle via Paypal claim. Paypal asked for me to send it back so I sent the faulty parts back. (RGB strip, with the mushroom head card killing screws, the box and spare screws) The block is on my card and doing a fair job. (not as good as the EK block I fitted for my brother a few weeks ago).

Chud_Jenny · 16 May 2019 at 17:36

If anyone is looking to give there card a workout try "A Plague Tale: Innocence" 4K Ultra. I'm sure you'll see some temps you haven't before!?

Carclis · 16 May 2019 at 18:43

FordneyMcCumber said:
Regarding the Fullcover Block from Alphacool.
This thing is trash, do not buy it. It costs much the same as EK's block but has dire quality control. I am getting temps that are barely any better than the stock cooler. Can't overclock more as the junction temp hits 110 easily.
To make things worse they can't even make a backplate properly. This is how the backplate fits (holes are lined up correctly with the PCB):

Looks like whoever machined this put the wrong numbers in as everything is offset by 1cm. Even if the holes were machined correctly, a standoff was fitted wrongly and broken, was like this in the sealed bag but they sell it anyway! Zero QC from what I can tell. I removed the LED strip from mine as this is known defective and can destroy cards.

Suffice to say that Alphacool are running a cut price operation and it's clear that they were trying to rush these blocks out. They even failed at that as mine was delayed for two weeks and EK released theirs sooner without problems.
The cause of poor temps is likely poor design combined with rough machining. The actual machining marks are very visible over where the die makes contact so I might be able to improve things by sanding it down.

I would recommend buying the EK block from OCuk now that it's available. I very much regret being impatient and buying this. Especially considering that I only just found time to fit it, I should have just bought from OCuk when I wasn't busy.

Thanks for posting. Your experience is very similar to mine. My temperatures are honestly no better than the stock cooler. Unfortunately I was not aware of the quality concerns of Alphacool and I still have not been notified by Alphacool of the issues their current block has. It's only from this thread that I was made aware of the quality control concerns. I can't say that my backplate is improperly sized like your own though.

pmc25 · 16 May 2019 at 19:24

AlphaCool - both the company and products - are something to be highly sceptical of. They have a record of major design defects and unreliability, and then trying to cover it up or being very difficult about refunds. They've also been responsible for some very questionable behaviour - see articles on TechPowerup and latterly elsewhere.

I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.

Re: the Barrow block ... anyone any comments on design?

Chud_Jenny · 16 May 2019 at 19:33

pmc25 said:
AlphaCool - both the company and products - are something to be highly sceptical of. They have a record of major design defects and unreliability, and then trying to cover it up or being very difficult about refunds. They've also been responsible for some very questionable behaviour - see articles on TechPowerup and latterly elsewhere.

I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.

Re: the Barrow block ... anyone any comments on design?

Regarding the Barrow block. It looks impressive as it uses all 8 screws around the package. You'd need to be careful with that as over tightening can crack the HBM. It looks to use spring screws though so that looks to of been thought about.