AMD Vega builders thread - rx 64 & rx 56

[Paratus]

Gone

 

[estarkey7]

https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E1...0446076&PID=6163686&SID=jc9px6be0f011rh100053

Sapphire Nitro 64 in stock!!!

Why on God's green earth would someone pay damn near $730 for this card, when $750 gets you the Vega FE and 8 GB more RAM?

Yeah, the fan can get loud, but you still have to get rid of the heat circulating in your case.

 

[Paratus]

Why on God's green earth would someone pay damn near $730 for this card, when $750 gets you the Vega FE and 8 GB more RAM?

Yeah, the fan can get loud, but you still have to get rid of the heat circulating in your case.

Cooler, quieter, will clock higher. I’d agree though that FE for $750 is the best priced Vega at the moment.

(I just spent $699 on a Red Devil RX 56. )

 

[estarkey7]

Cooler, quieter, will clock higher. I’d agree though that FE for $750 is the best priced Vega at the moment.

(I just spent $699 on a Red Devil RX 56. )

Dayum!

 

[Paratus]

Dayum!

For my birthday. Was only in stock for 18 minutes.

Basically I was going to buy the first Vega I could find under $800.

(Should have thought about the FE. But I kind of wanted the 56 to OC)

 

[DrMrLordX]

Cooler, quieter, will clock higher. I’d agree though that FE for $750 is the best priced Vega at the moment.

(I just spent $699 on a Red Devil RX 56. )

My needs may not be the same as every other Vega user out there, but to me, the best way to run any Vega FE or Vega 64 is undervolted, not overclocked.

 

[krumme]

My local vendor wouldnt take defective card back because cooler seal is broken but XFX offers an direct RMA.
This is good excellent service from XFX. Hope it pans out well.

 

[Paratus]

My needs may not be the same as every other Vega user out there, but to me, the best way to run any Vega FE or Vega 64 is undervolted, not overclocked.

Undervolted is the best way to OC Vega!

 

[meson2000]

I love it. But it took a little prodding to get the driver installed. Make sure to uninstall all drivers through Windows before you install it. Then reboot. Then use the AMD driver uninstaller utility. Then reboot. Then install the pro driver as a custom install and say you want to load additional drivers (this is only possible if it's on Windows 10).

After the driver completes loading. Reboot. Then after startup, go to driver options in the driver window. Then click search for drivers, and pick install the 17.12 version. DO NOT CLICK INSTALL AND SWITCH DRIVERS!!

FYI, it took me six tries to get it installed properly.

Thanks Estarkey7. I installed the FE card last night and followed your instructions and the driver install went smoothly. Ran a couple quick benchmarks and played a little Witcher 3 and all seemed well. Need to start tweaking game settings and profiles this weekend when I have more time with the card.

 

[meson2000]

XFX Vega 64 Reference Black

in stock at Newegg but the price ain't great.

I KNEW that was going to happen. When I finally caved and bought the FE I knew that shortly after some stock of 3rd party Vega RX 64 cards were going to come in stock... Oh well. So far the FE is working fine. Need to spend some real time with it this weekend.

 

[estarkey7]

Thanks Estarkey7. I installed the FE card last night and followed your instructions and the driver install went smoothly. Ran a couple quick benchmarks and played a little Witcher 3 and all seemed well. Need to start tweaking game settings and profiles this weekend when I have more time with the card.

Glad to hear it!

 

[EXCellR8]

I KNEW that was going to happen. When I finally caved and bought the FE I knew that shortly after some stock of 3rd party Vega RX 64 cards were going to come in stock...

i wouldn't sweat it too much... price on them is still in the clouds; it's not even the limited edition.

i was actually bidding on another LE until just recently when it mysteriously disappeared off ebay; still had a few days to go too. whole market is so distorted right now.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I KNEW that was going to happen. When I finally caved and bought the FE I knew that shortly after some stock of 3rd party Vega RX 64 cards were going to come in stock... Oh well. So far the FE is working fine. Need to spend some real time with it this weekend.

Those cards sold out in less than an hour, and they were as expensive as the FEs. Unless you really like the cooling solutions on those aftermarket cards, I see no reason to pay that much for only 8 GB of VRAM.

Got my FE today, but I won't have time to play with it until tomorrow. Monitor should be in then too. I didn't expect to get the DP --> DVI adapter with the card though. I really could run this old 1600x1200 monitor on my Vega, heehee! That would be silly though.

 

[EXCellR8]

it's 8GB HBM2 though, not GDDR5... but people are definitely paying too much for the RX cards right now, in some instances, by hundreds. It's a sad trend that, unfortunately, I don't see going away in the near future. The AIB cards are going even quicker than when the reference models initially rolled out. I actually planned on buying the NITRO but I've only seen it available for a few minutes.

 

[DrMrLordX]

it's 8GB HBM2 though, not GDDR5... but people are definitely paying too much for the RX cards right now, in some instances, by hundreds.

All I know is that if I can get 16GB of HBM2 for the same price (or less than!) the price I'd have to pay to get 8GB HBM2 and a slightly nicer cooling solution, I'm . . . not gonna be too sad about getting the 16.

edit: so it looks like FE cards are still on the Egg, though they're up to $799 now. Or $1599 for the liquid-cooled FE. You can't even search for the card through the usual consumer card -> Vega drill-down, you have to specifically search for it (and there was an ad on the site promoting the card as well).

Makes me wonder how many people even know to look for them.

 

[estarkey7]

All I know is that if I can get 16GB of HBM2 for the same price (or less than!) the price I'd have to pay to get 8GB HBM2 and a slightly nicer cooling solution, I'm . . . not gonna be too sad about getting the 16.

edit: so it looks like FE cards are still on the Egg, though they're up to $799 now. Or $1599 for the liquid-cooled FE. You can't even search for the card through the usual consumer card -> Vega drill-down, you have to specifically search for it (and there was an ad on the site promoting the card as well).

Makes me wonder how many people even know to look for them.

Well don't tell them, I may want to buy another!

 

[DrMrLordX]

Here are my initial Vega FE impressions:

1). The fan is kind of loud at idle. Normally I would not notice, since I run 3000 rpm IndustrialPPC fans (2) on my HSF, which are loud as all get out. And I also have a mining rig with various Hawaii cards chugging along a few feet away. But when I turned my fans down from max (I run them @ 3000 rpm constantly, normally), I could definitely hear the Vega FE. Some undervolting and fan speed adjustment will probably fix that.

2). There is now a 17.12.2 Adrenalin packaged for Radeon Pro available for download. So I do not think you need to go through the "check for new drivers" step anymore. I just wiped the old driver with AMD's driver management package (which was great, since Win10 didn't try installing defaults immediately thereafter, which it has done before) and then DLed/installed the drivers from amd.com .

3). Searching for new drivers by way of the FirePro Settings tray application . . . was bad. It got stuck in a driver search loop, rendering the FirePro Settings application mostly useless. Had to reboot.

4). For today, I am using the enclosed DisplayPort -> DVI adapter with my old hp 2035 monitor. Vega in 1600x1200 glory! My new monitor is supposed to arrive tomorrow. The adapter does work. The only drawback is that it seems to take 2-3 seconds from cold boot to produce any signal recognized by the monitor.

edit: looks like rebooting fixed the problem with checking for drivers. Interesting, will have to tinker with this more.

 

[EXCellR8]

I actually noticed, too, that the limited edition RX64 which has basically the same cooler as Frontier, is slightly noisier than the reference black. For the most part I don't let it bother me but for a "premium" cooler it should be quieter.

 

[estarkey7]

Here are my initial Vega FE impressions:

1). The fan is kind of loud at idle. Normally I would not notice, since I run 3000 rpm IndustrialPPC fans (2) on my HSF, which are loud as all get out. And I also have a mining rig with various Hawaii cards chugging along a few feet away. But when I turned my fans down from max (I run them @ 3000 rpm constantly, normally), I could definitely hear the Vega FE. Some undervolting and fan speed adjustment will probably fix that.

2). There is now a 17.12.2 Adrenalin packaged for Radeon Pro available for download. So I do not think you need to go through the "check for new drivers" step anymore. I just wiped the old driver with AMD's driver management package (which was great, since Win10 didn't try installing defaults immediately thereafter, which it has done before) and then DLed/installed the drivers from amd.com .

3). Searching for new drivers by way of the FirePro Settings tray application . . . was bad. It got stuck in a driver search loop, rendering the FirePro Settings application mostly useless. Had to reboot.

4). For today, I am using the enclosed DisplayPort -> DVI adapter with my old hp 2035 monitor. Vega in 1600x1200 glory! My new monitor is supposed to arrive tomorrow. The adapter does work. The only drawback is that it seems to take 2-3 seconds from cold boot to produce any signal recognized by the monitor.

edit: looks like rebooting fixed the problem with checking for drivers. Interesting, will have to tinker with this more.

The pro Adrenaline Drivers don't have Wattman. You must do a custom install and select allow multi driver settings so you can load the gaming diver so you can use Wattman. I've been down this road, so I'm trying to save you some frustration !

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah I figured out that part. It just didn't want to download any driver updates at all. I actually had to reboot twice to get the driver tools to work.

I've been tinkering around, using Superposition as a benchmark. With 1075 mV vGPU, default RAM settings, and power limit set to 50%, the card sits at 1585 MHz constantly with no RAM throttling (my RAM throttles to 800 MHz if I lower HBM voltage). I had to up fan speed to a minimum 3500 rpm. Max temp is around 72C I think?

I still need to get that voltage down.

 

[meson2000]

Here are my initial Vega FE impressions:

1). The fan is kind of loud at idle. Normally I would not notice, since I run 3000 rpm IndustrialPPC fans (2) on my HSF, which are loud as all get out. And I also have a mining rig with various Hawaii cards chugging along a few feet away. But when I turned my fans down from max (I run them @ 3000 rpm constantly, normally), I could definitely hear the Vega FE. Some undervolting and fan speed adjustment will probably fix that.

2). There is now a 17.12.2 Adrenalin packaged for Radeon Pro available for download. So I do not think you need to go through the "check for new drivers" step anymore. I just wiped the old driver with AMD's driver management package (which was great, since Win10 didn't try installing defaults immediately thereafter, which it has done before) and then DLed/installed the drivers from amd.com .

3). Searching for new drivers by way of the FirePro Settings tray application . . . was bad. It got stuck in a driver search loop, rendering the FirePro Settings application mostly useless. Had to reboot.

4). For today, I am using the enclosed DisplayPort -> DVI adapter with my old hp 2035 monitor. Vega in 1600x1200 glory! My new monitor is supposed to arrive tomorrow. The adapter does work. The only drawback is that it seems to take 2-3 seconds from cold boot to produce any signal recognized by the monitor.

edit: looks like rebooting fixed the problem with checking for drivers. Interesting, will have to tinker with this more.

Yeah, the fan on the FE edition is louder than I had hoped but softer than I expected. I haven't had a chance to play with Wattman yet, I will this weekend. I am pretty sure I will be able to get things where I will be able to live with everything.

 

[meson2000]

And I should probably add that I need to do more fan noise testing because I am not sure that the FE card is generating all the fan noise. I have an older (5+ years?) 650watt PSU that might be getting pretty stressed when I ran some benchmarks the other night. So the fan on that might be adding to the overall increase in perceived noise level. Probably time to get a newer low noise 750 or 850 watt PSU that can handle the increased load without getting too loud.

 

[estarkey7]

And I should probably add that I need to do more fan noise testing because I am not sure that the FE card is generating all the fan noise. I have an older (5+ years?) 650watt PSU that might be getting pretty stressed when I ran some benchmarks the other night. So the fan on that might be adding to the overall increase in perceived noise level. Probably time to get a newer low noise 750 or 850 watt PSU that can handle the increased load without getting too loud.

I bought a seasonic prime gold 750, and I don't believe the fan has ever turned on!

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah, the fan on the FE edition is louder than I had hoped but softer than I expected. I haven't had a chance to play with Wattman yet, I will this weekend. I am pretty sure I will be able to get things where I will be able to live with everything.

Will tell you this much, the fan does not do much until you crank it up. The default "balanced" profile for the card heats up like a sonofagun and throttles until you use Wattman to tame it. In Superposition, it hit 85C quick, and would start throttle-bouncing off that temp, sitting at maybe 1350 MHz through most of the run. I gained over 1k points in the final score just lowering voltage, raising fan speed, and increasing power limit (which is counter-intuitive but hey whatever). Once it gets over 3k rpm it gets a bit noisy, and since it's one of those blowers it can spin up to insane speeds if you want. Whoooosh.

And I should probably add that I need to do more fan noise testing because I am not sure that the FE card is generating all the fan noise. I have an older (5+ years?) 650watt PSU that might be getting pretty stressed when I ran some benchmarks the other night. So the fan on that might be adding to the overall increase in perceived noise level. Probably time to get a newer low noise 750 or 850 watt PSU that can handle the increased load without getting too loud.

Yeah I got thrown off by my CPU fans running up during periods of non-zero CPU utilization. Normally I have em running balls out @ 3000 rpm and they dominate the noise landscape. The FE fan makes more of a hissing noise.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Looks like I won't be getting that GPU voltage down after all. This card does not want to run stable below 1100 mV, which is still okay considering the default is 1250 mV. I haven't messed with mem speeds much, but it was not overly-productive when I did, so I may leave that alone for now. Just running default mem speed + voltage at the moment.

Fully overclocked (1800x @ 4 GHz, DDR4-3466 CAS 14, ASRock X370 Taichi) the system pulls 500W from the wall by way of a 750w EVGA P2.

I got:

Time Spy

7563

Fire Strike

17874

Sky Diver

48976

Cloud Gate

42790

Ice Storm Extreme

188999

Ice Storm

199915

Ice Storm Unlimited

206170

edit: I don't have a link for it, but I got a Superposition score of 14870 (default 1080p medium).