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New ROG Strix Vega 56 running slow

Ellis McKinnon

Ellis McKinnon

Ellis McKinnon

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Joined
14 Dec 2018
Posts
7
Hi, my first time on here looking for a bit of help.
I have a new build 8600K, MSI Mortar MB, 16GB Corsair 3200, Be Quiet 580 Gold PSU and Asus ROG Strix 56 Vega running Adrenaline 18.12.1.1 - no under volting or overclocking, simply standard.
Put it all together two weeks ago running Windows 10 64 primarily to run Battlefield 5 @ 1080p.
First run superb - 140fps constant on high settings and hitting - 100 - 120fps on Ultra.
Second time running the game I noticed that the FPS on high settings had dropped to 80 - 100fps and that the card was running much cooler! Strange! A change of divers to 18.12.2 caused the video settings to become unstable and gave a blank screen. Had to boot into the MB graphics to access the system and eventually ended up reformatting and installing windows 10 afresh. Installed 18.12.2 from fresh and hey presto! Back to 140fps on high settings again. Played BF5 for a couple of hours straight no issues.
Started up to play the following night and......back to the 80fps and the cool exhaust air from the system. Not changed any profiles, balanced was the original setting and not touched the switches on the side. The card has always been stable apart from this quirk.
I have no other third-party software installed apart from HW Monitor - it says the card is only hitting 60 degrees in the game whereas when it was motoring it was peaking at 80. What is going on? Is it pulling a cool and quiet profile from somewhere? What do I do to get it back to how it came out of the box?
Any help much appreciated.
 
The first I'd say is to have a good of the vega 56 thread on this forum (if you haven't already) there'll be some really good advice there. Secondly I'd say undervolt the V56 using the info in that thread and try the BF 5 out afterwards.
 
Set up some monitoring software with on-screen-display (OSD) capabilities so you can see what is going on real-time in game during your testing.

Example:

- hwinfo64 and RTSS (Rivatuner Statistics Server to display the hwinfo stats in game).
or
- MSI Afterburner (set up the monitoring and OSD parts - MSI afterburner also comes with RTSS).

Then it might give you a clue what you see is different when you experience the issue, e.g. high temperatures, memory down clocks, does GPU chip power look normal, CPU bottleneck etc.

As example my Powercolor Red Dragon Vega 56 has 185W power limit by default (Bios switch on the default setting and balanced profile in AMD Wattman). So i see this power limit reached when the card is running at 99%. Im not sure the default power limit for the Asus card. The GPU clocks dynamically change, it follows the frequency/voltage curve until it reaches its power limit, so you see GPU clock speeds fluctuate depending what is rendered in game at that time (e.g. if its a complex scene the gpu clocks might not boost so high), this also varies from game to game. In some situations like if you are CPU bottleneck or poorly optimized game you might see the GPU is not running at max 99% or reaching it's power limit, this varies from game to game and even from scene to scene in the game depending what is happening on screen, i think games like BF5 are also CPU intensive at times e.g. 64 player multiplayer map.

Check the physical cabling all looks good and there are no loose connections. Also I would recommend to use 2 cables to connect the Vega card if your PSU has two connections for the GPU instead of using a single cable. Im not sure what the minimum power supply wattage for the Asus card I couldn't find much info on their website. The Powercolor Red Dragon Vega 56 website says 650W so maybe something to keep in mind in case your PSU is not up to the task.

Check the Bus Interface in GPU-Z is reporting the correct link speed e.g. PCIe x16 3.0 @ x16 3.0

Run some benchmarks to confirm the GPU performance is running as expected, e.g. Unigine Superposition (1080p Extreme), 3D mark.

If still having issues, I would also look at other parts of the system performance are running as expected and stable, e.g. CPU benchmarks/stress tests, RAM benchmarks/stress tests, SSD/HDD benchmarks and also check the drives SMART info for errors/issues.

Also check your CPU temperatures and CPU frequency when you experience the issue to make sure the CPU is not throttling.

Edit: If you are overclocking your CPU or RAM i would also suggest to run at stock settings (bios default settings) to rule out possible issues with your overclock.
 
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Hi Guys, thanks for the replies and I realise that there is some detective work to do here to get to the bottom of the issue. No overclock on CPU or RAM. I'd rather not undervolt the card and just run stock.
BF5 @ 1080P on high settings should be well within the cards capabilities straight out of the box and especially as that is what it was achieving initially. Cheers
 
Some figs from GPU-Z/ BF5 Multiplayer - Amsterdam
Core Clock - 1520MHz
GPU Memory Clock - 800MHz
GPU Temp - 58 C
GPU Power Draw - 248 W
CPU Temp - 44 C
PCIe x16 3.0 @ x16 3.0

That's one cool, lazy Vega 56.

Something's got a grip of it.

Not tried the dual cable yet but that wattage should be well within the PSU limits.
 
Ellis McKinnon said:
I'd rather not undervolt the card and just run stock.
Click to expand...

No seriously, read through the Vega 56 owners thread and undervolt. Get it nicely tuned up and you'll save a chunk of power, gain some performance and drop your temps, especially given that Asus have naffed up the Strix cooler - there's a big thread about fixing the VRM cooling issue on the Strix Vega 64 and it might apply to the 56.
 
Cheers Guys. Typo on the energy demand - it was actually pulling 184W. I've just never had a card which demands so much tuning to get the best out of. As it stands it's barely outperforming the MSI 970 it replaced at 1080p I've read about the 64 VRM issue but I think that the Vega 56 cooler has only fins over the VRM's and not a thermal pad attached to the cooler. I'm just perplexed as to why it would scream out of the box only to be hobbled somewhere down the line - twice!
 
Are you using gpu-z, if so which version? I ask because version 2.8.0 shows the GPU "hotspot" which is at least 10c higher than GPU "temp". If this is getting up to around 90c (which I have seen on my Vega 64 in the past) that might be causing issues, in which case you need to under volt the card. It really is worth it to save power draw, fan noise and gives higher clock speeds on the core.
 
probably running the low power bios, check your bios switch. which way is it flipped? towards the back of the case or front?
also to re-enforce what others have said about the undervolt, do it. you wont regret it, try p6 at 1050mv and p7 at 1080mv and go from there.
 
This is where it gets a bit silly as I'm just about back to normal - High 130+fps - Ultra 110+fps - no under-volting - 140fps constant on the small 32 player maps

What did I do? Followed this thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7hzxw9/major_performance_bugs_with_rx_vega_6456_here_are/

and disabled the fast startup - How this should quite make such a difference I do not know but I could tell as soon as I'd changed the setting and fired up the game just by the exhaust from the case.

I'll test it some more tonight and I will still undervolt the card at some point. I just couldn't get my head around why, on a fresh install, it would run so well then revert back to 970 performance levels after a couple of restarts.

Weird and must admit I was clutching at straws at this point.

Core Clock - 1568MHz
GPU Memory Clock - 800MHz
GPU Temp - 80 C
CPU Temp - 50 C
 
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