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The RX Vega 56 Owners Thread

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has anyone ever installed thermal pads on the backside of the card?
I fixed a zalman cnps retro cpu cooler to my hd 2600 gpu years ago, it had memory on both sides. I mixed superglue and thermal paste together and stuck little heatsinks to both sides for the memory and whatever else was hot to the touch...worked like a charm. Last GPU I have seen with memory modules on the back side. Vega 56 has nothing worthwhile cooling on the back side, back plates are for aesthetics on most gpu's. What do you deem requires cooling on the back side of the card like mate?...happy for you to correct me if i'm wrong.
 
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Im running mine on a 1440/144hz panel, it handles things absolutely fine. Had to turn down the odd setting in the division2 for example, but i was still well above the 60fps.
Right guys and girls

I have sold my second machine to a friend and have the money to pick up a 1440p freesync 31.5" panel

Who is running a 56 @ 1440p and does it still handle the job ok?

My spec is in my signature and I am running the card Undervolted and lightly clocked the HBM (900) and according to gpu-z I am at 488gb/sec so up near 64 figures

Little bit of me is "buy a 5700xt" but the Vega has been so, so good
My Vega 56 Sapphire Pulse is sat at 1637mhz core and 945mhz HBM. I have console 1% low fps in a few games even at 1080p, in my opinion 1440p is a little beyond this GPU unless 30 fps is acceptable. The RX 5700 XT is circa 11% faster than Vega 56, and circa 50% more expensive.


Search the AOC Q3279VWF can be had for £150 mva panel.


Search the AOC Q3279VWFD8 can be had for £180 ips panel.


Both freesync.
 
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So following on from this story. I just changed the VRM thermal pad for a grizzly 3mm thick one and for some reason the card now works absolutely faultlessly. Just ran 15 mins of Heaven at 870mhz HBM. I don't really understand what has happened, my thermals were decent in the first place and the VRM only reaching 70 odd degrees C. They now sit at 60-65 degrees C. Maybe i just bent the card in the right way putting it back together :p
Now I've had chance to play with the Asus Strix I must say I am pleased in comparison to the previous Gigabyte version I owned. I have now manage to OC the HBM to 955mhz on the asus card compared to 860mhz on the Gigabyte. Other positives include the lack of coil whine and also the absence of any 100% fan black screen crashes which plagued me for a year with the gigabyte version.

In defence of the gigabyte card I believe the cooling solution is superior. Not only do you not have to buy 3rd party heatpads to make the card work, but the fans are quieter at the same RPM in general. Also I think overall the card also ran cooler.

I like the RGB on the asus card, its really the only bling i have. Though there doesnt seem to be a option to turn it off beyond unplugging the connector.
The Gigabyte Vega 56 cards are renowned for failing, the power delivery is too weak and the cooling inadequate. I bought my refurb Vega 56 Pulse after months of waiting and watching Overclockers, I seen 10, 20 or 30 of the refurb Gigabyte Vega 56's for sale, week in week out.
 
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My Vega 56 Sapphire Pulse is sat at 1637mhz core and 945mhz HBM. I have console 1% low fps in a few games even at 1080p, in my opinion 1440p is a little beyond this GPU unless 30 fps is acceptable. The RX 5700 XT is circa 11% faster than Vega 56, and circa 50% more expensive.

Which games are you finding this with though? Because according to benchmarks Vega should be capable at 1440p. There are exceptions to this where game developers have done a bad job porting their game to the PC - see AC Origins/Odyssey, Mass Effect 4 and then newer games like Metro Exodus and Red Dead Redemption seems to push the Vega to it's limits at 1080p So it depends on gaming habit because current games other than the outliers should be fine at 1440p but future games are going to make Vega more of a 1080p card

@JarlStreamus the other argument is, would 1440p high settings looks better than 1080p ultra settings. As a 1080p gamer I don't know the answer to this but I'm genuinely curious

And then there's the option of 1080p wide screen or whatever it's called.
 
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Soldato
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From the videos I have viewed, it looks like (as @ANDREW GREEN said previously) its more to do with the game favouring nvidia cards. When a title runs better on AMD the vega would seemingly handle 1440p well. I can see why some would conclude its not a true 1440p card but I would slant that it should be if the game has been optimised properly instead of rushed out for live beta testing like most games seem to be these days.
 
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My Vega 56 Sapphire Pulse is sat at 1637mhz core and 945mhz HBM. I have console 1% low fps in a few games even at 1080p, in my opinion 1440p is a little beyond this GPU unless 30 fps is acceptable. The RX 5700 XT is circa 11% faster than Vega 56, and circa 50% more expensive.


Search the AOC Q3279VWF can be had for £150 mva panel.


Search the AOC Q3279VWFD8 can be had for £180 ips panel.


Both freesync.

What games are you playing to get such low, 1% lows?i have my memory at 910mhz and core at stock with an undervolt. I play everything at 1440p, games including the new COD,Rust, the division and a couple more. None of which ever go to a peasantry 30fps.
 
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I fixed a zalman cnps retro cpu cooler to my hd 2600 gpu years ago, it had memory on both sides. I mixed superglue and thermal paste together and stuck little heatsinks to both sides for the memory and whatever else was hot to the touch...worked like a charm. Last GPU I have seen with memory modules on the back side. Vega 56 has nothing worthwhile cooling on the back side, back plates are for aesthetics on most gpu's. What do you deem requires cooling on the back side of the card like mate?...happy for you to correct me if i'm wrong.

Was just wondering mate. Was thinking about the VRM chips and if i could passively cool from black plate too.
 
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What games are you playing to get such low, 1% lows?i have my memory at 910mhz and core at stock with an undervolt. I play everything at 1440p, games including the new COD,Rust, the division and a couple more. None of which ever go to a peasantry 30fps.

56 is enough for me at 1440p too, no idea how he is getting such low frames. The only two games this year which have dropped below 60 for me, at 1440p and maxed out settings are Control and Metro Exodus. In games like this you can just drop the shadow quality down a notch and gain 10-20fps too. Have not tried RDR2 yet as im waiting for Steam release but im not expecting to max that out, a mixture of medium/high/ultra will do the job, some settings absolutely tank the framerate as seen in hardware unboxed optimization video.
Other games ive played this year are around 80-100fps maxed (RE2, DMC5, BF V, Modern Warfare, Rage 2, Apex legends..). Anything 2018 or older it chews through no problem.

Not too shabby for a card that cost £250~ earlier in the year, still dont see anything that beats its price/performance today. a proper upgrade would be a 2080s, so £650+. Im holding onto mine until after the next gen consoles release and buying the gpu generation that releases after those, as thats when big performance gains and price drops usually happens or everyone will switch to consoles.
 
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What games are you playing to get such low, 1% lows?i have my memory at 910mhz and core at stock with an undervolt. I play everything at 1440p, games including the new COD,Rust, the division and a couple more. None of which ever go to a peasantry 30fps.

Ofcourse @dankeeys doesn't mention which CPU he's gaming on. If it's a quadcore that could well be the culprit here.
 
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56 is enough for me at 1440p too, no idea how he is getting such low frames. The only two games this year which have dropped below 60 for me, at 1440p and maxed out settings are Control and Metro Exodus. In games like this you can just drop the shadow quality down a notch and gain 10-20fps too. Have not tried RDR2 yet as im waiting for Steam release but im not expecting to max that out, a mixture of medium/high/ultra will do the job, some settings absolutely tank the framerate as seen in hardware unboxed optimization video.
Other games ive played this year are around 80-100fps maxed (RE2, DMC5, BF V, Modern Warfare, Rage 2, Apex legends..). Anything 2018 or older it chews through no problem.

Not too shabby for a card that cost £250~ earlier in the year, still dont see anything that beats its price/performance today. a proper upgrade would be a 2080s, so £650+. Im holding onto mine until after the next gen consoles release and buying the gpu generation that releases after those, as thats when big performance gains and price drops usually happens or everyone will switch to consoles.

yeah i think i paid £275 for mine after returning a vega64 strix which was just hot and constantly throttling. i bought it as a stop gap to see what the next round of AMD/Nvidia cards could do, and like you say a 2080+ only seems the right way to go and personally i think they're over priced.
 
Soldato
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For 1440p it really depends what you're playing. I have maxed out graphics settings in Overwatch and still hit my monitor's refresh rate in certain areas (144 FPS) but more demanding games obviously require tactically reduced settings (Far Cry 5 for example).
 
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Ofcourse @dankeeys doesn't mention which CPU he's gaming on. If it's a quadcore that could well be the culprit here.
We have chatted extensively about vega 56 previously andrew, yes I am running a 2500K overclocked to 4.9ghz. I understand my CPU will be dropping my 1% lows, I have also seen my vega 56 hitting 100% and struggling in Kingdom come deliverance as one example. I do have a 2600K in the post...I will be furious if its a bad overclocker
 
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We have chatted extensively about vega 56 previously andrew, yes I am running a 2500K overclocked to 4.9ghz. I understand my CPU will be dropping my 1% lows, I have also seen my vega 56 hitting 100% and struggling in Kingdom come deliverance as one example. I do have a 2600K in the post...I will be furious if its a bad overclocker

It'll hit everything to do with your frame rate.
I wouldn't dream of using a 2500K with a Vega 56.
 
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We have chatted extensively about vega 56 previously andrew, yes I am running a 2500K overclocked to 4.9ghz. I understand my CPU will be dropping my 1% lows, I have also seen my vega 56 hitting 100% and struggling in Kingdom come deliverance as one example. I do have a 2600K in the post...I will be furious if its a bad overclocker

Yes I remember chatting Dan, although I forget if we chatted about your CPU though. Having only 4 threads will hit framerate as a whole depending on the game As you can see in the video below (using a Vega 56 with a Ryzen 2200g and Ryzen 2600 - The 2200g is faster than a 2500k despite it's lower clockspeed). This was my upgrade path. I actually thought I had a faulty Vega with the fps I was getting when I initially paired it with a 2200g but I replaced it with a 2600 and FPS have pretty much doubled in some open world games


It depends on the game but as you can see with Kingdom Come Deliverance it bottlenecks heavily at medium settings. If I remember rightly even with the settings amped up settings the CPU bottlenecks it heavily.

Also if you have limited threads leaving browsers and other programs running in the background will see you get worse performance than in the video. I was actually getting lows in the 30s-40s with Just Cause 3, which never happened after the upgrade

Looking at these videos the 2600k should perform quite well once overclocked, the problem is I'd like to see him use more open world benchmarks because it is likely to suffer with these


As you can see in this hardware unboxed video - the 2600k will perform great in racing games but will suffer in Assassin's Creed, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Hitman when scenes get busier and Kingdom Come Deliverance will similarly be hit


So you will still be CPU bottlenecked in some games and it'll be more noticable in busy areas of open world games. But in racing games you'll barely notice the difference.

In this video you're comparable CPU is a 2400g, which is a little faster but similarly has 4 cores/8 threads. So I'd imagine the performance upgrade should be similar to the 2200g to 2400g comparisons below


As for long term replacement I'd recomend holding on until Ryzen 2700 goes end of life and drops to around £100 (happened with the 1700) or wait until the 4000 series release when the 3600 probably drops to around that price. Both will give you a nice upgrade in open world games for around £240 for CPU/Ram/Mobo

One takeaway is if you upgraded to 1440p instead of getting a new CPU/system you'd likely suffer no FPS hit
 
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It is struggling in some newer games

Eh, in all of those titles its averaging nearly 60FPS at 1440p at high or very high settings. Drop a couple of particularly taxing settings down a notch or two, the game will still look great and it'll still comfortably average 60+FPS. Thats pretty good for a card that can be had for low / mid £200's.
 
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Eh, in all of those titles its averaging nearly 60FPS at 1440p at high or very high settings. Drop a couple of particularly taxing settings down a notch or two, the game will still look great and it'll still comfortably average 60+FPS. Thats pretty good for a card that can be had for low / mid £200's.

Yes those are outliers, just debating whether it's worth upgrading from 1080p to 1440p or not with the way things might be going or maybe going to 2560x1080
 
Soldato
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We have chatted extensively about vega 56 previously andrew, yes I am running a 2500K overclocked to 4.9ghz. I understand my CPU will be dropping my 1% lows, I have also seen my vega 56 hitting 100% and struggling in Kingdom come deliverance as one example. I do have a 2600K in the post...I will be furious if its a bad overclocker

Your 1% lows are completely to do with your cpu, at least for KCD. That is a VERY CPU demanding title.
 
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