The RX Vega 64 Owners Thread

[pmc25]

I've sort of figured out what's going on with Wattman.

It doesn't reduce GPU core voltage at all unless you reduce the HBM voltage value. It won't reduce it past around 0.98-1V though, unless you then reduce the P6 and P7 GPU core voltages. At the moment I've got all 3 values set to 850mV. At these values, GPU memory voltage (actually GPU core voltage) in HWInfo is reading mostly between 890mV and 930mV, with 900-910 being the value most of the time under load.

Under full load, with the stock cooler at 100%, and locked to 1630Mhz / 1100Mhz, it is hitting max temperatures in Ashes Escalation 1920x1080 Crazy presets of 51C.

Wattman is a total joke, and the drivers can kindly be described as alpha, but it seems that this is actually the coolest, most efficient stock performance card ever released, with a few tweaks. In contrast to being the hottest, most power hungry as initial reviews seemed to say.

FYI, peak additive GPU core power and GPU memory power values are ~192W under full load. I'm told that HWInfo is fairly accurate for peak figures, even if the readings jump around all over the place.

It's not applying values below 900-950mV ... either it's 950mV and Vdroop is pushing it towards 900mV, or it's applying ~900mV and LLC is causing overshoot.

 

[pmc25]

Seems rather low - watching GN's livestream at the moment, and they're seeing similarly optimistic load temps; they get below ambient readings at idle, so not sure if the raw sensor value is having the right formula applied.

All I know is that:

I'm hitting 85C on all stock Turbo.

Undervolted as far as ******* WattMan will allow me, and fighting it all the way, I hit 51C peak in AoTS Escalation Crazy presets benchmark, locked solid to 1630/1100, rather than massively-throttling/945. Most of the time it's ~48C. This is on stock air cooler. Even if I replaced the stock TIM with Liquid Metal Ultra, I'd expect peak to drop to 45C (ish) and mean value of 42C or so. The readings may not be 100% accurate, but one thing is for sure, undervolting takes an axe to thermals and power draw like no other card before it.

 

[TonyTurbo78]

We actually have similar setups, would be interested to see some results from yours, got a 3770k myself.

I've benched a few things on air. Will let it fly more once it's under water this weekend.

Here, taken from much earlier in thread

Just ran a Timespy bench, not to shabby. Link to compare http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/21604298?

Graphic Score 7600

 

[ICDP]

So having got the voltage and throttling problems sorted I have settled on the following settings. This is will a stock reference black cooler.

• 1000mV on both state 6 and 7 (hard to believe this is .2mV lower than stock).
  
• Core clocks 1550 on both state 6 and 7
• HBM2 is stock 945
  
• +10% PL (not much but is helps eliminate throttling)
• Max fans speed 2300 RPM or roughly 45%
• Seems to stabilise at 79-80c in Witcher 3.

This gives me similar speed to balanced mode but with 5-6c less temperatures, a slightly lower fan noise and a slight performance boost.

So all in all at 4K settings I am getting 20% - 40% (game dependent) higher performance than my old Fury. Noise on the reference cooler is not horrible when gaming but one thing I noticed is that no there's pump noise at idle.

I'm happy with my £448 Vega 64. Especially now I have it undervolted and running cooler.

 

[ICDP]

One thing worth noting, if your voltage and core clock settings start messing about, Select power saver mode, apply and then start again using custom. I found this to stop the core clock from crapping out such as excessive throttling.

 

[ICDP]

All I know is that:

I'm hitting 85C on all stock Turbo.

Undervolted as far as ******* WattMan will allow me, and fighting it all the way, I hit 51C peak in AoTS Escalation Crazy presets benchmark, locked solid to 1630/1100, rather than massively-throttling/945. Most of the time it's ~48C. This is on stock air cooler. Even if I replaced the stock TIM with Liquid Metal Ultra, I'd expect peak to drop to 45C (ish) and mean value of 42C or so. The readings may not be 100% accurate, but one thing is for sure, undervolting takes an axe to thermals and power draw like no other card before it.

48c on stock reference cooler? Are you using a frame rate cap at 1080p?

 

[pmc25]

On the settings I used to test stability on my Nano at 1045/545, on 3 runs of Metro 2033 Redux (seemed to make unstable settings crash more than anything else), my Vega 64 is about 1.98x faster It's at 1630/1095.

It does this at probably 15% less power consumption. Nano was set to -18mV and +45% power limit. Vega64 is at 950mV, drooping to ~900mV (I'm now sure WattMan is applying 950mV but no lower), or -250mV (-300mV re: droop) and +20% power limit.

Vega hits a peak of 50C during the run at 100% fan speed, Nano 76C at 100% fan speed.

 

[ICDP]

Ah OK, 100% fan speeds makes more sense.

 

[pmc25]

Ah OK, 100% fan speeds makes more sense.

I don't want thermals to be an issue when I'm testing stability and the limits (on these very early drivers), and also the Nano had Liquid Metal Ultra, giving it a big advantage.

Plus, there's no whine or bearing noise from the fan that's audible over the blowing sound, so it doesn't drive me nuts when playing for hours. That and I have an EK block sitting on my desk next to me.

If future WattMan (or WattTool now) allows 900mV, I'm pretty sure my card will do it at stock 1630 boost. Maybe lower.

I'd guess to do 1700Mhz I'll have to raise voltage to 1015-1020mV.

Edit: Set so that it hits about 3200rpm it (overshoots the number you set - max is ~4800rpm), it still only hits a peak of 56C. The card is very cool once underclocked heavily.

 

[Kaapstad]

So, my Sapphire Vega64 Liquid Edition arrived today, ordered on launch day for £638. Missed out on initial stock, though more arrived yesterday and one of them had my name on it

Picture for the roll of honour:

Spoiler

Installed and running:

Spoiler

Firestrike: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/21739425?

Played a few hours of prey, looped 3dmark a few times, blasted through some GTA5, all running smoothly with no crashes, on Turbo settings in wattman. Very impressed with the performance, is a major step up from my RX580, all silky smooth at 1440P 144Hz freesync

Noise wise, very happy. The pump is very quiet, can hardly hear it if I stop the radiator fan. Much quieter than the usual pumps in corsair AIO's etc. I may end up replacing the radiator fan with a Noctua though, to match the rest of my case. It's not loud, though is noticeable over the rest of my (very) quiet case fans. Luckily no warranty void stickers on the aluminium shroud, so I can simply disconnect the current fan and install a new one if needed.

The only negative so far is that I feel pressured to replace my Noctua UH12S heatsink with an AIO, so have a better view of the gorgeous backplate

The AIO version does look really good and well built.

Welcome and on TROH.


The Roll of Honour.

Date 23/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, Dave2150, Link
Date 23/08/2017, Make Reference Air, Roughneck, Link
Date 21/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, diziet, Link
Date 19/08/2017, Make Reference Air, CapitalOne, Link
Date 18/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, NathG79, Link
Date 18/08/2017, Make Reference Air, Chrisc, Link
Date 18/08/2017, Make Reference Air, Richeh, Link
Date 17/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, DazQ87, Link
Date 17/08/2017, Make Reference Air, Smudge, Link
Date 17/08/2017, Make Reference Air, ChosenName, Link
Date 17/08/2017, Make Reference Air, mattyc123, Link
Date 16/08/2017, Make Reference Air, WhistleBlower07, Link
Date 16/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, Chewie, Link
Date 16/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, nashathedog, Link
Date 16/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, heartburnron, Link
Date 16/08/2017, Make Reference Air, vanpeebles, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference Air, Morve, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference Air, Howling, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference Air, Apache14, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, Dianbobo, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference Air, ubersonic, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, AMDMatt, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference Air, TonyTurbo78, Link
Date 15/08/2017, Make Reference AIO, MDPlatts, Link


To get on the Roll of Honour all you have to do is post a pic with your user name on it of your Vega 64.
​

 

[Chewie]

Hi Guys,

Some news on my end with my Liquid Edition, which I'm afraid are not good. While playing more and benching less over the last two days I had a lot of black screen/no signal/crash issues. Benchmarks have never been a problem but games definitely trigger the problem almost immediately (Forza Horizon 3 is a good example, always occurs after 5-10mins).

Since I have quite a "heavy" rig I started to wonder if it wasn't my Seasonic Prime 850W which is struggling to feed the card while under load so I've ordered a Prime 1000W to confirm (arriving tomorrow).

Note that undervolting the card made no difference, actually in game it seems to make things even worse.

I'm really hoping it's the PSU as I don't want to have to send the card back and wait for a replacement to be available

If you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears

 

[Nemesis.ie]

Given all this undervolting talk, once they sort out Wattman and the drivers mature, maybe we will see updated UEFIs for the cards with lower voltages set and/or higher clocks.

One of the AMD Vega engineers said the clock target was 1700MHz in an interview, one would think that should be at a reasonable efficiency point.

All very mysterious.

 

[gthlm]

Hi Guys,

Some news on my end with my Liquid Edition, which I'm afraid are not good. While playing more and benching less over the last two days I had a lot of back screen/no signal/crash issues. Benchmarks have never been a problem but games definitely trigger the problem almost immediately (Forza Horizon 3 is a good example, always occurs after 5-10mins).

Since I have quite a "heavy" rig I started to wonder if it wasn't my Seasonic Prime 850W which is struggling to feed the card while under load so I've ordered a Prime 1000W to confirm (arriving tomorrow).

Note that undervolting the card made no difference, actually in game it seems to make things even worse.

I'm really hoping it's the PSU as I don't want to have to send the card back and wait for a replacement to be available

If you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears

I don't have any real advice, sorry, but after crashing two or three times after I installed mine has yet to experience another crash, and I can tell you what I tried as it's absolutely not extensive!

First crash was on the menu screen for Hellblade when I was quitting the game - steam overlay reported 3 thousand and something fps for a couple of seconds then the screen went black and system locked up.

Second crash was in game in pubg, nothing to report, just mid game black screen and system lock up.

After that I was getting ready to order a new psu but I held off for some reason. System currently has a Corsair RM750, but it's pretty light - just the base system in sig and a few ssds and a H110i cooler.

I set a global frame limiter of 144fps - basically in reaction to the menu screen crash in hellblade. None of the games I have played heavily in the last few days really reach 144fps anyway.

I turned on HBCC Memory Segment, just at the minimum setting. This was because I noticed it massively reduced the stuttering and hitching in superposition benchmark that was actually caused by HWInfo as Matt explained earlier. I left it on because it didn't seem to hurt anything.

I haven't updated to the latest driver, nor have I played too much in wattman as I have been waiting for them to mature a little bit at least.

That's all I have/haven't done. Nothing else on my system has been touched and there have been no more crashes. Have played pubg, hellblade and the witcher 3 on max settings for many hours with no problems.

 

[jaffveyda]

Question to owners, any regrets yet?
no flame just curious.

 

[MikeB]

Any chance of a massive favour those us of buying soon, a you tube video of software and settings to get best results in a non water 64

 

[ICDP]

Question to owners, any regrets yet?
no flame just curious.

At first yes because while performance was good it was running too hot and just a bit too loud for me. I subsequently found out that voltage control was bugged on release beta drivers and the latest ones fix it. So now it is running cooler, faster and quieter.

Happy enough even with reference so far but only at the £450 price point. At current prices it is not a viable option IMHO.

 

[LtMatt]

Performance test on Resident Evil 7 on Vega 64.

 

[TonyTurbo78]

Question to owners, any regrets yet?
no flame just curious.

Honestly none as yet, but I am at the moment putting it back in a water loop. At £449 for this level of performance, absolutely no complaints at all.

I think, and this is me being completely honest, I would regret buying a reference blower style card to use without water, as the temps and noise levels are off the charts. And I'd definitely regret paying today's prices for that.

 

[ubersonic]

Question to owners, any regrets yet?
no flame just curious.

No regrets, more relieved I got mine before the price went up or I would have had to pay more lol. If I was buying a GPU today it would still be a V64 as even at the inflated price as it's still the best deal going for somebody who wants to game AND use applications AND intends to buy a new monitor sometime in the next 12 months.

 

[malachi]

Question to owners, any regrets yet?
no flame just curious.

Nope, haven't played any games with mine properly yet. Waiting for better drivers.