The RX Vega 64 Owners Thread

[Lokken86]

I find that my reference card just crashes when I under volt the core by any amount if the default clock speeds are left as they are (1632 in p7). So I set it to 1600 and 1550. The HBM on the other hand goes over 1100mhz without a problem and that seems to be where the extra performance is mainly coming from.

 

[Lokken86]

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...

Slide the power slider up to +50% and job done, it's faster then a 1080. And it's minimum £200 more for a 1080ti.

 

[Panos]

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

Great stuff mate
Play with Power Save & Turbo Mode also. (you can switch while gaming). Let us know your findings, especially your clocks while gaming on Power Save mode.
We can compare them to my findings and experience.

Because I found power save mode on 90% of the game is really the perfect spot for around 100fps at 2560x1440.
I am losing 10% over the Turbo mode (usually runs at 1605 with 945 HBM) over Power Save mode (1400-1410mhz 800 HBM) but the power draw difference is 276W over 178W!

 

[Panos]

I find that my reference card just crashes when I under volt the core by any amount if the default clock speeds are left as they are (1632 in p7). So I set it to 1600 and 1550. The HBM on the other hand goes over 1100mhz without a problem and that seems to be where the extra performance is mainly coming from.

To down volt you need to work from the low voltage raising the speed, not from high speed lowering the voltage.

So reset everything.
a) Set power limit to +50%
b) Set the P7 state to 1100 and P6 state to 1050. Leave everything else as is.
c) Open something like Heaven, put the overlay on. See the speed. Now go to the drivers while Heaven it running and raise slowly the P7 state at 12mhz intervals.
Go back to Heaven for a bit, then raise 12mhz gain. Rinse and repeat until it crashes. Make sure every time you save the profile....
If you hit your target speed before crashing you are OK. Otherwise raise the P6 state to 1100 and P7 to 1150. Repeat above.

 

[Lokken86]

To down volt you need to work from the low voltage raising the speed, not from high speed lowering the voltage.

So reset everything.
a) Set power limit to +50%
b) Set the P7 state to 1100 and P6 state to 1050. Leave everything else as is.
c) Open something like Heaven, put the overlay on. See the speed. Now go to the drivers while Heaven it running and raise slowly the P7 state at 12mhz intervals.
Go back to Heaven for a bit, then raise 12mhz gain. Rinse and repeat until it crashes. Make sure every time you save the profile....
If you hit your target speed before crashing you are OK. Otherwise raise the P6 state to 1100 and P7 to 1150. Repeat above.

Will try this method now thanks.

 

[montymint]

Cheers for the help @Panos , been lots to take in. My fan is audible fro. 2300 and with a beefy OC cranks to 3500rpm lol. Will tweak my curve and clock settings until I'm happy. But it's fun trying theoretical clocks under air

 

[Panos]

Cheers for the help @Panos , been lots to take in. My fan is audible fro. 2300 and with a beefy OC cranks to 3500rpm lol. Will tweak my curve and clock settings until I'm happy. But it's fun trying theoretical clocks under air

You are welcome mate.
I have found the Vega 64 a fascinating card to play with it's settings, and still learning more things every time I spend few hours with it even 6 weeks later.
And winter is coming (literally ), so lets see how it will behave few days in a freezing room

@Lokken86 good luck mate. Also something wrote numerous times. If you really wish to improve the performance even a bit, and you have steady hand and patience, use liquid metal on the GPU & HBM. (dont smudge everything only the 3 cores, and transfer it with the bud dont put it directly from the tube to the GPU). It will greatly help lower the temps, even by 15C is 20% over the 74C is working on now.

In addition, use HWInfo and lets us know your HBM voltage shows there and your HBM temps. Must say I am impressed with your card going over 1100Mhz HBM. Thats a great performer there.

 

[Lokken86]

In addition, use HWInfo and lets us know your HBM voltage shows there and your HBM temps. Must say I am impressed with your card going over 1100Mhz HBM. Thats a great performer there.

Admittedly the fan has to be up high for it even though the temperatures don't seem to be very high at all. Anyway I think I will back off he HBM to 1050mhz to play it safe as I found in the past if you push it too hard for too long the overclock actually begins to fade.

Also I'm wondering why the core doesn't seem to run at the 1637 that it has as a default setting for p7. If I set both p6 and p7 to that with any voltage settings it just dies on a Firestrike run at the start.

 

[nashathedog]

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...

All valid points, If you haven't got a Freesync monitor and don't enjoy messing around with the hardware's software the GTX 1080's the way to go.

That said you can currently get a good Vega 64 for just £450 and there's a bit over £100's worth of upcoming games with the main one being the next Assassins Creed so even if that's the only one you really want it's knocking the price down to £400. I couldn't say no to this deal as I have a Freesync monitor and with AMD's current situation it'll remain a driver priority for a lot longer than the 1080 will with Nvidia.

Great stuff mate
Play with Power Save & Turbo Mode also. (you can switch while gaming). Let us know your findings, especially your clocks while gaming on Power Save mode.
We can compare them to my findings and experience.

Because I found power save mode on 90% of the game is really the perfect spot for around 100fps at 2560x1440.
I am losing 10% over the Turbo mode (usually runs at 1605 with 945 HBM) over Power Save mode (1400-1410mhz 800 HBM) but the power draw difference is 276W over 178W!

I'll try it all out this weekend, I just spent a couple of hours in the game I was trying to play when it kept crashing over the last few days and it sailed through it with no hiccups tonight.

I had one unrelated oddity when installing the new motherboard. With the new board I put it all together and I kept getting a cpu fan error and couldn't get past the bio's so I removed the H100i GTX AIO I've been using and installed the reference fan that comes with the 2700x and the cpu fan error is gone, I'm not sure what the problem was as it was plugged in correctly, I imagine it's related to some setting somewhere or other, Not to worry though, I think I'm gonna grab the AM4 fittings so I can use my Bequiet air cooler that got retired when I moved from the 4790k to Ryzen.

 

[Panos]

I'll try it all out this weekend, I just spent a couple of hours in the game I was trying to play when it kept crashing over the last few days and it sailed through it with no hiccups tonight.

I had one unrelated oddity when installing the new motherboard. With the new board I put it all together and I kept getting a cpu fan error and couldn't get past the bio's so I removed the H100i GTX AIO I've been using and installed the reference fan that comes with the 2700x and the cpu fan error is gone, I'm not sure what the problem was as it was plugged in correctly, I imagine it's related to some setting somewhere or other, Not to worry though, I think I'm gonna grab the AM4 fittings so I can use my Bequiet air cooler that got retired when I moved from the 4790k to Ryzen.

Some boards have a setting in Security (or anything related to fans) tab, that will not make the board usable when no fan is present.
Is annoying at best. But can be resolved by having a case fan connected
Btw which board you got?

 

[Lokken86]

All valid points, If you haven't got a Freesync monitor and don't enjoy messing around with the hardware's software the GTX 1080's the way to go.

I will also say that Nvidia cards are more user friendly coming from experience at least when it comes to overclocking. I bought a 1070 and within an hour of tinkering I had the highest 1070 Firestrike score on here without water cooling or anything. Ok so helped by the CPU but considering most people were running high clocked Intels, i'd say fairs fair

 

[Panos]

I will also say that Nvidia cards are more user friendly coming from experience at least when it comes to overclocking. I bought a 1070 and within an hour of tinkering I had the highest 1070 Firestrike score on here without water cooling or anything. Ok so helped by the CPU but considering most people were running high clocked Intels, i'd say fairs fair

Nvidia though requires 3rd party tools to do so
On AMD you can either use MSI AB which is not efficient to overclock by using brute force or Wattman and tweak as much as you like

 

[Lokken86]

Nvidia though requires 3rd party tools to do so
On AMD you can either use MSI AB which is not efficient to overclock by using brute force or Wattman and tweak as much as you like

Gotta love some tinkering

 

[Panos]

Huh
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vega-20-More-Driver-Code

 

[nashathedog]

Huh
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vega-20-More-Driver-Code

I've had to arrange a return today, I thought things were going well on the new motherboard but when I settled in to do a bit of gaming it all went tit's up after an hour or two, It's definitely got to be the card.

 

[nashathedog]

I will also say that Nvidia cards are more user friendly coming from experience at least when it comes to overclocking. I bought a 1070 and within an hour of tinkering I had the highest 1070 Firestrike score on here without water cooling or anything. Ok so helped by the CPU but considering most people were running high clocked Intels, i'd say fairs fair

If not for my Freesync monitor I'd be going with Nvidia, You never know, they may announce adaptive sync support soon & that wouldn't be a nail in AMD's coffin it'd be taking an axe to it.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

I've had to arrange a return today, I thought things were going well on the new motherboard but when I settled in to do a bit of gaming it all went tit's up after an hour or two, It's definitely got to be the card.

Oh man

 

[scritchyrat]

Oh man Nasha, that looks bad but look on the bright side. You could have multiple Explorer icons on your screen instead

 

[nashathedog]

Oh man

It's an odd one as I can run bench after bench of something like Firestrike or Unigine but once I go in-game and spend any amount of time in-game this happens.

Oh man Nasha, that looks bad but look on the bright side. You could have multiple Explorer icons on your screen instead

It's a shame I don't use Explorer.

 

[Panos]

I've had to arrange a return today, I thought things were going well on the new motherboard but when I settled in to do a bit of gaming it all went tit's up after an hour or two, It's definitely got to be the card.

That looks like something taken out of sci-fi
Are you sure you got a Vega Red Devil and not a receiver of signals from Hell?

RMA the card mate. Seems your card is faulty.