Overclocking and undervolting
The conventional overclocking by means of an even higher power limit and more clock counteracts the current cooling concept, because the rather quiet cooler gets along quite well with what it has to dismount ex works. More, on the other hand, is already quite loud. In our articles "Overclocked and boiled: AMD Radeon RX Vega64 water-cooled" and "AMD Radeon RX Vega64 without temperature limit with interesting findings" has already been explained extensively.
On the other hand, a healthy sub-voltage can achieve much better results. Especially the use of the program OverdriveNTool can produce real miracles here. More or less, because as always it depends on the respective chip quality (and the driver version). However, since these very individual results cannot be flattened, each user would have to test it for himself. Whether the effort is worth it, however, is up to everyone. A good guide for this can be found, e.g. in this tutorial.
Temperatures and clock rates
Why we limit ourselves to the output of the values reported as GPU temperature is because the telemetry of our test sample also uses this value. What it is all about with the sometimes significantly higher hotspot temperature, you can read here again: "AMD Radeon RX Vega64 without temperature limit with interesting findings". We were able to log values up to 15 degrees higher on the map, but they seemed a bit borderline in their height if you take advantage of all the possibilities of the map.
We now tabulate the achieved start and end values for temperatures and GPU clock (boost), but also point out that these clock rates can be much higher in loops with significantly lower load. In some scenes of Wolfenstein 2 (indoor), the map reaches 1.5 GHz, only to break in the open terrain again.
Initial |
Final value |
|
---|---|---|
Open Benchtable | ||
GPU Temperatures |
42 °C | 74-75 °C |
GPU clock | 1449 MHz | 1352 MHz |
Ambient temperature | 22 °C | 22 °C |
Closed Case | ||
GPU Temperatures |
43 °C | 74-75 °C |
GPU clock | 1433 MHz | 1338 MHz |
Air temperature in the housing | 24°C | 47°C |
Overview Graphs: Temperatures vs. Clock
For better illustrations now again the respective courses considering our timeline of a total of 15 minutes each for the warm-up time.
We see that the clock in the gaming loop is around approx. 100 MHz higher than the reference. This increase of an average of just under 10 percent in this very demanding game is bought with a 40 watt higher power consumption, which is already 18%. However, gaming performance only increases by a maximum of 5-7%, which is no longer in any meaningful relationship. The Torture Loop looks similar:
Thermal analysis of the back of the board
Finally, we consider the thermal analysis of the respective load states. In order to remain as practical as possible, we have pierced the backplate at the relevant locations for the IR measurements and cut out the pads accordingly. Since these are very small diameters, this does not change the performance.
Gaming
We can see that the card is already reaching its limits in the gaming loop with Witcher 3. As long as you operate it vertically and in an open structure, everything still seems to be in the green area, but that can change quickly if you install it. Interestingly, the balancing between the individual voltage converters is a little more optimally solved than with the Gigabyte RX Vega56 Gaming OC.
When used in closed housings, we then measure higher temperatures for the voltage converters by up to 2°C. Here it is revenge once again that the fans only take into account the GPU temperature. With only a little more bums for the fans you would get back to about. 3-4°C cooler, without the ears falling off. Gigabyte has responded to our hints and has given the latest BIOS a one-to-one 100 rpm higher fan speed.
Stress
The stress test is slightly lower in terms of power consumption compared to normal gaming, but some areas, such as the voltage converters, still get a tick warmer. In the end, this is also due to the more constant loads, which are generally more difficult to cool down.
Even in the closed housing, this time it is only up to one or two degrees more at the neuralgic points, nothing more. In sum, however, the voltage converters remain even a tick cooler in all four scenarios than the almost identical Vega56, which, however, operates far above its sweet spot.
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