The RX Vega 64 Owners Thread

[Panos]

hmmm my benchmark on heaven is nearly 10 fps slower (54). Would my Ryzen 1600 be to blame for that?

My GPU never hit 1600Mhz once during the benchmark, it seemed to cap at 1500

This a Red Devil btw

Are you using Turbo mode? What is the registered speed at GPUZ? What are yout remps on the AMD overlay? (ctrl+shft+O)
Heat is the limiting factor here. The card doesn't like to work over 70C so it will cut a lot of from the clocks and start throttling at 55C because the internal GPU temp will be skyrocketing to 80C+ (use HWINFO to see the third thermal sensor)
To resolve this you need to create a more aggressive fan curve and not the default one which works are barely any airflow, then at 100% few seconds, and then back down again to "nothing".
Continuing the same yo-yo.

 

[Shiari]

3440 x 1440p users .. what kind of fps are you getting in games (throw examples at me!) and what settings do you use to get these? Can you get away with high / ultra or have to tone back?

Depends a bit on the game, and I'm speaking of a freesync setup. Far Cry 5 I can fully max out no problems, runs very well (there's only a few places it sometimes stutters a little bit). No Man's Sky NEXT isn't as well optimised (and is OpenGL, no freesync either). Games like The Hunter: Call of the Wild or The Forest I can also pretty much max out.

So yeah, high to ultra is generally not a problem, and the visual difference between Ultra and High is mostly not worth a loss in performance where that matters anyway.

 

[JGF111]

Are you using Turbo mode? What is the registered speed at GPUZ? What are yout remps on the AMD overlay? (ctrl+shft+O)
Heat is the limiting factor here. The card doesn't like to work over 70C so it will cut a lot of from the clocks and start throttling at 55C because the internal GPU temp will be skyrocketing to 80C+ (use HWINFO to see the third thermal sensor)
To resolve this you need to create a more aggressive fan curve and not the default one which works are barely any airflow, then at 100% few seconds, and then back down again to "nothing".
Continuing the same yo-yo.

This seems like a lot of effort/tweaking/massaging in order to push the vega64 to equivalent or even slightly faster overall (which is still pretty debateable) to a 1080... while still being more expensive and considerably more power hungry. I'm not sure why one wouldnt just get a 1080, save money, not have to worry about fan/cooler/power profiles etc... and of course we wont even talk about the 1080Ti which while in the same price category/power envelope neighbourhood is much faster.

I dont know, imo, there isnt really a compelling reason to go with vega64 if you are truly vendor agnostic...

 

[montymint]

This seems like a lot of effort/tweaking/massaging in order to push the vega64 to equivalent or even slightly faster overall (which is still pretty debateable) to a 1080... while still being more expensive and considerably more power hungry. I'm not sure why one wouldnt just get a 1080, save money, not have to worry about fan/cooler/power profiles etc... and of course we wont even talk about the 1080Ti which while in the same price category/power envelope neighbourhood is much faster.

I dont know, imo, there isnt really a compelling reason to go with vega64 if you are truly vendor agnostic...

My panel is freesync so in the battle of 1080 v vega64 I'd prefer that, especially with the long game in mind as NVidea tend to lose groud as they age, whereas AMD get better. The 1080Ti is frankly too expensive.

Depends a bit on the game, and I'm speaking of a freesync setup. Far Cry 5 I can fully max out no problems, runs very well (there's only a few places it sometimes stutters a little bit). No Man's Sky NEXT isn't as well optimised (and is OpenGL, no freesync either). Games like The Hunter: Call of the Wild or The Forest I can also pretty much max out.

So yeah, high to ultra is generally not a problem, and the visual difference between Ultra and High is mostly not worth a loss in performance where that matters anyway.

Thanks for that, yeah I had a further play last night on a few games. Metro 2033 redux is 3 figure fps when everything maxed out (and the card only using about 1000Mhz core), Kingdom come deliverence I needed a few things on high over very high for 60+fps, otherwise it'd be 50 - however freesync helps in both cases. Hitman again hits 3 figures, but the core usage goes up to 1400 -1500 according to Riva.

Some games more tied into the CPU -No Mans Sky and Fallout 4 both run like hot garbage atm, offering very little over the Fury. I'll need to dig into these further and see if people on reddit have come up with some settings fixes for this.

Are you using Turbo mode? What is the registered speed at GPUZ? What are yout remps on the AMD overlay? (ctrl+shft+O)
Heat is the limiting factor here. The card doesn't like to work over 70C so it will cut a lot of from the clocks and start throttling at 55C because the internal GPU temp will be skyrocketing to 80C+ (use HWINFO to see the third thermal sensor)
To resolve this you need to create a more aggressive fan curve and not the default one which works are barely any airflow, then at 100% few seconds, and then back down again to "nothing".
Continuing the same yo-yo.

I used some custom settings you suggestedin an earlier post which did increase the benchmark a couple of fps (57 instead of 54). I was using Riva during the test and the card was moving from approx 1380 - 1520 during the benchmark. The Fans went sa you said from 70 - 89 and back as the clocks changed. Average heat was 63c during the test.

What I'll do tonight after work is install the bits and bobs you've mentioned above and give you more accurate info

For reference, my wattman settings are currently this:

Spoiler: spoiler

 

[EL_JOCK]

Yeah, he got the worse of the non reference Vega 64.

Before i start i might be wrong always do your own checking but these are just the thoughts running through my head on the subject of the video,


To be honest i believe there is more issues than the simple poor choice of card that needs reviewing with the video, i think steve and his team do some good work but a number of questions bug me with the style of data points he creates.

In the final data sheet he simply shows that x number as a % of y number, i.e using the Frostpunk game Nvidia's score is 33% bigger than AMD's. You would think he would want to show the % increase / decrease between the cards i.e the 1080 is 25% Faster than the Vega in frostpunk, which to be honest is what most of us think of when looking at cards to buy.

The second issue is the double dip on a single game, you cannot lose or win twice in a single game, its not like at random points the game will move render paths. In each game with the choice of DX11 or 12 one of the render methods will be better for the user to pick based on their hardware, so find which one is representative of what users are best picking and run that as a single data point. Equally his data points makes it appear than AMD does better in DX12 but that's only true in 1 case, more often than not AMD users are better off picking DX11 based on his numbers.

If you account for all this and want to understand which card is faster then using his numbers the 1080 is 2.9% faster on average, across all the games tested, when picking the fastest render method for each hardware config over Vega @ stock

Overclocking seems to be a whole different issue with the review but he does not show what settings he had in wattman or what nvidia settings, so its hard to review that section.

 

[mediamatt]

Depends a bit on the game, and I'm speaking of a freesync setup. Far Cry 5 I can fully max out no problems, runs very well (there's only a few places it sometimes stutters a little bit). No Man's Sky NEXT isn't as well optimised (and is OpenGL, no freesync either). Games like The Hunter: Call of the Wild or The Forest I can also pretty much max out.

So yeah, high to ultra is generally not a problem, and the visual difference between Ultra and High is mostly not worth a loss in performance where that matters anyway.

So no freesync for games using opengl??

 

[Panos]

This seems like a lot of effort/tweaking/massaging in order to push the vega64 to equivalent or even slightly faster overall (which is still pretty debateable) to a 1080... while still being more expensive and considerably more power hungry. I'm not sure why one wouldnt just get a 1080, save money, not have to worry about fan/cooler/power profiles etc... and of course we wont even talk about the 1080Ti which while in the same price category/power envelope neighbourhood is much faster.

I dont know, imo, there isnt really a compelling reason to go with vega64 if you are truly vendor agnostic...

What I describe above is 1 - 2 clicks on the drivers. GTX1080 requires third party software like MSI AB and RTSS and much more time than 2 clicks to achieve those same goals. Also the "more power" is kinda stupid argument when the cards are capped at 276W at turbo boost profile (1630mhz for Nitro and Red Devil), and you have to really try hard to burn 330W. Something the good GTX1080s clocking at 2000+ can do easily. As all the factory OC GTX1080ti do.,

And last time I checked this discussion was about Vega 64 owners and asking questions about the cards, not Nvidia trolls.

 

[Panos]

So no freesync for games using opengl??

Anyone said to use those settings needs to be shot especially only for the HBM ram.....
Set the card to Turbo mode mate, click apply and carry on. Play your games. If you have Red Devil that would clock the card to 1630 @ 276W, and it will be working due to heat at around 1550-1570 all the time stable without throttling.
Also set your FPS cap limit to 2-3 fps bellow your maximum Freesync fps your monitor can handle. eg at 144hz set it to 142fps.
That way even if it goes over some times (and does) you will still have Freesync, and never the need for Vsync.
Personally setting it to 140.

Next step. For custom overclocking the rules of thumb are
a) Raise voltage limit to +50% (at the bottom of the screen last one)
b) Set P7 state to 1100. Set P6 state to 1050. Dont touch any of the clock settings. Just see how it performs and use the overlay to record speed.
c) Next stop overclock the HBM ram. Set it to 1050, touch nothing else. Use HWInfo to monitor it's temperatures while gaming. If they escalate to 80C I wouldn't consider pushing them more. If not and the card supply voltage to HBM (in HWInfo) is 1.35 or higher, try 1100HBM. If not stable reduce by 20.
(the power setting under HBM is not for the ram but for a P state of core, leave it as is)

d) Set the fan curve. Got to the fan setting and set the minimum to 2000. The majority of the cards are completely silent even at 2200.
That would allow you a more stable clock speed, than the usual yo-yo.
e) After you have used the card and check it's speed/perf try overclock. For new users the best way is to use the overclock slider (horizontal bar) and not the direct value.
It works great with air cooling because it automatically sets the max value based on the thermals and not trying to force a speed that could crash the GPU like it is happening on Nvidia cards.
Also it gives more stable overclock than going to set a value. Set it to +2% and see if all ok.
Then set it to 3%. If you want more overclock set P7 to 1150 and P6 to 1100. Observe now how the clock speed is higher than before.

Pushing to 5%+ you are going to hit 1700mhz territory with cards like Nitro and Red Devil, so expect loud fan as it tries to use 330W-376W.

The choice is yours.

 

[LtMatt]

@montymint

You should be able to lower the core voltage for P7 and P6 if those are your desired core clock speeds. Try knocking 0.025mv off each voltage state until you hit instability. You may be able to knock off 0.050-0.075mv off each.

 

[montymint]

Anyone said to use those settings needs to be shot especially only for the HBM ram.....
Set the card to Turbo mode mate, click apply and carry on. Play your games. If you have Red Devil that would clock the card to 1630 @ 276W, and it will be working due to heat at around 1550-1570 all the time stable without throttling.
Also set your FPS cap limit to 2-3 fps bellow your maximum Freesync fps your monitor can handle. eg at 144hz set it to 142fps.
That way even if it goes over some times (and does) you will still have Freesync, and never the need for Vsync.
Personally setting it to 140.

Next step. For custom overclocking the rules of thumb are
a) Raise voltage limit to +50% (at the bottom of the screen last one)
b) Set P7 state to 1100. Set P6 state to 1050. Dont touch any of the clock settings. Just see how it performs and use the overlay to record speed.
c) Next stop overclock the HBM ram. Set it to 1050, touch nothing else. Use HWInfo to monitor it's temperatures while gaming. If they escalate to 80C I wouldn't consider pushing them more. If not and the card supply voltage to HBM (in HWInfo) is 1.35 or higher, try 1100HBM. If not stable reduce by 20.
(the power setting under HBM is not for the ram but for a P state of core, leave it as is)

d) Set the fan curve. Got to the fan setting and set the minimum to 2000. The majority of the cards are completely silent even at 2200.
That would allow you a more stable clock speed, than the usual yo-yo.
e) After you have used the card and check it's speed/perf try overclock. For new users the best way is to use the overclock slider (horizontal bar) and not the direct value.
It works great with air cooling because it automatically sets the max value based on the thermals and not trying to force a speed that could crash the GPU like it is happening on Nvidia cards.
Also it gives more stable overclock than going to set a value. Set it to +2% and see if all ok.
Then set it to 3%. If you want more overclock set P7 to 1150 and P6 to 1100. Observe now how the clock speed is higher than before.

Pushing to 5%+ you are going to hit 1700mhz territory with cards like Nitro and Red Devil, so expect loud fan as it tries to use 330W-376W.

The choice is yours.

I assume that was in reply to my post and thanks, I'll give it all a whirl this weekend.

I don't mind the tinkering, however I'm very much out of the loop when it comes to gfx overclocking, as I knew my Fury wouldn't blast 3440x1440 quickly I left it and ran games on lower settings.

I do have an FPS set already as advised as some games were going past the 75mhz refresh rate of my current panel.

 

[Acesbomb]

This seems like a lot of effort/tweaking/massaging in order to push the vega64 to equivalent or even slightly faster overall (which is still pretty debateable) to a 1080... while still being more expensive and considerably more power hungry. I'm not sure why one wouldnt just get a 1080, save money, not have to worry about fan/cooler/power profiles etc... and of course we wont even talk about the 1080Ti which while in the same price category/power envelope neighbourhood is much faster.

I dont know, imo, there isnt really a compelling reason to go with vega64 if you are truly vendor agnostic...

GTX 1070 was about the same price launch day, £450.

 

[Panos]

I assume that was in reply to my post and thanks, I'll give it all a whirl this weekend.

I don't mind the tinkering, however I'm very much out of the loop when it comes to gfx overclocking, as I knew my Fury wouldn't blast 3440x1440 quickly I left it and ran games on lower settings.

I do have an FPS set already as advised as some games were going past the 75mhz refresh rate of my current panel.

You changed your post mate
Also you have downlocked the HBM to 147mhz. Thats crazy completely culling all your performance.

 

[montymint]

You changed your post mate
Also you have downlocked the HBM to 147mhz. Thats crazy completely culling all your performance.

Have I? I think it's on dynamic, I only touched the power. At the time I had nothing running so it isn't running fast But gaming that bad boy goes to 985 -990. The weird this is that if you look at the frequency above the voltage the in the right most state - it's in the negatives - which is weird.

Also - when looking last night, that power slider would only go to 1, is there anything I need to change?

 

[Panos]

Have I? I think it's on dynamic, I only touched the power. At the time I had nothing running so it isn't running fast But gaming that bad boy goes to 985 -990. The weird this is that if you look at the frequency above the voltage the in the right most state - it's in the negatives - which is weird.

Also - when looking last night, that power slider would only go to 1, is there anything I need to change?

On the images you posted yet. It has a typed number of -5xxxxxxxx.

Click the reset on the top left corner
If you go custom overclock look at my previous post. Most of the gains with Vega are with HBM overclock than core, and 1100 is your max target, 1000 your minimum.
But use the horizontal slider bar to set the "gaming mode" (State 3 max) HBM speed. Like this. Around this area don't touch anything else



Also the reason asked you for HWInfo HBM voltage is because if your board pushes 1.35-1.356v (these are the max HBM can take before degrading) then you are OK.
However there are boards like the reference which push less HBM voltage. These need to be flashed to achieve 1100.

 

[Shiari]

So no freesync for games using opengl??

I'm not sure if OpenGL always means "no freesync", but in the case of No Man's Sky it won't turn on vsync (I have it turned on in the game profile as well) and without vsync no freesync. It's possibly just a problem with NMS.

 

[montymint]

On the images you posted yet. It has a typed number of -5xxxxxxxx.

Click the reset on the top left corner
If you go custom overclock look at my previous post. Most of the gains with Vega are with HBM overclock than core, and 1100 is your max target, 1000 your minimum.
But use the horizontal slider bar to set the "gaming mode" (State 3 max) HBM speed. Like this. Around this area don't touch anything else



Also the reason asked you for HWInfo HBM voltage is because if your board pushes 1.35-1.356v (these are the max HBM can take before degrading) then you are OK.
However there are boards like the reference which push less HBM voltage. These need to be flashed to achieve 1100.

I've reset Wattman settings and I still have that weird number:



Again, I can;t push power past "1"



Think I'll DDU and re-install catalyst to see if it's a borked install.

Edit: If It set State 3 to min, the HBM clocks at 945. The voltage going in according to HWinfo is 1.356

 

[Panos]

I've reset Wattman settings and I still have that weird number:



Again, I can;t push power past "1"



Think I'll DDU and re-install catalyst to see if it's a borked install.

Edit: If It set State 3 to min, the HBM clocks at 945. The voltage going in according to HWinfo is 1.356

Use DDU in Safe Mode. Wipe everything and use the 18.8.1.
Let us know how it goes.

 

[montymint]

Use DDU in Safe Mode. Wipe everything and use the 18.8.1.
Let us know how it goes.

I figured it's been a while so I'm currently formatting c:/ and going fresh fresh lol.

I'll update once I'm up and running

 

[nashathedog]

I finally got my X470 motherboard set up with my 2700x and Vega Red Devil. So far so good, The memory has yet to moan about being at 3200mhz as it did when using the 2700x with my B350 M-ATX motherboard.

Last night I did a run of Timespy extreme on the B350 motherboard with the memory underclocked to 3000mhz, Today I did the same test with the X470 board and the ram at it's stated 3200mhz and there's a small but consistent improvement across all the tests.

I'm now going to spemd the weekend gaming to see if the gpu crashes again if it does I'll send it back but hopefully it won't now I've removed what was likely the weakest link and done a ddu and reload of the drivers.

Here's the two Timespy extreme results which are done with everything at the stock out of the box settings.

Result

 

[montymint]

annnnd it's looking better

Spoiler