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Krogoth
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Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Tue Aug 22, 2017 8:44 pm

I had managed to get my hands on a Sapphire RX Vega 64 when a few went on sale on the egg before selling out again. I've been waiting patently for something to drive my fairly new ASUS MG278G through its proper paces. RX 480 and Fury don't cut it.

Vega 64 puts my aging 660TI to shame in every way. The card itself a 1/2" longer then my previous 660TI but still fits itself my Fractial R4 Define chassis with some clearance to spare. It easily yields three times the throughput of my previous 660Ti but at a cost though. The card itself gets toasty fast running at 80C+ when fully loaded and you could probably slowly cook eggs on the backplate. :o

I haven't touch on the fan controls/undervolting yet so I can dial things down a bit.

As for as gaming performance, my current [email protected] clearly holds the Vega back but it still manages to deliver ~120-150FPS on newer franchises at my monitor's native resolution (2560x1440) with all of the works. Freesync eliminates screen tearing and makes motion blur look more "natural".

I'm aware that 1080Ti is faster with lower power consumption but you need to get a Gsync monitor and Nvidia has no incentive to support Freesync in light of Vega's lackluster launch. It feels like Vega 64 is Hawaii 2.0. There's potential in the hardware, but the real issue is coding the software to properly harness it. Nvidia has a massive jump start here. I wouldn't be too shock that Vega 64 manages to distances itself from the 1080 in next year or so, but it will never catch up to 1080Ti in terms of gaming performance.
Last edited by Krogoth on Thu Aug 24, 2017 6:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Noinoi
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Tue Aug 22, 2017 9:08 pm

I suggest seeing if Power Save mode on the Vega 64 isn't affecting too much performance for your use as it does appear that the Vega 64 is being run on the ragged edge of the clock/voltage curve out of the box. A significant power reduction without further tweaking with minimal performance loss might be desired even if you're not specifically looking for it. Might help thermals/noise, too.
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HERETIC
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Tue Aug 22, 2017 9:51 pm

Krogoth wrote:
I had managed to get my hands on a Gigabyte RX Vega 64 when a few went on sale on the egg before selling out again. I've been waiting patently for something to drive my fairly new ASUS MG278G through its proper paces. RX 480 and Fury don't cut it.

As for as gaming performance, my current [email protected] clearly holds the Vega back


Whether it's a 3770 or 3570(sig) I'd recommend nudging up to 4.2-should still be at bottom of bathtub curve,
and depending on silicon lottery,possibly without any voltage increase...................

A little underclocking of vega would then give you the perfect match..............
Good luck and enjoy.......................
 
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Fri Aug 25, 2017 5:29 pm

I'm a Vega 64 owner too, got the Sapphire card for £450 on launch day. Coupled with my 7700K and 144hz freesync it performs very well. I used to have a Sapphire Tri-X Fury pro and Vega is about 25-50% faster depending on the game. So a worthwhile upgrade for me TBH. Needed a 850W PSU to run it but I probably needed that anyway so all in all I'm happy with my upgrade.
 
ermo
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Wed Oct 11, 2017 12:22 pm

I got one of the cheap-ish OEM cooler Sapphire branded RX Vega 64 boards from a 100 unit firesale at OCUK almost 4 weeks ago (it ended up being cheaper shipped than the cheapest 1080 I could find on sale in .dk at the time).

Last night, I finally sat down and fiddled with undervolting (1050 mV across the line) and underclocking it (-1% -- effectively nothing, but enough to keep it stable) and upping the power limit (+25%) after seeing [url="https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/73ikda/rx_vega_extreme_undervolting_overclocking_and/"]this reddit post[/url], which ended up giving me almost +400 points of performance in Unigine Superposition 4K over the Turbo preset at the same wattage and +600 (+10%) over the Balanced preset.

While the card doesn't boost as high as in Turbo, it is able to consistently stay above 1500 MHz and not reach its thermal ceiling with the fan spinning at 2800 RPM (loud, but doesn't whine and can't hear it in-game when using headphones).

I'll probably get an Arctic air cooler for it at some point, but so far I'm pretty happy with it.
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Topinio
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:11 pm

Gz.

I have the Sapphire Vega 56, £380 on launch day from Scan, and am running it at a quick-and-dirty first stab changes of ( freq. target 1642, 1100 mV, fan_target 2900 RPM, T_max 85 °C, T_target 70 °C, P_limit +10% ) gets a consistent 1600 MHz at 70-74 °C

I really should try dropping the fan down a bit, and maybe the voltage. Or upping the clock.
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:31 pm

Hit up the little bios switch near the exhaust end of the card and flip it to the secondary BIOS (with quieter fan profiles and lower power limits). The sweet spot for vega's air cooler is at around 200W or lower, which you should be able to hit with power-save and the secondary BIOS. Performance will be nearly as good but noise levels will be dramatically lower.
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Mon Dec 04, 2017 10:28 am

As for as gaming performance, my current [email protected] clearly holds the Vega back but it still manages to deliver ~120-150FPS on newer franchises at my monitor's native resolution (2560x1440) with all of the works. Freesync eliminates screen tearing and makes motion blur look more "natural".

I'm aware that 1080Ti is faster with lower power consumption but you need to get a Gsync monitor and Nvidia has no incentive to support Freesync in light of Vega's lackluster launch. It feels like Vega 64 is Hawaii 2.0. There's potential in the hardware, but the real issue is coding the software to properly harness it. Nvidia has a massive jump start here. I wouldn't be too shock that Vega 64 manages to distances itself from the 1080 in next year or so, but it will never catch up to 1080Ti in terms of gaming performance.


After waiting patiently for the last several months, I bit the bullet and bought a Vega 64 LC edition. I was so close to capitulating and getting a 1080Ti (great card), but the recent advances in AMD driver support for Win/Linux has won me over.
As well, I've hedged that the gaming/compute performance will improve as AMD enhances drivers/support over time.

I've been running an R9 390 for the last several years on an ASUS MG279Q FreeSync (1440p) monitor and it has been good for me, although gaming at 1440p on the newer AAA titles has been a let down.

I've been able to successfully dial back the voltage on my current R9 390, staying above the point of instability, while significantly reducing the power/hear/noise. I suspect that with Vega, I should be able to do the same (unless I receive a 'lemon' card).

Any good pointers on tweaking the voltage(s) on Vega ? (I currently use MSI afterburner for the R9 390)

Prior to the R9 390 and MG279Q combo, I was firmly in the green team camp, until the nonsense of the green team unable/unwilling to support the VESA 1.2A open standard (yes, I know that supporting the VRR from 1.2A is optional)

BTW, I used to run my 3570K at the stock frequency - however I recently delidded it. Many have been able to run at 5GHz, but I run mine 'conservatively' at 4.7GHz with no issue on an ASUS Z77 motherboard.
 
Vhalidictes
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Re: Managed to snag a RX Vega 64: First Impressions

Mon Dec 04, 2017 12:05 pm

I have a vanilla 390 and not a Vega, but I've found that lowering the power to -10% and setting the fan to 65% permanently fixes a lot of the heat issues. With the case I'm using it will never be perfect, but as best I can tell framerates are barely affected.

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